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IBM NZ appoints practice lead for new Cloud Advisory Practice
Wed, 25th Nov 2020
FYI, this story is more than a year old

IBM New Zealand has appointed Donald Long as a senior cloud advisory consultant and practice lead of its newly established Cloud Advisory Practice, which provides access to global resources and advice to clients undergoing digital transformation.

A recent IBM study of global executives found that nearly six in ten responding organisations have accelerated their digital transformations due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has disrupted critical workflows and processes.

Study participants reported that technologies like AI, automation and cybersecurity that could help make workflows more intelligent, responsive and secure are increasing in priority.

Long brings to IBM more than 30 years of IT experience in New Zealand and South Africa, in cloud consulting and architecture, and client service roles.

“Donald's appointment to the New Zealand Cloud Advisory Practice will help clients adopt an open, hybrid multi-cloud environment that lays the foundation to increase automation or create new products using AI and data,” says IBM New Zealand global business services managing partner Steve O'Donnell.

IBM's Cloud Advisory Practice makes design methodologies and global experience available so that New Zealand clients and business partners can evaluate their operational and cultural readiness for transformation.

These resources include an AI-powered cloud advisory tool to help clients define their multi-cloud strategy, identifying opportunities to optimise infrastructure costs and which applications to move to which cloud platform, based on workload.

Prior to joining IBM, Long worked on contract to Carter Holt Harvey as IT operations manager, Australia and New Zealand for two years, the first of which while on secondment from Datacom.

Long worked at Datacom for almost eight years where his consulting roles included Principal Advisory Architect and Senior Solution Advisor.

He also previously worked at Spark Digital, Axon Computer Systems and Citrix Systems, cementing his strong industry relationships throughout the New Zealand IT and business partner community.

“As this role is the first New Zealand hire into IBM NZ's newly established Cloud Advisory Practice, which provides global resources and advice to inform and assist clients' digital transformation strategies, the role includes the responsibility of Local Practice Lead for this global practice, responsible for driving the strategic plans of expansion and growth of the local IBM NZ Cloud Advisory Practice going forward,” explains the job description on Long's LinkedIn page.

“This newly established local capability is an extension of the global IBM Cloud Advisory Practice within IBM Services. The IBM Services Cloud Advisory Practice brings to bear global experience, design methodologies and toolsets in assisting New Zealand clients and business partners in evaluating their operational and cultural readiness for transformation, helping customer organisations to define their hybrid multi-cloud strategies, identifying opportunities to optimise infrastructure costs, and providing "Cloud Provider Agnostic" strategic advice on which cloud platforms and providers are best suited to host and deliver the customer-specific workloads and applications, using the best open technology and platforms that scale.