Wasabi Technologies, the hot cloud storage company, has expanded its leadership bench in the Asia Pacific region with the additions of Aki Wakimoto and Andrew Sandes as Country Managers for Japan and Australia respectively. Wakimoto and Sandes will drive customer and partner growth as Wasabi continues its full-scale APAC expansion to meet the demand for high-performance, affordable cloud storage in this digital-first region.
“APAC is quickly becoming one of Wasabi’s most important markets, and we are strategically building our operations to support the incredible opportunities in both Japan and Australia”
Wasabi has undertaken an expansive rollout to support the region with cloud storage that is 1/5th the cost of hyperscalers, with no fees for egress or API requests and no vendor lock-in. Businesses are able to securely and affordably store all of their data and access it the moment they need it without complex pricing tiers.
The executive hires of Wakimoto and Sandes follow the opening of four storage regions – Tokyo, Osaka, Sydney, and most recently Singapore – and the appointment of long-time APAC industry veteran Michael King to Vice President, General Manager of APAC in May 2022.
“APAC is quickly becoming one of Wasabi’s most important markets, and we are strategically building our operations to support the incredible opportunities in both Japan and Australia,” said King. “I have witnessed firsthand how successful Aki and Andrew have been in their markets, building optimized channels of distribution and driving customer success. They will take us to the next level.”
As Country Manager for Japan, Wakimoto will spearhead Wasabi’s growth strategy in the country, working closely with King to build Wasabi’s go-to-market team, drive value for channel partners and customers, and help deliver storage solutions that maximize the ROI of data across organizations. Wakimoto brings over 20 years of experience in the Japanese IT industry to her new role at Wasabi.
Previously she served as President and Representative Director of SolarWinds Japan where she grew the company’s customer and channel business, and implemented a comprehensive IT Operations Management (ITOM) product portfolio to support the digital transformation of Japanese enterprises. She has also held a number of impactful sales and operations roles with CA Technologies, Citrix Systems, and Adobe Systems and was also President of Pulse Secure Japan.
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Sandes holds over 20 years of experience across Oceania, Japan and the wider Asia Pacific region, helping customers solve their biggest problems using leading technologies like cloud storage. Prior to Wasabi, Sandes served as Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand at Empflifi and was previously GM Asia Pacific at Lithium Technologies (now Khoros) working with large enterprises across the region to provide solutions to high scale online and social customer service challenges.
Prior to Lithium, Sandes spent five years working in corporate advisory, executing cross border mergers and acquisitions, and capital raising transactions in the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors. He has also held several sales and business development roles across the technology sector in APAC.
With Wasabi, Sandes will focus on go-to-market strategies with Australian partners, build a team to support Wasabi’s channel, and evangelize the value proposition of cloud storage to customers in the country who are dealing with concerns like ransomware, data sovereignty, and unpredictable costs of hyperscale storage providers.