Microsoft Names Pieter Knook Vice President, Far East
REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 27, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the promotion of Pieter Knook to vice president, Far East. Knook will manage Microsoft’s Far East operations from Tokyo, including marketing, sales and support, consulting, and research and development. Microsoft subsidiaries in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China, including Hong Kong, will report directly to Knook.
“The Far East region has grown rapidly over the past few years and continues to have incredible potential, ” said Steve Ballmer, executive vice president of sales and support at Microsoft. ” Pieter’s strong background in marketing, particularly online, to business customers of all sizes and his work with businesses ranging from developers to large integrators will ensure that we continue doing a great job of meeting the demands of customers and growing the industry.” Knook will continue to report directly to Ballmer.
Knook was most recently general manager for customer systems, supporting all the IT needs of the worldwide sales and support organization including Microsoft’s Web presence http://www.microsoft.com . Before that, he was general manager of business customer marketing, responsible for marketing to business customers segmented by size and industry. He joined Microsoft in England in 1990 to start the consulting business for Microsoft and has held a number of positions since then. Before he joined Microsoft, Knook ran his own start-up company serving large organizations with integration needs based on LAN and WAN technologies.
“I am very excited to be working in the Far East,” Knook said. “We have a wonderful team of people and superb products for the local markets that meet the needs of our customers and partners. The fact that our software makes local companies more competitive fuels our business and benefits local parties who have invested with Microsoft.
” Our relationships with hardware and software vendors throughout the region are a strength that continues to drive Microsoft’s results,” he said. “We continue to see a shift away from UNIX and mainframe systems to PC-based technology. In the Far East, the Microsoft® Windows NT operating system and the BackOffice® family of products continue to more than double sales per annum. In addition to this, our desktop applications business continues at a growth rate of over 50 percent. To satisfy this demand, we plan to continue investing aggressively in customer technical support, research and development, and consulting in the region.”
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