IT high flyer joins SITA to drive sales and enhance customer relationships

Geneva - Air transport IT specialist SITA has recruited IT industry veteran Peter Cunningham to head up its growing sales and relationship management function. Peter will lead SITA’s global sales team looking after its 3,200 customers worldwide and developing new opportunities to deliver profitable revenue growth.

Francesco Violante, SITA CEO, said: “Peter has extensive experience in building, growing and leading successful professional sales and services teams. He has a great track record in the IT industry and I am delighted he has chosen to join us. SITA’s plan is to continue to grow and transform the company, which we have been doing successfully over the past few years. Peter will play a vital role in our growth and transformation, as we deliver new and ever-more sophisticated IT and communications services to our customers.”

In recent years, Peter has focused on leading business transformations to enable sales organizations to deliver complex IT solution to enterprise customers - most recently at McAfee where he led Security Product Sales and Consulting Services. Prior to that, Peter was at SUN Microsystems where he built a large and globally successful systems integration business. He has also grown and run a global Financial Services Sales and Field organization and more recently has driven the business line of a new generation of utility “cloud data centres”. Before SUN, Peter was President and CEO of Unix International and was instrumental in driving the worldwide success and adoption of the UNIX Operating system.

Peter Cunningham, SITA’s Senior Vice President, Sales and Relationship Management, said: “I am looking forward to building further on the international success of SITA and the industry knowledge for which it is renowned. SITA is focused on new generation game-changing solutions that add real value for the air transport industry. It is integrating IT and communications and forging ahead with innovative services in the areas of common-use platforms, mobility, airport communications, virtualization and cloud computing. There is big potential for further growth and success, and I am delighted to be a part of that, providing our customers with ever more innovative and sophisticated solutions.”

Peter is a Computer Science and Economics graduate of the University of London and has an MBA from London Business School. He takes over from Richard Stokes who is retiring after 45 years in the IT industry, much of it spent in air transport.