NEC Australia shuts professional services division

NEC Australia has shown five of its senior technology professionals the door as part of a restructure that will see its Professional Services division merged with its Managed Services Division.

The Professional Services Division, led by former Advantra CIO Peter Nichol, provided technical sales support and systems integration for a range of managed services including managed desktop, unified communications, cloud computing, biometric security, network monitoring services, managed hosting and co-location data centre services.

Late yesterday the management of this team - which included assistant general manager, Peter Nichol, consulting manager Gary Lowe and professional services manager Guy Pilens were suddenly asked to leave as part of a "restructure and rationalisation."

In April, two senior managers from the same division were also let go.

An NEC spokesman said that staff that had reported to the departed management team - which comprises of 12 staff - would now report to NEC's 300-strong Managed Services unit, led by Alex Gatiragas.

Gatiragas, general manager of managed services solutions at NEC Australia told iTnews that managed IT services "remains a key area of [NEC's] business" in Australia.

Management staff let go under the restructure told iTnews that they were confident of new opportunities from a buoyant IT employment market.