Hitachi Vantara, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., announced new appointments to its global leadership team: Mark Ablett has been named senior vice president of global go-to-market (GTM) strategy and Daniel Chong has been named senior vice president of Asia Pacific (APAC). Both will report to the company’s chief revenue officer, Hans-Peter Klaey.

Ablett previously served as Hitachi Vantara’s senior vice president (SVP) of APAC, where he helped Hitachi Vantara’s APAC theatre to achieve record growth. In his new role, Ablett will be responsible for developing the company’s global GTM strategy, partnering with Hitachi Vantara’s customers to help them successfully navigate and execute complex digital transformation journeys. Prior to joining Hitachi, Ablett held executive positions with Juniper Networks and SpectraLink, among others.

Chong will assume Ablett’s former post as SVP of APAC at Hitachi Vantara. He previously served as the company’s vice president and general manager (GM) of mainland China and Taiwan, where he grew revenue in the region by more than 150%. During Chong’s tenure as GM, the company has been recognized as a “Great Place to Work” in the region for the past five consecutive years. Prior to Hitachi, Chong held senior management positions at Oracle, PeopleSoft, BMC and Informix, where he focused on sales, marketing, business development and company management.

Ablett and Chong will further fortify Hitachi Vantara’s executive team, which the company has been aggressively expanding with experienced talent in recent months. The company recently tapped Klaey, an enterprise software industry veteran, to lead global sales and GTM, appointed former GE Digital COO Brad Surak as its Chief Product and Strategy Officer.

Qualtrics announced the appointment of Julie Larson-Green as Chief Experience Officer, effective January 2018.

Qualtrics is a single system of record for all experience data, also called X-data™, allowing organizations to manage the four core experiences of business—customer, product, employee and brand experiences—on one platform.

As CXO, Larson-Green will be leading the design of Qualtrics’ intricately connected customer, employee, product and brand experiences. She will also advise Qualtrics’ customers globally on how to develop their experience management strategies.

Larson-Green is recognized for her ability to foster innovative teams and build scalable business models. Throughout her career she has played pivotal roles in shaping products that enable productivity and cohesive experiences across product platforms.

Prior to joining Qualtrics, Larson-Green spent 25 years at Microsoft, most recently as its Chief Experience Officer where she led Microsoft’s efforts to reimagine the Office suite for intelligent work through artificial intelligence, collaboration tools, and digital assistance capabilities.

Ant Financial Services Group announced the appointment of Cherry Huang as General Manager, Cross-border Business for South and Southeast Asia of Alipay, who has joined Alipay in 2016 as the Head of Marketing and Operations of Southeast Asia.

Reporting directly to Carl Su, Vice President of Ant Financial, Ms. Huang will lead business operations and growth in the region to further strengthen Alipay’s payments platform leadership through enabling cross-border transactions.

The appointment of Ms. Huang reinforces Ant Financial’s mission to leverage Alibaba’s online marketplace success to benefit brick-and-mortar merchants, and to expand Alipay into the world’s leading payments platform and lifestyle ecosystem in South and Southeast Asia.

Alipay has evolved from a digital wallet to a lifestyle enabler. It is the platform of choice among Mainland Chinese travellers and merchants for its reliable and efficient payments and other value-added services such as instant tax refund, competitive exchange rates, consumer credits and fast settlement. The platform also acts as an effective marketing channel for businesses with its sizable reach and viewership. To date, Alipay operates in six countries in the South and Southeast Asia region, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines with over 80 financial institutions and payment solution partners and over 70,000 merchants in its ecosystem to enable cross-border payments for Chinese traveling overseas.

Danone and Lazada Group signed a Strategic Regional Partnership agreement for South-East Asia, covering Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

With this alliance, Danone and Lazada aim to create together a superior online shopping experience for key product categories, combining their expertise on shopper needs and behaviours, and bringing convenience and compelling content to the ever-growing number of online consumers across the region.

This alliance will begin work immediately with Danone's Early Life Nutrition category, which brings a broad portfolio of brands for families with young children. Danone's Early Life businesses are already working together in Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore -- participating in Lazada mega-campaigns such as Online Revolution on 11.11 (11th November) and 12.12 (12th December). The joint ambition, with a closer alliance, is to be able to offer parents an unparalleled level of service and delivery, including advice and information on the growth, development and nutritional needs of children.

Lazada's digital platforms will provide convenient ordering solutions, personalised service and exclusive content and events developed with Danone, thus fulfilling the best online shopper experience.

The partnership will come into force by end of November, beginning with workshops bringing together the Danone and Lazada teams in the local countries in sharing insights and planning. The first visible consumer features jointly developed will be implemented on the Lazada websites in Thailand in December.

AppNexus Update on Ads.txt Implementation

AppNexus has been an early promoter of ads.txt, an emerging IAB initiative that will make domain spoofing and unauthorized reselling difficult, and even rare, once a sufficient number of publishers and their ad tech partners have implemented it.

Starting 24 January 2018, AppNexus is enforcing ads.txt, an emerging IAB US initiative in a bid to stop invalid traffic and inventory. If a publisher adopts ads.txt, AppNexus’ DSP will disable buying from parties that are not directly identified through the publisher’s ads.txt files as authorized resellers.

To help the process along, AppNexus recently released a free Ads.txt validation tool to the public. This free resource will help digital publishers ensure that their ads.txt implementation is free of common errors often seen publishers make.

Infosys announced the appointment of Salil S. Parekh as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (CEO & MD) of the company effective January 2, 2018.

Mr. Parekh joins Infosys from Capgemini where he was a member of the Group Executive Board. He has Master of Engineering degrees in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Mr. U B Pravin Rao will step down as the interim CEO and Managing Director (effective January 2, 2018) and will continue working as Chief Operating Officer.

Exiger, the global regulatory, financial crime, risk and compliance company, announced the appointment of Dean Ward to the post of Vice President and Head of Business Development for the Asia Pacific region based in Exiger's Hong Kong office. He will be responsible for growing and expanding Exiger's due diligence, technology, global investigations and financial crime compliance businesses in the Asia Pacific market.

Mr. Ward joined Exiger from Thomson Reuters, where he led the Risk Solution Sales Specialist team in Hong Kong and North Asia. An established risk and compliance technology business leader, Mr. Ward has held senior business development roles, overseeing regional sales teams throughout the Asia Pacific region, with deep experience in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and Australia. Prior to Thomson Reuters, Mr. Ward held management and research positions with IntegraScreen and Hill & Associates Ltd. He holds a BA in Development Studies from the University of London.