Hitachi Vantara names Walid Gomaa as new Middle East GM

Technology industry veteran Walid Gomaa has been named as the new Middle East & Pakistan general manager for Hitachi’s digital transformations arm Hitachi Vantara.

Hitachi Vantara – a digital-focused subsidiary of Japanese multinational conglomerate Hitachi – has named technology industry veteran Walid Gomaa as its new managing director for the Middle East & Pakistan. To be based out of Dubai, Gomaa crosses from his most recent role at Huawei as General Manager for Data Centre and Cloud Solutions in the Middle East – just one of the positions he’s held at numerous global tech heavyweights.

“With over 30 years of industry experience and a deep understanding of the Middle East – a market with growing importance for us – Walid represents the perfect candidate to drive Hitachi Vantana’s ambitious business strategy,” said the firm’s EMEA emerging markets vice president Tom Pegrume. “We have complete trust that his appointment will strengthen our presence in the region and are thrilled to have him join Hitachi Vantana.”

Having kicked off his career in Egypt in 1987, Gomaa has since served in various locations across the Middle East (including Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) at all of GBM (Gulf Business Machines), Oracle, IBM, Dell EMC, and Hewlett Packard – the latter where he until joining Huawei in 2017 spent eight years rising to the post of Director for HP’s Storage Division for the Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa.

Hitachi Vantara was formed roughly two years ago through the merging of Hitachi Data Systems (storage and data center infrastructure), Hitachi Insight Group IoT and big data business Pentaho, providing for a wide suite of expertise and digital transformation solutions in the areas of (IoT), cloud, application, big data and analytics among other areas. According to the firm, Gomaa will now be tasked with leading its commercial growth in the Middle East region.

“It is a great pleasure to join Hitachi Vantara at this mission-critical point in which the region undergoes tremendous change, offering access to very promising markets,” Gomaa said. “We are listening to our customers as well as to our channel partners and know that there is a great appetite to embark on a digital transformation journey. Supporting their goals, our key focus remains our commitment to them, which ultimately contributes to our continued success in the Middle East and Pakistan.”

Hitachi Vantara has been busy beefing up its senior leadership ranks this year with a number of C-suite appointments over the past six months, including most recently former Cognizant VP and one-time McKinsey associate Catriona Fallon as Chief Financial Officer. Earlier in the year – on the launch of its new global headquarters in Santa Clara – the firm welcomed Jonathan Martin as its new Chief marketing Officer and Kristin Machacek Leary as Chief Human Resources Officer.