Liquidware Labs, the leader in desktop transformation solutions, announced today that it has established operations in the United Kingdom with the hiring of two virtualization industry veterans. This move again demonstrates the company is committed to developing a strong presence in the European VDI market and in the backyard of core competitors, AppSense and RES, both user-virtualization companies.
“We see tremendous opportunity for desktop virtualization throughout Europe,” said Chris Akerberg, senior vice president of global sales and marketing for Liquidware Labs. “We are aggressively investing in EMEA to build out a powerful channel and stronger infrastructure to better serve our customers as we see a sharp increase in demand for our solutions.”
In line with this objective, Liquidware Labs has recently signed agreements with key value-add distributors in the area, including Arrow, Magirus and SDG. These distributors, along with the new local team, will work with partners to expand their portfolios of cost-competitive VDI products in the key areas of assessment, design, migration and validation. As more VARs are equipped to be trusted desktop virtualization advisors, they future-proof their business while facilitating adoption across a wider spectrum of end-clients.
Joining the Liquidware Labs team in the United Kingdom are two long-time virtualization industry pros, Ricky El-Qasem as northern EMEA technical director, and Dan Falconer as UK territory manager. Falconer and El-Qasem will both report to Scott Bennett, the northern EMEA sales director, who is based in Chicago, IL, USA—the global headquarters for Liquidware Labs.
El-Qasem has 19 years in the tech industry with accreditations from VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, RedHat and others. He comes to Liquidware Labs from Veeam Software where he was Director of Global Education Services. In this role, El-Qasem helped onboard partners in northern EMEA, authored several key whitepapers, formed the education services team, and designed and managed development of Veeam's ProPartner accreditation program, of which 12,000 people are currently enrolled.
"I am very excited to take my career to the next level with yet another innovative and forward-looking company,” said El-Qasem. “Liquidware Labs is uniquely positioned with methodology and software that simply makes it affordable and as easy as possible to move to VDI. I based this belief after observing activity with numerous partners and others in the community. They all say that Liquidware Labs is one of the key ‘go-to’ companies addressing VDI challenges."
Falconer will be in charge of sales and business development in the UK for Liquidware Labs. Previous to Liquidware Labs, he held technical sales roles at Vizioncore, Quest Software and vKernel. Falconer brings a well-rounded, seasoned perspective to his role with an impeccable blend of technical, business and sales experience.
“We are extremely pleased to bring such exceptional talent into the Liquidware Labs UK team,” added Akerberg. “The UK is one of the most progressive high-tech markets in the world, and the VDI opportunities we are uncovering are testament to that. These two highly-respected, experienced individuals will help meet those demands and catapult our growth to the next level.”