Vilvoorde, Mont-Saint-Guibert, Windhof (Luxembourg) – September 11, 2024 – WESTPOLE Benelux, a provider of IT services and hybrid solutions for digital transformation, has appointed Olivier Vangrunderbeek as their CEO. His entire career has been situated within the IT sector. He brings 29 years of experience gained at various IT and tech companies.
Vangrunderbeek, leaving his previous leadership role at Oracle, takes over from Frenchman Bertrand Launay at WESTPOLE Benelux. Launay took the helm at WESTPOLE in March 2023 when it was taken over by the Prodware group. He guided them to profitability and a 20% growth during this period.
Olivier Vangrunderbeek explains his choice: ‘We now want to further develop WESTPOLE as the competence center ‘par excellence’ when it comes to IT infrastructure modernization. I hope that I can contribute to this through my experience. I’m well acquainted with the players I’m now approaching as WESTPOLE partners from the inside. I know the WESTPOLE biosphere, both from a technical point of view, as well as in terms of contacts on a personal level.’
‘Important challenges for the CIO today are managing the risk (including successful cyber attacks) on one hand and the cost of their hybrid infrastructure on the other. The cost of cloud infrastructure can be reduced by up to 25% and the risk reduced if both are managed optimally. We see our role as WESTPOLE as encouraging our customers to always go that extra mile and helping them to do so. In addition to our trusted and well established partners, we are therefore always looking for new technology from challengers that can modernise an existing infrastructure. That is how I want to further consolidate our growth.’
‘In doing so, we combine our strong market experience and can make maximum use of our credibility. We help our customers accelerate their digital transformation with hybrid cloud services and innovations such as IT automation, security, governance and data and AI.’, Vangrunderbeek continues
Vangrunderbeek’s professional journey
Originally from Brussels, Olivier Vangrunderbeek (54) graduated as a civil engineer and was previously Oracle’s Senior Director of Alliances and Channel Sales for the EMEA region, since 2022.
From 2021 to 2023, he was a non-executive board member at AREMIS, where he fulfilled an advisory role. Before that, Vangrunderbeek was a member of the Board of Directors of Microsoft’s My Innovation Center (formerly Microsoft Innovation Center) from 2017 to 2020.
He worked at Microsoft for seven years (2015-2022), where he held various senior positions. From 2020 to 2022, he was Senior Director of Partner Sales for Western Europe. Prior to that, he held the role of Senior Director Solution Sales for Belgium and Luxembourg (2017-2020), responsible for the sales of advanced technical solutions. From 2015 to 2017, he was Director Data & AI Sales for Western Europe. From the early beginnings of his career, he held various sales and leadership roles at IBM between 1997 and 2015.