NetApp Hires AWS Executive To Manage Global Cloud Sales

Ashish Dhawan’s ‘track record leading sales growth at some of the world’s largest companies demonstrates a keen understanding of the industry and customer priorities,’ says NetApp President César Cernuda.

NetApp is looking to strengthen its cloud capabilities with the hiring of a top sales executive from Amazon Web Services.

Ashish Dhawan, who until this week was AWS’ managing director and worldwide head of enterprise workload sales, is as of Tuesday the new senior vice president of NetApp’s global cloud sales.

Dhawan’s move to NetApp is the second high-profile hire for the San Jose, Calif.-based storage and cloud technology developer since the beginning of the year. NetApp earlier this month hired Riccardo Di Blasio, the former chief revenue officer from Tinton Falls, N.J.-based data protection technology developer Commvault to serve as its new senior vice president of North America sales.

[Related: NetApp Shakes Up Cloud Portfolio After ‘Strategic Review’]

NetApp did not make Dhawan or other executives available to talk with CRN about the news.

However, NetApp President César Cernuda responded via email that Dhawan, who will report to him, is coming into what is a new role at NetApp.

“The role of SVP of Global Cloud Sales was created to support NetApp’s continued commitment to Cloud and strengthen our sales strategy for the coming fiscal year,” Cernuda said in the email. “It is not a direct replacement for any role.”

Dhawan (pictured above) will be responsible for NetApp’s cloud sales strategy, Cernuda said.

“In his new role, Ashish Dhawan will develop and execute the cloud sales strategy for NetApp, lead a high-performing sales team, and collaborate closely with cross-functional stakeholders to achieve revenue targets and expand the company’s market presence in the cloud services domain,” he said.

Despite coming from AWS, Dhawan will not be focused on any one cloud provider, Cernuda said.

“This role is focused on expanding NetApp's market presence in the cloud services domain,” he said. “NetApp is the only vendor with first-party, cloud-native storage solutions running on all of the three largest public clouds. We will continue to be strategic partners with the major cloud providers in order to best serve organizations operating in the cloud globally. Ashish Dhawan’s track record leading sales growth at some of the world’s largest companies demonstrates a keen understanding of the industry and customer priorities.”

Before AWS, Dhawan worked at high-profile vendors including Juniper Networks, Nortel and Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn profile.

NetApp, which started over 30 years ago as a developer of on-premises storage technology and which remains the top independent storage vendor, has in the last decade taken the lead in tying legacy storage to public and hybrid cloud infrastructures. The company has made much of its storage technology available to run natively on AWS, Google, and Microsoft Azure.