SAP Mena, a leading provider of business software, has announced the appointment of Sherif Hamoudah as its new head of ecosystem and channels.

Reporting directly to Sam Alkharrat, managing director of SAP Mena, Hamoudah will play a significant role in supporting SAP’s ambitious expansion in the region. He will also serve as head of telecoms, a statement from the company said.

Mazen Jabri, Hamoudah’s predecessor, has taken on a newly created role to lead channel and ecosystem development in Saudi Arabia, which is SAP Mena’s largest market.

Hamoudah has over 25 years’ experience in the region’s IT and telecoms industries, and is a clear demonstration of SAP’s determination to develop its channel partner relationships and capabilities across an ever-growing ecosystem.

A strong emphasis will be placed on catalysing emerging innovations such as analytics, mobility, cloud and in-memory computing, the statement said.

Hamoudah will also add considerable momentum to SAP’s ambitions in the telecoms industry. A renowned and respected expert, he has worked with 11 different telecom start-ups and is a regular speaker at high-profile industry events such as Middle East Com, Africa Com, Arabcom, VAS Middle East and Digital Africa.

“I am delighted to join SAP at such a promising time,” said Hamoudah. “This is a company with an extremely forward-looking and influential strategy, which presents unique challenges and opportunities for its channel and ecosystem.”

“From boosting entire industries with innovation and creating new jobs to through training local talent and unlocking new opportunities, the road ahead is filled with potential.”

He joins SAP from market-leading mobile communications pioneers Acision, where he served as executive vice president and global head of sales and marketing, managing a 160-sales and marketing team.

Prior to this in 2009, he held the position of managing director/senior vice president for the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan. The team led by Hamoudah became the most profitable in the company.

He also worked as the vice president for Oracle Middle East and Africa. During the course of an 11 year period, he served on the company’s Emea telecoms board and established a dedicated telecoms team in Mena.

Before joining Oracle, Hamoudah was marketing manager at Motorola, sales manager at IBM/GBM and computer consultant at KPMG, the statement said.

“Sherif is a fantastic new addition to our Mena team, and his proven track-record will be invaluable as we seek to expand and solidify our ecosystem and channel capability,” said Sam Alkharrat, managing director, SAP Mena.

“He will also be a significant driving force as we continue to build on our successes in the region’s burgeoning, and hugely influential telecommunications sector.”

SAP’s channel and ecosystem was a strong contributor to its success last year. 18 new partners (primarily VARs) joined the fold, 60 consultants were trained under SAP’s special partner program, and 400 partner employees across 81 organisations were trained on key solutions.

In other eco-system boosting initiatives, SAP launched a young professional program, hiring 40 talented graduates in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and five institutions joined the company’s globally acclaimed university alliance programme (UAP). The UAP now counts 26 members across the Mena region, which is a figure set to double that figure within the next four years.

SAP also launched its first Training and Development Institute, which will have a significant impact on the company’s channel and ecosystem by certifying 2,000 new consultants within the next four years, as well as accelerating and the localisation and Arabisation of SAP solutions. – TradeArabia News Service