Microsoft partner Barhead Solutions appointed John Kaleski as its new head of sales and marketing, formerly the ANZ country manager at Dell subsidiary, cloud services provider Virtustream.
The company said in a statement that the appointment was made to drive top-line growth and market expansion in the coming years.
Kaleski will be responsible for managing sales, presales and marketing functions and working with the delivery unit to ensure successful customer outcomes.
Prior to Virtustream, he worked in roles leading cloud solutions team for IBM and Fujitsu and spent nearly seven years at Microsoft, Barhead’s primary vendor partner.
Kaleski said he chose to work for Barhead because it met the “five important qualities that matter when engaging with a prospective company to work for.”
These qualities are: “(1) being a nimble company with a high growth trajectory, (2) having an inspiring & credible CEO and executive leadership team, (3) forming a trusting relationship with the founders and CEO of the company, (4) having a set of service offerings that resonate in the market, and last but not least, (5) aligning with one of the industry’s three hyper-scalers: Google, AWS, or Microsoft,” Kaleski listed in a statement on his appointment.
He added that he liked Barhead’s “all in” approach with Microsoft.
“I am pleased to welcome John as Barhead’s head of sales and marketing,” Barhead chief executive Ken Struthers said.
“His role is key now more than ever, as we aim to double in size this year. John’s experience in enterprise, passion for success and alignment to our values will be critical to our success.”
Kaleski said his approach to working successfully with Microsoft includes ensuring that Barhead delivers customer outcomes to secure the vendor’s trust, working with industry-specific experts to offer superior business solutions, and maintaining a flow of information and feedback with Microsoft.
“Microsoft has to know how we’re tracking opportunities and delivering value, so it is important that we can communicate to them how we are handling each project,” he said.
Attracting and retaining a high level of talent is also a key priority, he added.Got a news tip for our journalists? Share it with us anonymously here.