Former A/NZ StorageTek managing director, Philip Belcher, has been appointed CEO of Australian project management services firm, PMPartners Group.

Announced today, Belcher is responsible for providing strategy and future direction, as well as heading up the company's sales and marketing operations.

The appointment follows the merger of PMPartners and ITPM, an IT project delivery organisation.

Belcher said the merger creates Australia's first "one stop project management shop" offering all the services required to ensure the success of projects executed by Australia's top 100 organisations.

"My key goal as CEO is to leverage the respective strengths of PMPartners and ITPM to bridge the project skills gap by developing our clients' in-house capabilities through training and consulting and providing them with skilled external staff to ensure their projects are successful," Belcher said. "By achieving this, we will cement PMPartners Group's position as the leader in project services in Australia."

He will report to the board of PMPartners Group, where he serves alongside PMPartners co-founders Peter Swan and Steve Hewitson and ITPM co-founder Nik Samuelson.

Belcher began his IT career withTelecom Australia in 1972.

Most recently, he was general manager of application delivery solutions vendor Radware in A/NZ.

From 2001 to 2005 Belcher was managing director for StorageTek in A/NZ.

He also spent three years at Cisco Systems as general manager of enterprise sales in Australia before being promoted to director, enterprise line of business, Asia Pacific.

Prior to joining Cisco, Belcher spent 10 years with Datacraft Ltd, a publicly listed Australian data communications manufacturing and services company, holding the positions of managing director and executive director on the board of Datacraft Ltd.

He has an MBA from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management and a Cert. of Technology (Electronics) from Box Hill Institute of Technology in Victoria, where he is currently an executive member of the board.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

PMPartners Group combines the capabilities of over 60 professionals to offer project services including education, training & certification, organisational capability development, project consulting & governance services, project management, project solutions, project management recruitment & contracting, electronic project management solutions and online tools.