Ensono Snags Faction, Rackspace Vet as SVP of Public Cloud

In its latest high-profile hire, hybrid IT services provider Ensono has snagged Duan Van Der Westhuizen. Many partners know Van Der Westhuizen from his time at Faction and Rackspace. He now serves as senior vice president of public cloud at Ensono.

On the cloud side, Ensono teams with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Dell Technologies and IBM, among others. (Its additional practice areas include security, applications, mainframe, and consulting and advisory.)

Ensono’s Duan Van Der Westhuizen

Van Der Westhuizen spent almost three years in marketing and product marketing at Faction. Faction provides IaaS cloud services. Before that, he led the Azure practice at Rackspace. In fact, he was instrumental in launching the for managed services for public cloud business unit, built on Azure, there. He also held other roles during his 11 years at the cloud computing firm.

Growth Plans

Now, as head of public cloud at Ensono, Van Der Westhuizen will spearhead growth. He is tasked with developing offerings that are different from competitors’ and that solve enterprises’ business problems. Given Ensono’s many cloud partnerships, Van Der Westhuizen and his team will take a multicloud approach to helping organizations choose the right platforms and capabilities.

“By scaling Ensono’s managed services portfolio to all major public cloud providers and targeting new M&A opportunities, we’re expanding capabilities to provide clients with targeted solutions on high-value use cases like data and analytics, machine learning and AI,” Van Der Westhuizen said. “Enterprises require a true partner across the entire customer journey including strategy, design, build and run. Ensono has deep operational expertise spanning mainframe to cloud native technologies, and Ensono is uniquely positioned to drive innovation through our managed services across this broad portfolio to propel these organizations forward.”

Marc Capri, president of Ensono, said Van Der Westhuizen brings the experience the MSP needs.

“The addition of Duan to our public cloud practice is key for expanding our expertise and depth of knowledge to serve as relentless allies to our roster of enterprise clients,” Capri said. “Under Duan’s leadership, we’ll be able to broaden our public cloud services portfolio to reach organizations and drive growth into new global and vertical markets, strengthening Ensono’s position as the leading managed services provider for multicloud solutions.”

Ensono a Poster Child for Channel Expansion

Illinois-based Ensono has spent the past several months beefing up its personnel roster as it takes aim at global growth. In May, the company brought on David Twohy, a 20-year veteran of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. He is responsible for augmenting Ensono’s North America client base, as well as for overseeing inside sales efforts.

Following that announcement, Ensono in June named Hannah Birch its new general manager and deputy managing director for its business in Europe. Birch came from Accenture. She leads Ensono’s growth strategy in Europe, a booming region for cloud computing. Software as a service is especially strong on that continent. Statista estimates the European cloud computing market exceeded 53 billion euros last year and that SaaS, in particular, will generate more than 76 billion euros by 2025.

Ensono is fueling its expansion efforts through investments from new owner KKR. KKR bought the MSP this past spring, citing “robust growth” that occurred in 2020, despite COVID-19.

“Ensono strives to be a cloud-agnostic partner that can provide tailored solutions that fit the evolving needs of today’s enterprises,” Jeff VonDeylen, CEO of Ensono, told Channel Futures in April. “KKR will play a significant role in helping us grow our business and help to deliver on that mission.”

Meanwhile, Ensono also continues to pursue growth through M&A opportunities. Its most recent deal came in April with the purchase of U.K.-headquartered Amido, a cloud-native consultancy. Ensono gained its Google Cloud expertise through the acquisition of Amido. However, Ensono also just joined Google Cloud’s Partner Advantage Program  in August to boost its multicloud credentials.