Top recruit from SAP: Dr. Ferri Abolhassan to be the new Head of Sales for Systems Integration
Frankfurt/Main, Germany, August 20, 2008
Dr. Ferri Abolhassan (44) will take on the newly created position of Head of Sales for Systems Integration at T-Systems as of September 1. In this capacity, he will report directly to the member of the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management responsible for Business Customers and T-Systems CEO, Reinhard Clemens. Dr. Abolhassan previously worked for SAP where he was most recently responsible for the corporate customers’ business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
"We have gained another first-class sales professional in Dr. Abolhassan. He has many years of top management experience in our industry," explained Mr. Clemens. "He will be a valuable addition to our management team from both a technical and a personal perspective. With Dr. Abolhassan, we are realigning sales at Systems Integration. In his new role he will be the link between our key account and delivery units in the area of Systems Integration."
The new sales unit for Systems Integration combines the sales activities from the existing Corporate Customers and Systems Integration units. Corporate Customers has overall responsibility for ICT support for corporations and public institutions. Systems Integration focuses on the creation and delivery of software applications. To this end, T-Systems concluded a partnership in March of this year with U.S. provider Cognizant. Cognizant has far-reaching resources in countries such as India and China. This gives T-Systems extensive access to offshore capacities, thus enabling the company to be a competitive systems integration provider.
Dr. Abolhassan holds a doctorate in computer science, and started his career in research and development in 1987. He initially worked for Siemens in Germany, and afterwards at IBM in the United States. Between 1992 and 2001, he held various management positions at SAP. In 2001, he moved to IDS Scheer AG, where he was CEO and Co-Chairman. In 2005, Dr. Abolhassan rejoined top management at SAP – most recently as Executive Vice President EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa).
