The rough leaderless ride for Hewlett-Packard's Australasian operation ended this week with the appointment of industry veteran Norm McCann as managing director for Australia and New Zealand. McCann replaces Bruce Thompson, who was supposed to have been replaced by Bob Robertson, until Robertson threw those plans into disarray when he allowed himself to be enticed away to a regional CEO's role at Lucent. Hans Neilson took the reins as interim CEO until McCann came along.
McCann has been around the Australian industry for some time, having spent 20 years at Australian Consolidated Industries before leading a management buy-out of ACI Computer Services in 1989. As Ferntree Computer Corporation the company continued to trade successfully until its sale in 1996 to GE Capital. Recently he has held several advisory positions with Federal Government bodies.
All change at Sun as Bate goes regional
Russell Bate has been appointed vice president of Asia/Pacific sales operations for Sun Microsystems, leaving the way open for James Hassell to become Sun's managing director for Australia and New Zealand. Hassell was previously Sun's channels director in the UK.
In his new regional role Bate will have responsibility for the integration of Sun's business units and products into the recently formed Global Sales Organisation. He joined Sun in 1992 and spent six years as managing director of Australasian operations.
Big shake-up at Online Advantage
There has been a changing of the guard at B2B e-commerce player Online Advantage and by all accounts there are more changes to come. Pamela Chapman, the company's CFO who had also been acting managing director for four months, has been given the MD's job with immediate effect.
George Jones, the company's chairman, has decided not to stand for re-election at next week's AGM and has been replaced as interim chairman by non-executive director Graham Sadd, who is also CEO of UK software developer Infobank International Holding. In addition John Lee, principal of the Stockholder Relations investor relations consultancy, has been appointed non-executive director.
"As a public company Online Advantage recognises that we need additional non-executive directors on our board to assist the executive directors in the areas of corporate governance and shareholder relations," Ms Chapman explained.
It is expected that further directors will be appointed within a few weeks.
Identity crisis hits Sausage
Sausage Software has been hit by a loss of several technical staff in the wake of its takeover of SMS Consulting and the appointment of Lloyd Roberts, CEO of SMS, as CEO of Sausage. As previously noted by Tom Stanios, Sausage's director of business solutions, who also joined the company from SMS: "Sausage is effectively a new company".
So strong is the influence of the influx of SMS personnel at Sausage that they appeared to have John Brumby, the Victorian Treasurer and Minister for State and Regional Development, all at sea last week. After attending a function for Sausage he was heard by friends of The Rust Report to refer repeatedly to the company as SMS. Maybe he knows something we don't.
Around the traps
Australian media content provider HWW has promoted its COO Anthony Ghattas to CEO, replacing Stephen Wall, a founder of the company, who has been appointed executive deputy chairman. The changes are being made as the company reinvents itself as a "sales-oriented provider of managed content solutions," a spokeswoman explained.
ASP player Interpath Australia has recruited Dennis Lewis from Just Jeans, where he was group information services manager, to become a senior systems engineer. In addition, Scott Norrish has joined the company as sales executive. He was previously sales director for the International Communications Group in Hong Kong.
CorProcure, the e-marketplace backed by 14 of Australia's largest companies, has appointed Len Ward CEO. He was previously COO of New Zealand company Global Ecomex and replaces interim CEO Cameron Moroney.
Telstra has appointed Rob Tsarnas a president and CEO of its US subsidiary Tesltra Inc in San Franciso. Tsarnas was previously executive vice president of sales and marketing with North American Telecommunications.
Metcash Trading has appointed John Hale to the board. He has worked in Metro's IT operations for 17 years, during which time he has held the positions of operations director IT, group operations director, and corporate group IT director.
Peter Murray has been appointed marketing director for the Asia/Pacific region of Avaya, the former Enterprise Networks Group of Lucent Technologies. He was previously general manager of marketing and solutions for Avaya South Pacific.