Distributor Westcon has appointed Bill Hurley to the position of chief technology officer to help drive growth.

Hurley originally joined Westcon last April as chief information officer and has impressed with his actions of positioning Westcon for growth such as an aggressive virtualisation effort, consolidation of Westcon's datacenter, conversion to cloud computing and a conversion to software-as-a-service (SaaS) for messaging and collaboration.

His new role, reporting to chief executive Dean Douglas, will include overseeing Westcon's IT organisation, and identifying future technologies and capabilities the distributor will invest in as it drives growth in its global portfolio.

Douglas said: "Since joining our company a year ago, Bill has taken the Westcon IT infrastructure to the forefront of technology. Our experience in newer technologies – particularly around virtualisation – position us as a thought leader to both our OEM partners and our global reseller customers.”

Hurley said: “Westcon Group is a global, dynamic distribution business with its own very complex networking requirements. Since we have strategic relationships with companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, EMC, NetApp, VMWare, Avaya and Nortel, we are able to leverage solutions that help our business become more efficient.

"These solutions, which increasingly include technologies such as virtualisation, cloud computing, unified communications and SaaS, represent an enormous opportunity for our resellers around the world. By embracing and successfully implementing these emerging technology solutions in our own backyard, we gain enormous credibility with both new and existing customers.”