Dell Technologies South Africa general manager resigns

Dell Technologies South Africa general manager Douglas Woolley has resigned from the company. He said he would announce his next move on Monday.

Woolley, who also served as the company’s VP of sales for Southern Africa, spent nearly a decade at Dell, first joining in September 2015, a year before it acquired the EMC Corporation.

The acquisition, which took place in September 2016, made Dell Technologies, as it became known, the largest private technology company in the world, Woolley said.

He was then appointed as the Dell EMC general manager in 2017, a position he held for the remainder of his tenure.

This is a milestone that Woolley took great pride in, noting “the privilege of witnessing and contributing to the merger of two technology giants, Dell and EMC,” in a farewell post on LinkedIn.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and one I’ll always treasure.”

Woolley told CEO magazine in 2017 that the merger brought together the two complementary teams, creating room for additional growth.

“Between the respective Dell and EMC cultures, I think we’ve been able to build a new dynamic culture,” he said.

“In South Africa, we’re implementing a lot of what has originated in the US as a strategy, and have been focused on making sure that we’ve got the right market coverage and the right roots to market.”

Woolley boasts over two decades of industry experience, holding several key leadership roles throughout his career.

After working as a sales director at international ICT solutions firm Datatec Distribution, he was appointed managing director of Workgroup Distribution in 1999.

Woolley then worked as the group services director at Workgroup’s holding company, Siltek, in 2001, nine months before the company was liquidated.

After the liquidation, Woolley said that Workgroup was rescued, and he was tasked with leading its continued evolution.

“I stood at the coalface of this transition, managing the strategic plan and operational execution of Workgroup on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Woolley remained in this position for just shy of ten years before being appointed as the company’s CEO and being tasked with the merger of Workgroup and Axiz. It then became AxizWorkgroup.

After a year in the top C-level spot, Woolley moved on to work for Business Connexion (BCX) as a group executive responsible for BCX Nigeria. He spent three years there before joining Dell.