TSANet (Technical Support Alliance Network), a multi vendor support alliance, has appointed Duane Watkins, Program Director for High-End Storage at IBM, to the TSANet Board of Directors.

“IBM has been a key member of TSANet since its inception in 1993. In its tenure, IBM has taken several leadership positions within the alliance and I’m very much looking forward to Duane’s contribution and participation in TSANet at a Board of Director level,” said Dennis Smeltzer, TSANet president. “With the up-coming changes to TSANet, his skill sets are very complementary to both IBM and TSANet’s goals in providing better collaboration amongst the membership.”

Duane is responsible for the World-Wide Customer Support mission for the DS8000 series product. He has experience in successfully managing customer service relationships outcomes and has developed a methodology for managing high performing teams in the support discipline with a focus on innovation, knowledge, problem determination techniques and employee retention. Duane works daily with worldwide leading financial institutions helping to maintain high availability and reduced downtime.

Duane serves with TSANet board members: René Karel (VMware), Doug Jones (NetApp), Jim West (Citrix Systems), Kenny Loo (Dell EMC), Richard Long (Actian Corporation), Charlotte Post (Cisco Systems), Uwe Schaefer (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise), Michelle Huenink (Microsoft), Deepak Chawla (Nutanix) and Sandra Falzarano (Red Hat).

About TSANet
Founded in 1993, TSANet (Technical Support Alliance Network) is a worldwide, vendor neutral support alliance that offers an industry-wide forum to facilitate servicing multi vendor customers while providing an infrastructure for more efficient multi vendor problem solving. Membership consists of more than 600 software and hardware companies. TSANet can be reached at (913) 345-9311 or at www.tsanet.org.

Company and product names mentioned may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.