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VMware welcomes new leadership to accelerate multi-cloud strategy
Thu, 10th Feb 2022
FYI, this story is more than a year old

VMware has announced the appointment of two executives to the company's Go-To-Market Leadership team. Laura Heisman as chief marketing officer, and Sylvain Cazard will lead the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region as general manager.

"Multi-cloud will be the model for digital business for the next ten years, and VMware is working with our customers to help them embrace this opportunity," says VMware president, Sumit Dhawan.

"Laura brings a great combination of enterprise infrastructure and developer experience that will help us accelerate our marketing efforts in this multi-cloud era. And Sylvain's customer-centric mindset and deep sales experience will help jumpstart a fantastic next chapter of growth for the  company and the team in APJ."

As CMO, Heisman is responsible for leading all aspects of the Global Marketing organisation, including Corporate and Brand, Partner, Developer, Segment and Field Marketing. She brings more than 25 years' experience to the role, in reaching enterprise, developer, consumer, and corporate audiences. She has had prior leadership roles at GitHub, where she elevated awareness and built developer fans of the large and advanced development platform, and at Citrix, the cloud computing and virtualisation technology company.

"I am so happy to share my next professional adventure," says Heisman. "VMware has a tremendous opportunity to be the foundation for customers innovating in this cloud-first world, and I can't wait to be part of it. The impact is limitless, and the opportunity is unique. I feel fortunate to join everyone at VMware on this journey to help our customers thrive in a multi-cloud world."

As VMware general manager in APJ, Cazard oversees VMware's sales, business strategy and services across the region. Having garnered over 12 years at VMware, he has experience executing go-to-market strategy across multi-product and multi-cloud platforms, enabling enterprise digital transformation. Previously, he was vice president for Central Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. He takes over the reins of VMware's APJ business from Duncan Hewett, retiring from his role at the company.

"I am thrilled to be taking up the opportunity to lead VMware's Asia Pacific and Japan business," says Cazard. "It's an exciting time to be part of the multi-cloud transformation in the industry, and I couldn't be more excited to work together with our customers and partners in APJ."

VMware also recently welcomed two additional executives to the company's Go-To-Market leadership team. John Sabino leads the company's Customer Experience and Success organisation, including the Customer Success, Professional Services, Learning, and Global Support team, as chief customer experience officer, joining from Splunk. And Zia Yusuf as senior vice president of Strategic Ecosystem and Industry Solutions. Yusuf joins the company from Boston Consulting Group, where he was a senior partner and managing director.