Novell Appoints Presidents of North American, Asia/Pacific Regions

Published: November 7, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Ron Hovsepian, Novell's relatively new president and chief operating officer, continues to make changes in the company's management team. And in recent days has appointed new presidents of two of the Novell's operating groups, one for North America and one for Asia/Pacific.

As of last week, Troy Richardson, who was formerly vice president and general manager of sales in the northeast region of Novell's North American business group, is now the president in charge of that entire region. Susan Heystee, who was president of this region for the past two years (replacing Hovsepian after he moved up), has been tapped to be vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances, a new position at Novell that was created to provide focus on Novell's alliances with its channel and OEM partners.

Richardson joined Novell in July 2005 from NCR, the data warehousing and point-of-sale expert based in Dayton, Ohio; he was previously vice president of retail solutions for the Americas unit at NCR, and has been in the IT business for 22 years. Richardson spent 15 years at server maker IBM prior to his work at NCR.

A few days earlier, Novell announced that it had stolen away another IBM executive to run its Asia/Pacific group. Maaten Koster, who was director of the IBM Tivoli systems management and security software unit in the Asia/Pacific region, is now president of Novell Asia/Pacific. He replaces Rhonda O'Donnell, who has been named chairman of Novell Asia/Pacific. The IT markets are booming in China and India, and Novell wants to get more hooked into what is happening in those regions. Koster spent nine years working for IBM in its own Asia/Pacific region, heading up the company's SMB sales, among other jobs. Koster was also the business development manager for Wang Australia way back when (remember Wang?) and has worked as a consultant and manager at a number of IT firms in Europe and the Pacific region in his 28-year career.

Both executives are responsible for sales of products and consulting services within their regions.

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