Sun, which has had a tumultuous time of late in Europe, after losing its head of U.K. channel and its U.K. country manager within weeks of each other back in July, announced Dec. 21 that Alain Andreoli will now head up the EMEA region, which accounts for more than 40 percent of Sun's business.

Resource Library:

The appointment also means that Crawford Beveridge, who assumed the position while the search was going on, can return to his role as executive vice president and chairman of EMEA, APAC and the Americas.

Sun's open-source support has been questioned. Click here to read more.

Andreoli, who will report to Don Grantham, executive vice president of global sales and services, was most recently CEO of cc-hubwoo, a "source to pay" electronic procurement company. He has also held senior positions at StorageTek (which was acquired by Sun in June 2005), Xiotech and McData.

Andy Griffiths, business development manager at Sun and IBM VAR Q Associates, said the move is indicative of Sun's future strategy. "Sun clearly has a focus on storage, and appointing someone with such a storage background into EMEA management teams will help support Sun's strategic storage focus going forward," he said.

Check out eWEEK.com's for the latest news, reviews and analysis on enterprise and small business storage hardware and software.