Archiving vendor Plasmon has appointed Colin Horne as vice president of EMEA sales and customer support to help expand its channel reach.

Colin joins Plasmon from EMC where he spent eight years as a sales manager. He takes over responsibilities from David Thomson who is moving into a global sales programmes and operations role.

With more than 20 years’ IT industry experience at EMC, Nortel, Cabletron and Data General, Horne has been tasked with extending the vendor’s channel reach through its recently announced partnership with storage giant NetApp.

He is responsible for the management and development of Plasmon’s four regional teams in Europe, Middle East, Africa and India.

Horne said: “I am very pleased to be stepping into my new responsibility at this particular stage in the market. Archive requirements are now established as a major priority within the enterprise and have much greater visibility with senior management.

“I’ve seen first hand how organisations can struggle with the optimisation of storage resources and their obligations for risk mitigation and compliance, while balancing this against the need for greener data centre strategies. Plasmon’s archive solutions are perfectly suited to satisfy these enterprise demands. It’s a fantastic market opportunity that I look forward to developing with the Plasmon sales and marketing team.”

This quarter Horne will be working with the EMEA team to launch its NetArchive solution that combines Plasmon Archive File Manager software and Archive Appliance with NetApp’s storage technology.

Steven Murphy, chief executive of Plasmon, said: “Colin’s experience is a great addition to our European operations. He has an excellent track record for establishing strong customer relationships; something Plasmon sees as essential for both his sales and customer support responsibilities.

“Colin has the experience to manage the sales process for our increasingly sophisticated archive solutions, while helping Plasmon build a more customer centric focus.”