SAP ANZ bumps up cloud expertise with new COO

Since Greg Miller moved on from being SAP Australia and New Zealand's chief operating officer to lead the company's cloud and in-memory database platform, SAP HANA, as global partner operations general manager, the company has been on a hunt for a replacement.

The company has now appointed John Ruthven as the new COO for SAP ANZ who will be responsible for the company's local presales, industry value engineering, and sales operations teams. Since Miller's departure, SAP ANZ CFO Richard McLean took on the COO role.

Ruthven joined SAP in January as the regional lead for cloud and line of business solutions across the SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ), where he led SAP APJ's 48 percent year-over-year growth in cloud subscriptions and support revenue.

He has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry, including general manager of emerging markets at CA Technologies and vice president of Australia and New Zealand for Zuora.

In the role of COO, Ruthven will continue to drive the company's cloud as-a-service offerings, as well as the SAP HANA platform to ANZ customers.

"The market is demanding cloud, and by powering this delivery model with the SAP HANA platform, we are in the prime position to deliver for organisations of all sizes and across industries," Ruthven said.

According to the company, more than 40 customers in Australia and New Zealand signed cloud contracts with SAP during the second quarter of 2014, while contracts for SAP HANA increased "well above expectations".