He worked in manufacturing and IT organizations and brings a background in automotive, banking, health care and government industries. Dirk has developed and implemented for HP various programs and initiatives integrating customer expectations and business requirements with the seamless delivery of services on a pan-European and multi country regional basis. Dirk understands and is committed to the importance of customer delivery excellence in heterogeneous environment.

This support includes a new client centric support concept for technical Support which IBM introduced globally. Before that he was for ten years the Director of the European Storage Competence Center responsible for Level 3 Pre- and Post Sales technical Support of IBM Storage Solutions in Europe.

During his 34 years with IBM Rainer has held several Engineering and Management positions that allowed him to develop and utilize his technical, intercultural and Leadership skills. He has spend over 5 years in the US holding key positions in Manufacturing, Development and Technical Support. The above mentioned "European Storage Competence Center" was formed and enhanced under his leadership to client centric, efficient End-to-End Service- and Support Center . Rainer is representing IBM on customer boards and government committees.

Since he has been appointed to member of "Board of Directors" at TSANet Europe six years ago Rainer has dedicated a sizable amount of time and effort to further develop TSANet to a global operating multi- vendor support organization. He is an Advocate for multi- vendor collaboration ensuring that technical support strategies are tied to drive customer success. In the extremely challenging world economy, his intend is to position TSANet as the multi -vendor support organization for many businesses and for the benefit of TSANet members.

During my time at Oracle I've worked in many roles within Technical Support ranging from a standard support analyst role, through to generating and delivering training classes on Oracle technology, and since 1999 I've acted as an EMEA Planning manager. As EMEA Planning manager I have the responsibility for ensuring that Oracle Support in EMEA is ready and prepared to support any new product that we bring to market. This entails working with my global counterparts in the Americas and Asia Pacific in building a globally scalable deployment model. In the past this has often required working with other vendors to setup mutual Co-operative Support Agreements in order to provide customers with a seamless support experience.

I believe that TSANET gives vendors a superb opportunity to leverage multi vendor support models, easily and efficiently, without the need for the setting up of time consuming bilateral bespoke agreements.

The benefit and value of TSANET membership needs to be widely known and understood across the IT industry, and I'll be pressing this message as a newly appointed member of the board.