Computerworld

Ex Unisys MD returns to NZ

After two years in influential roles at Unisys's Pennsylvania head office, former Unisys New Zealand managing director Tim Miles has returned home - to New Zealand, but not to Unisys.

After two years in influential roles at Unisys’s Pennsylvania head office, former Unisys New Zealand managing director Tim Miles has returned home — to New Zealand, but not to Unisys. He becomes a director of the local arm of Vodafone, with responsibility for expanding the company’s market among businesses.

Vodafone has been “incredibly successful in the consumer space”, he says, but there is scope for delivering “a lot more value” to business.

Miles declines to discuss his ideas for delivering the growth last week, citing confidentiality and noting that his work has just started. He only returned to New Zealand on August 1, he says.

Miles was persuaded to go to the US in 1999 to head a 10-strong international task-force to reorient Unisys for growth.

In early 2000, he became vice-president for the “global industry” division of Unisys. For six months of this period, he also ran Unisys’s telecommunications business and became interested in the area. As to the change, he says “I wanted a challenge, and something at the leading edge”, and also wanted to bring his family to New Zealand.

Miles will be based in Auckland, but there will still be a fair amount of international travel involved in his work, since it extends over the Pacific region.