New to Nonstop (N2NS): Newcomer Spotlight

New to Nonstop (N2NS): Newcomer Spotlight

Introducing a new face in the Nonstop community, Klaus Harder. Klaus has been a longstanding member of the HPE team and joined the Nonstop team in February as a Sales Specialist in the Nordics. Charlie Higgins, N2NS Committee Member, sat down with Klaus earlier this month to learn more about him, his journey, and why Nonstop.

Klaus Harder, HPE Nonstop Nordics Sales Specialist

Charlie Higgins, HPE Nonstop UKI Sales Specialist

Charlie: Thanks for sitting down with me today. To begin, could you walk us through your career journey?

Klaus:  I’ve spent more than 25 years at HPE. I joined as a Sales Specialist for the BCS (Business Critical Systems) team. I’ve also been a Bid Desk Manager for the Sales Operations part of the business. Then I moved to Category Management for MCS (Mission Critical Systems), which was the new BCS. So I’ve been around Nonstop for a while. In fact, some of the accounts I’m now, I worked with in my previous roles, so it’s fun to revive that.

The last three years I’ve been an Account Support Manager, responsible for the delivery of services and ensuring customer satisfaction.

C: With your various roles across HPE, was there anything that stood out for you this time that encouraged you to join Nonstop?

K:  Nonstop has always been in my heart somehow. I’ve always had colleagues in Nonstop who I’ve worked closely with. I would’ve joined Nonstop back in 2021, but it wasn’t meant to be with timings. But the mission critical part is what has been the, let’s say, the common denominator for my work with HPE.

C: Although you are a new to Nonstop, you’ve had a very successful career up to this point. Have there been any particular milestones or challenges that you consider a turning point in your career journey?

K:  That’s a difficult one. I think one situation that’s always nice is when you’ve brought in a big order, or resolved an issue, or managed through a tight situation. I had a deal with a large shipping line trying to get them to deploy on HPE. Long story short, the campaign was successful, but it was a big deal and took a long time – in the end it ended up being 12 people on each side of the desk, big things to settle. I think when you succeed at something like that, it gives you the confidence to say ‘yeah, I can do a lot of things’, and not to be afraid of the bigger deals.

C: Looking ahead for the next few years, what is your vision and are there any particular points within Nonstop that you want to grow in?

K:  I still have a lot to learn about the full stack of Nonstop products – how they work, who supplies what. And delving into my customers and how each of them use Nonstop differently. From my experience so far, the customers we have are very much willing to share with us and accept that Nonstop is a platform that will help them achieve their goals.

N2NS will be hosting a session at GTUG next week, with lots of new-to-Nonstoppers from across HPE, our vendors and our customers in attendance. We look forward to seeing many of you there.