Sun has launched an new division to drive sales in emerging markets such as South and Eastern Europe, Latin America, India and Greater China.

The vendor has also embarked on a series of management changes to realign the business with its latest plan for growth.

The new Emerging Markets division will be headed up by Denis Heraud, Sun’s senior vice president of Asia Pacific. Peter Ryan has been appointed as executive vice president of Sun’s Global Sales and Services organisation, reporting to Jonathan Schwartz – president and chief executive.

Schwartz said: “Rapidly developing and emerging economies have been some of the most assertive in embracing Sun's approach to sustainable network computing, via open source software and open document formats, along with power sensitive datacentre infrastructure.

“Establishing an emerging markets geography as a peer to North America, Europe and Asia, will focus our resources, attention and leadership to accelerate that growth, while opening yet more indigenous opportunity for the governments, businesses, and the developers looking to the network for opportunity. With today's leadership announcements of both Peter and Denis complemented by an updated organisational structure, we are positioned to capture the tremendous opportunity found in these key emerging markets and communities around the world,” he said.

Other leadership changes included Lionel Lim taking over the Asia Pacific sales region from Heraud, Cheryl Cook will take the reins of senior vice president of the North America sales region from Ryan, and Lin Lee has been promoted to vice president of global communities.

In addition, Sun is planning to combine its systems and storage product sales forces into one unified team to help it address the market opportunities. This is the final move in a strategy in which Sun will consolidate its global sales and service organisation into three key practice areas: systems, software and services.

All changes will take effect from 1 July.