Richard Heitmann is the Vice President of IBM Automation GTM. In this role, he is responsible for the worldwide go-to-market functions for the multi-billion dollar Automation division. Previously, Richard served as Vice President and General Manager for the Aspera business unit in Hybrid Cloud where he led all offering management, engineering and SaaS operations.  He was an early executive with Aspera prior to the acquisition by IBM, and has held executive product and marketing positions at Atempo (acquired by ASG), EVault (acquired by Seagate), and WatchGuard (acquired by Francisco Partners).