Australian cloud management platform Stax expands to New Zealand and South East Asia following the appointment of the former head of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) chain and alliances with Davinia Simon as as new head of sales and growth markets.

Stax, which started as a product division at partner AWS Versent, will now operate as a stand-alone entity with Thor Essman as co-founder and CEO.

Essman remains Chairman of the Versent Board of Directors and will work closely with Stax Co-Founder and Product Manager James Coxon to grow the Stax brand and attract more funding and talent to help the company grow.

The company has firm plans to expand into New Zealand and Southeast Asia by the first quarter of 2022.

“Davinia understands AWS customers and partners better than anyone,” Essman said. “She knows the issues they can face when deploying cloud infrastructure and the innovation that can be achieved when the foundation is well built. I look forward to expanding Stax to new channels and markets, under his leadership.

As part of his new remit, Simon will develop Stax’s go-to-market strategy and partner program, which will position the company for international expansion.

“I am delighted to join Stax and hope to accelerate the Stax culture for innovation,” said Simon. “I fundamentally believe in the crucial and unique role that Stax plays in helping customers get the most from their AWS environments.

“Stax is a sophisticated and effortless solution to an inherently complex global problem. Based on all of the current success metrics, Stax undoubtedly has a global trajectory ahead of it and I am delighted to be part of the team to take this company to the next level.

Over the past year, Stax has managed to grow its revenue 175% year-on-year, doubled its workforce to over 60 employees, and raised AU $ 23.6 million in private funding, investing A $ 37 million in research and development throughout FY21.

To support its next phase of growth, Stax has also made additional hires to boost sales, operations and marketing, including Amanda Iwasaki from Versent as COO of Stax, while Prayna Prasad is from Fujitsu and Macquarie Data Centers as Head of Marketing.

With offices in Sydney and Melbourne, Stax is currently recruiting for a range of engineering and channel-focused roles. Its platform is available on the AWS Marketplace and through selected partners.

“Our philosophy is to constantly challenge the IT industry to bring greater discipline, automation, know-how and delivery excellence to enterprise technology. The Stax platform is a dynamic symbol of this, helping our clients achieve cloud results with more impact, less risk and less cost, ”said Essman.

Credit: Stax

Stax clients include Event Hospitality & Entertainment (EVT), Daymark and carsales.

“Event Cinemas Group selected Stax to support our cloud migration to AWS. Rather than creating a traditional, bespoke, bespoke cloud foundation, we saw Stax as a way to speed up our implementation, ”said Abhishek Anupuri, head of strategy and architectures at Event Hospitality and Entertainment.

“The Stax platform helped EVT implement core cloud best practices that aligned with well-architected AWS principles and helped migrate our workloads faster than we could have done in internal. We now use Stax to provide a single view of our AWS environment, including access, provisioning, costs, and compliance. We don’t need to argue over the data, it’s all brought together on one platform, freeing up time for us to make more informed decisions.

Tags Thor EssmanAWSVersentStaxDavinia Simon