Aportio has tapped the software expertise of a Silicon Valley specialist to complete the built out of the start-up’s intelligent virtual assistant offering.
The IT service management provider has appointed Juergen Brendel as software development manager, in response to market expansion plans.
Specifically, Brendel is tasked with enhancing virtual assistant capabilities, while leading the team developing Aportio's wider portfolio of products.
“Juergen is a talented and genuine innovator,” Aportio CEO, Scott Green, told Reseller News. “His experience in developing distributed, secure, robust and scalable systems at the enterprise level aligns perfectly with Aportio’s vision and future technology roadmap.”
Leveraging more than 20 years industry experience, Brendel has expertise in a variety of technology platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS); OpenStack and Kubernetes, alongside open source, cloud and network security skill-sets.
With seven patents against his name, Brendel has provided technical expertise for Cisco, MuleSoft and SnapLogic, in addition to his most recent role as director of engineering at Manifest Networks.
“There are two things that attracted me to Aportio,” Brendel added. “The strength of its leadership team and the innovative business idea behind it.
“I have worked with large enterprise scale data centres and cloud technologies for many years. Resilience, scalability and automation has been a key driver in those fields for some time now and I'm excited to bring my experience to Aportio.”
The hiring of Brendal follows the appointment of Chong Looi as chief digital officer, joining the emerging start-up amid strong growth plans in New Zealand and Australia.
With more than 30 years industry experience, Looi joined from Datacom, having previously ran the technology provider’s enterprise and commercial market cloud business across the country.
In the new role, Reseller News revealed that Looi will be primarily focused on engaging Aportio’s core base of service provider customers, in a bid to improve customer experience and profitability levels across the channel.
Furthermore, Looi will also be tasked with helping shape and drive the technology roadmap of Aportio, which officially launched to the market in February 2018.
Built on Amazon Web Services, Aportio is delivered on a subscription basis, targeting service providers through technologies such as digital, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
From a channel standpoint, the start-up is split up into two service offerings, spanning AVA and SEAK.
Specifically, AVA is a virtual concierge and support assistant designed to transform the service experience offered to IT users and IT support personnel.
Meanwhile, SEAK discovers the IT assets of a business, before adding information from a number of sources to enable customers to make better decisions on assets sooner.
