Shake-up for SAP’s local leadership

SAP has appointed former COO Colin Brookes to the position of president and managing director for the company’s A/NZ operations.

Brookes replaces Stephen Moore who held the job on an interim basis and has now been promoted to executive director.

Brookes rise through the ranks has been swift, having only joined the company as chief operating officer in January this year.

He was previously working for SAP in the UK following a career with the likes of Software AG and CA Technologies.

“In the past six months, Colin Brookes has brought a new level of sophistication to our operations that has translated to better outcomes for and higher satisfaction among our customers in Australia and New Zealand,” said Scott Russell, who earlier this month was himself was appointed SAP’s new APJ president. “Under his leadership, I am confident this trend will accelerate.”

Moore, as executive director of SAP ANZ, will be “responsible for building on the substantial growth and adoption of SAP’s extensive cloud portfolio and supporting SAP’s wider customer, partner and community ecosystem in ANZ” the company said today.

Moore joined SAP in 2011 as a delivery executive for SAP APJ, progressing to technology sales and delivery roles with SAP ANZ and SAP APJ. He has previously held executive positions at PeopleSoft, Unisys and CA Technologies.

“Under Stephen Moore’s leadership, organisations in Australia and New Zealand have adopted our cloud solutions at an unprecedented rate,” Russell added. “We look forward to his continued leadership as we simplify and harmonise the way we deliver on our customers’ increasing demand for our innovation in the cloud. Through these appointments, we are confident we can better serve our customers and strengthen our position as their innovation partner.”

The top tier leadership changes come as the German software vendor works tobuild up its cloud profile, embracing software-as-a-service (SaaS) business models and the public cloud.

In May, Mooretold Fairfax Mediathat a$10 million hiring spreeslated to be undertaken by SAP locally in the first half of this year was a result of increases in the company’s cloud-based software subscriptions.

At the time, SAP was recruiting for more than 40 new Australian jobs on its global careers page, with 39 new local job opportunities being published in April alone.