SAS South Africa appoints new sales director

The SAS Institute South Africa has appointed Dion Harvey to the position of sales director.

Harvey has spent more than 21 years in the local and international information technology industry. He has joined SAS after 15 years at IBM where he led sales for a range of their software brands, and ultimately served as general business sales executive for IBM Software in the MEA region, and software brands sales executive for IBM South Africa.

His experience has gained him strong ICT leadership skills, particularly in the software industry, and he has capabilities in development, technical and sales leadership areas.

“We are delighted to welcome Dion to SAS South Africa, and we are confident that his wealth of experience and integrity are the right mix to refine and deliver on our sales strategy and do great things with us,” says Riad Gydien, SAS Vice President Middle East and Africa.

Harvey has joined the business analytics software and services leader at an exciting time for the industry. As data volumes grow at a speed that far outpaces computer processing speeds, it is only the highly-specialised solutions offered by vendors like SAS that can make sense of this much information evolving this quickly.

“I am relishing the challenge of developing strategies to help our market understand the radical leaps forward in capability that they can realise with SAS,” says Harvey. “SAS has always been a leader in business analytics software and services. The power and effectiveness of the SAS solutions are their own best marketing tool. Our mission must be to help our customers anticipate business opportunities, empower action and drive impact, in order to transform the way they do business. SAS calls this the power to know.”

Dion will be responsible for the national sales team located around South Africa and will report directly to Gydien.