Snowflake appoints James Petter head of EMEA sales

a man wearing a suit and a tie

Key Takeaways

James Petter has been appointed as VP of EMEA Sales at Snowflake, effective July 3, where he will lead business growth and customer acquisition in the region.

Petter brings over 25 years of experience in senior sales roles, having previously held positions at Pure Storage, EMC, and Cisco, and has a proven track record in driving revenue growth across EMEA and APAC.

Snowflake is experiencing significant sales growth, with a 66% year-on-year increase in product revenue in the last quarter, and aims to leverage Petter's leadership to expand its footprint and innovate in the data cloud ecosystem.

Snowflake has announced the appointment of James Petter as VP of EMEA Sales, responsible for leading Snowflake EMEA to business growth.

Taking the role from July 3, Petter will also be responsible for landing new customers and ensuring collaboration and innovation across Snowflake’s data cloud ecosystem.

Petter joins the team with over 25 years of experience in senior sales positions across leading firms, driving new business and revenue growth, expanding business in EMEA and APAC as well as attracting and retaining workforce. Prior to his appointment, Petter spent over eight years at Pure Storage, driving increased revenues across EMEA, Latin America and APAC.

Before this, he spent 11 years at EMC and a further four years at Cisco. Petter also served in the British Army for four years before joining the enterprise tech industry.

James Petter, VP of sales EMEA at Snowflake, said: “As a leader, I’ve always adopted the mantra of ‘serve to lead’ and at a company as innovative and disruptive as Snowflake, this will continue to remain true.

“Snowflake is at an exciting new chapter in its journey led by developments in generative AI, LLMs and applications and I’m thrilled to join at this stage and extend these opportunities across EMEA, helping our customers better mobilize their data.”

Commenting on the appointment, Chris Degnan, chief revenue officer at Snowflake, said: “Our EMEA organization is at an exciting phase as we continue to expand and increase our footprint in the region and help customers to do more with their data. Bringing in James’ wealth of experience in leading globally recognized companies to strong success will help us achieve this goal with effective go-to-market strategies.”

With strong sales growth taking place in the last quarter for the region, as product revenue saw a 66 percent year-on-year growth to $88.7m, Petter takes some sturdy reins with his new role and the race is now on to continue EMEA success.

It follows other announcements from Snowflake, as the firm recently unveiled its latest partnership with NVIDIA and the availability of its Native App Framework, with the duo building accelerated computing and software integrations for Snowpark Container Services and making advanced AI capabilities widely available.