Europe Focus Group
The objective of this group is to define common challenges for technical support organizations in Europe and work together on possible solutions. The group also provides input on reviewing and influencing TSANet’s strategy from an European perspective. Contact Rainer Zielonka at rainer@tsanet.org if you would like to join this group.
Below are the details of the upcoming meetings. Contact Rainer Zielonka if you would like to attend any of these sessions.
Group Members
Rainer Zielonka – VP of Business Development EMEA & India
Rainer Zielonka, VP of Business Development for EMEA and India, chairs TSANet’s EMEA and INDIA focus groups, fostering collaboration among tech support executives. With over a decade on the TSANet Board, he brings extensive experience to his current role, representing TSANet to drive regional business growth and membership expansion.
In his 35-year career, Rainer has excelled in Customer Experience Management, Business Development, IT Consulting, Digital Transformation, and Technical Support Services. His leadership in top-tier tech firms demonstrates his global engagement and cross-functional collaboration skills across management levels. Rainer’s strong communication and people management abilities have consistently been evident in his diverse roles.
Excited about his new position at TSANet, Rainer said, “I’m eager to contribute to TSANet’s success with its winning strategy, skilled team, and unique value proposition.
Eva Schooss – Lenovo
Eva Schooss joined Lenovo in 2015, and has since been responsible for HW and SW support delivery for Lenovo’s data center group products in EMEA. Her main focus is to create and maintain an excellent service experience for Lenovo’s DCG customers.
Throughout her career of almost 30 years in the IT industry, she held several professional and management positions in Systems Integration, HW and SW support, Technical Sales and Sales.
Eva is based in Mannheim, Germany.
Daniela Mitova – HPE
Daniela Mitova is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in operations management, account management, and team leadership. Currently serving as the HPE Compute Operations Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Daniela is responsible for designing strategic initiatives and enabling high-performing teams with diverse technical expertise.
With a track record of success in improving customer satisfaction, increasing efficiency, and implementing innovative solutions, Daniela is passionate about authentic leadership and creating psychological safety within organizations. She is also a dedicated advocate for sustainability, actively promoting sustainable practices in her community.
Daniela holds an MBA degree, which further enhances her strategic acumen and leadership capabilities. Her career journey reflects her commitment to fostering a culture of inclusion, innovation, and compassionate leadership, making a positive impact both professionally and socially.
Jens Ulbricht – IBM
Jens joined IBM in 1998 as Manufacturing Engineer for Storage Products working mainly in Germany, Hungary and USA. He held various positions in respect to IBM Storage like New Products Launch Manager, Manager of Engineering Team and Manager of Client Care across EMEA. As Program Director Technical Remote Support, he is responsible for multiple support teams across EMEA for storage products. Jens is located in Frankfurt, Germany.
“Being part of TSANET Focus Group gives me the opportunity to interact closely with experts from other IT companies and to share my expertise and network.” Jens stated.
Rob Schoon – Software AG
Rob became part of the TSANet EMEA Focus group early 2014. He is quite excited to have the opportunity to be part of that group as it helps him understand common business challenges in the IT/Support industry. Rob has worked before with TSANet, between April 2005 and September 2007. He was Director of the Board of TSANet, representing webMethods at the time. In that role he has worked closely together with many of the people who are now still with TSANet. At Software AG he is active as Director Global Support, responsible for the support delivery and customer satisfaction results for the webMethods, IBO and Big Data Product Suites within the time zone EMEA. Together with a team of professional support managers he develops and leads regional teams in The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, England, Malaysia and Israel. Customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction are two of the main focus points for Rob.
Jane Cao – Microsoft
Jane joined Microsoft Netherlands at 2014 as the Global Critical Situation Manager within the Microsoft Support Escalation Management team. Her role is dedicated on helping Microsoft worldwide customers to relieve from the direct pain as fast as possible at some of the most complicated and moment of truth type of incidents.
Jane has years of first hand technical support and incident management experiences, many cases studies and true stories of some of the most classic computer system incidents involves multiple system suppliers, multiple product teams, multiple customer businesses across time zones. Those are the true pleasure Jane enjoy keep working at the front line and in the war rooms, from the starting day and till this day.
Denis Canty – Dell EMC
Denis has been with Dell EMC since 2013 and is responsible for managing global partner alliances. His main responsibility is to enable seamless service operations between Dell EMC and their partners and being responsible for TSANet within Dell EMC is a part of that.
Over a twenty year career Denis has also worked directly within a number of support management roles, leading various data center operations across the EMEA region.
Denis is based in Cork, Ireland.
Robert Binkhorst – Red Hat
Robert Binkhorst is a champion for the customer experience and customer success in the EMEA region as the Director of Customer Experience and Engagement for Red Hat in Europe, Middle East and Africa. He works to ensure customers and partners see increased value to their business through their relationship with Red Hat. His team consists of Technical Support, Customer Success Managers, Technical Account Managers, and highly specialised Customer Adoption roles who are all positioned to guide customers from adoption to deployment and beyond, in order to maximise the value they get from Red Hat technologies throughout their adoption life cycle.
Tony Orr – F5 Networks
Tony Orr is the Director of Global Support Services at F5 Networks. Tony’s team consists of approximately 130 engineering professionals across five countries – UK, Poland, Israel, Singapore and North America. A veteran of the services industry, Tony started his career in 1988 as a Field Service Engineer at Case Communications and, over the last 15 years, has held senior leadership positions in both reseller/SI’s and vendor organisations where he’s been responsible for Project Management, Professional Services, Technical Support Services and Networks Operations Centres across Europe.
Tony is based near London, UK. For further details on Tony’s career history, click here.
Arnaud Errede – Amazon
Arnaud Errede has 20 years of expertise in services and customer success leadership working for companies like EMC, Atlassian and now AWS. After growing the EMEA Enterprise Support for Atlassian, introducing new support offerings such as Premier Support and Priority and leading operations, strategy and innovation across the Global Customer Support organisation.
He is now the AWS Benelux Enterprise Support Leader that help unleash the potential of the Cloud for the largest AWS customers via a Team of passionate Cloud enthusiast Technical Account Managers.
Being part of the TSANet Focus group is a unique opportunity to share and exchange best practices with industry leaders and help create a cohesive understanding of industry trends and opportunities.
Barry Gavigan – Broadcom
Barry is an experienced Technology leader with over 25 years industry experience in both Telecoms and IT. Barry joined Broadcom ( Formerly VMware) in 2016 and has since been responsible for various leadership positions and initiatives within their Technical Support organisation. He has held leadership positions in both an EMEA regional and Global capacity. Currently his main responsibilities is leading the EMEA Technical Support organisation for VMware by Broadcom’s VCF stack as well as owning the overall global responsibility for one of the main VCF components domains.
Barry is based in Cork, Ireland.
India Focus Group
Amid Ganguly – Cisco
Prashant Chaudhri – Red Hat
Shoumik Kumar – Red Hat
Antony Fernando – VMware
Abhinav Bhargava – Nutanix
Venkat Raghavan – Citrix Systems
Pavan Kumar V Vemu – IBM
Australia Focus Group (Includes Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia)
North America Focus Group
Japan Focus Group
