Hitachi Vantara has elevated its Australia and New Zealand business unit boss Adrian Johnson to lead its Digital Infrastructure Business Unit (DIBU) in Asia Pacific, the 43 year old company said in a statement.

The storage solutions vendor’s DIBU includes offerings like its data storage, hyper-converged & converged infrastructure, data protection, IT management, and edge-to-cloud infrastructure services.

“Over Adrian’s 2.5 years of service leading Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) for Hitachi Vantara, he has demonstrated a passion for growth, a customer-first mindset, and a commitment to creating the right culture for our people. I am confident that Adrian is the right leader to drive APAC’s business growth,” said Hitachi Vantara DIBU boss Mark Ablett, to whom Johnson would be reporting too.

Johnson will be responsible for Hitachi Vantara’s business strategy across the APAC region while continuing to be based in Australia. His current responsibilities will also include continuing to lead the company’s ANZ business in the interim until a replacement has been named.

Johnson joined Hitachi Vantara in 2019 as ANZ vice president and managing director, replacing Nathan McGregor, who also moved to APAC within the company at the time, leading the data analytics and IoT unit. During his stint, Hitachi Vantara said Johnson led the business through the COVID-19 pandemic and delivered business growth. Prior to Hitachi Vantara, Johnson was ANZ general manager at videoconferencing vendor Liferay from 2016 to 2019 and APJ managing director of Code42 Software from 2013 to 2015.

Previous stints also include multiple leadership positions at Dell Technologies, ANZ general manager of Fuji Xerox from 2007 to 2008, practice director at CA Technologies, and multiple management roles at Sun Microsystems.

Commenting on his appointment, Adrian Johnson said that he is looking forward to working with experienced and customer-focused colleagues across the Asia Pacific region, as well as Hitachi Vantara’s ecosystem of partners and distributors.

 “ I am also looking forward to maximising the insights their APAC customers gain from their data, and to support their data-driven initiatives with cloud smart, hybrid cloud solutions,” he added.