Amazon hires first Aussie staff

Poaches experienced hosting industry professional.

Amazon Web Services has hired its first sales staff in Australia.

The cloud computing company has poached business development manager Russell Hall from enterprise hosting company Hostworks.

Russell Hall spent ten years at Hostworks, climbing from various technical support roles into account management during that time.

His latest role as client business manager saw him report directly to Hostworks’ national sales manager and – more crucially – develop relationships with all of Hostworks’ key clients.

Hall and Amazon Web Services were both unavailable for comment.

Last month, Amazon hired Simon Elisha as principal solutions architect for the Australian market. Elisha is based in Melbourne.

Amazon executives are currently in discussion with several large independent data centre providers in Australia to house another availability zone for its global cloud computing service.

The company’s US-based cloud competitor Rackspace hired its first Australian staff – current country manager Mark Randall - in February 2009 after he proved a star salesman in other territories.

Rackspace now has seven staff in Australia, but is yet to launch any services hosted on Australian soil. Its Australian customers are served from a data centre located in Hong Kong.