Johnny Koen

Leading a global organization of around 300 people across the Center of Excellence, Solution Engineering & Architecture, Global Labs, DevSecOps, TechOps, and product-aligned engineering functions. Responsible for connecting engineering innovation, solution architecture, technical validation, labs, and customer experience into a unified capability that accelerates customer adoption and business growth. Key focus areas include: * Scaling global customer and partner experience services across executive briefings, demonstrations, proof of concepts, workshops, and technical validations. * Leading engineering and architecture teams responsible for solution compatibility, best practices, white papers, performance validation, and technical differentiation. * Expanding global lab capabilities to support customers, partners, product teams, and engineering. * Driving innovation across AI infrastructure, hybrid cloud, cyber resilience, automation, data management, and next-generation storage platforms. * Strengthening alignment between Product, Engineering, Sales, PreSales, Partners, and Customer Success.

• Scaled the CoE organization from 18 → 42 across Experience (Demos/POCs), Lab, Partner Enablement, RFP, and Discovery. • Shifted delivery from standard demos/POCs to custom demonstrations, now ~75% of all demonstrations, improving differentiation and sales effectiveness. • Built an award-winning demo program including the “Unbreakable” demonstrations and a public demo center drawing ~17,000 visitors/year. • Increased influenced revenue from ~$190M → ~$340M/year through repeatable demo/POC services and field-aligned technical GTM execution. • Developed and launched a Demo Portal to scale reuse, consistency, and partner/customer access to demonstrations. • Personally built a VSP One Block MCP Server prototype outside of core work hours (innovation + enablement). • Regularly lead customer/partner meetings, deliver executive-level demos, and present at events across regions.

We created the Center of Excellence to provide swift and comprehensive field sales support by delivering proof-of-concepts and providing live demos for Hitachi’s broad product portfolio and its integration into various ecosystems. Highlights of my responsibilities: * Manage and CoE Storage Team Lead * Provide leadership and direction to the Global Center of Excellence team by expanding its sales support capabilities * Building and maintaining relationships with Hitachi Product Management including Hitachi development and engineering group ITPRO * Liaise with Hitachi Product Marketing to create and presenting fresh content for product launches and events * Present Storage Management pre GA code to Hitachi Partners and internal groups * Present CoE demo's content at events like, Hitachi NEXT, Hitachi GKOM and also VMWorld * Development and delivery of customer workshops with account teams and solution specialists

Working in the Hitachi Global Solutions Services (GSS) devision as one of the senior Principle Consultant with key focus on Enterprise Systems. Responsible to translate customer business requirements into solutions that leverage Hitachi Unified Compute Platforms and Enterprise Arrays.

Contracted by Neotel for a fixed term to complete a number of projects: To implement and migrate all production storage data from Hitachi USP-V and other End-of-Life Storage systems to Hitachi VSP, Hitachi HUS and Hitachi HNAS Platform. To design and implement new sparc T4 infrastructure. Then migarate all Vertitas clusters and standalone systems to T4 Logical Domains for all production, preproduction and development environments.

I started at Volintec delivering professional services on a per project basis for Sun Microsystems Dubai across Africa and the Middle East. I then accepted a permanent contract at Sun Microsystems South Africa. I architected and delivered numerous projects on Enterprise solutions on their behalf. I was also utilised as a Technical Pre-Sales engineer. I then moved to a per project bases contractor for Oracle Professional Services as I started to deploy more projects on platforms outside the scope of Oracle

I started at BSI in a managed services position as a Senior Systems Engineer at Investec Private Bank South Africa. I was at Investec for about two years architecting and implementing their Online banking environments. I then moved to a six month Sun Microsystems contract at MTN Nigeria. I was a Senior Systems Engineer at MTN Nigeria which is the largest mobile company in Africa. I then started working on per project basis contracts at Sun Microsystems delivering professional services across Africa and the Middle East. My main focus was enterprise solutions specialising in enterprise storage projects.

Tasked to architect and administrate the Sun Solaris operating environments and the Informix Databases.

Tasked to architect and administrate the Unix operating environments terminal concentrators, jet streams, scanners and picking systems. In the last year of my career at Medicom I moved to programming division as an embedded C programmer.

Performed the tasks of a junior Cobol programmer. Coding reports and distributing the code to customers. Later in my career at Nyl-Data I moved to a more senior position developing complex financial modules for the company.