Zscaler's Scott Robertson
Cloud-based security vendor, Zscaler, is making a significant investment into the Asia Pacific and Japan region, using Australia as its anchor market.
Zscaler vice president, Asia Pacific and Japan, Scott Robertson, said it had seen sales grow more than 100 per cent year-on-year and it will be adding another five staff to its headcount.
“We have to invest in this market to support it,” Robertson said. “We have 12 staff, but we’re a growing team and are constantly looking for the best talent around. We have a very regimented hiring process and we need individuals that understand how business and IT are coming together.”
Zscaler’s route to market has been through large service providers. It has relationships with companies such as Verizon, BT, Orange Business Services, AT&T, along with many other regional service provider relationships and value-added, nimble resellers who are delivering mobility and digital solutions to the enterprise market, he said. In Australia, it has relationships with companies like Telstra, Optus and The Missing Link.
“There’s a whole host of partners that are trying to differentiate themselves,” he said. “Our relationships are well cemented with the big service providers and in Australia, there’s opportunities for more nimble resellers to get onboard and start servicing the large SMB market.”
In August, the vendor achieved about $US110 million investment from Google Capital and private investment firm, TPG and delivers its security solutions through its 100 global datacentres. Some of its biggest customers include GE and the National Health Service in the UK.
In A/NZ, the vendor is involved in the education market and it will also be looking into working with the government sector.
Zscaler vice president worldwide sales, channel and operations, William Welch, said it has some of the largest American education institutions going through its Cloud service, which is a big priority for them.
“The challenge in security that we see is that the target is no longer the datacentre, it’s the user,” Welch said.
Robertson highlighted that there were two mega trends driving organisations towards Zscaler being mobility and BYOD.
“We’re taking the perimeter away from the office and putting it around the Internet,” he said. “We have some of the largest global organisations as customers and because of that, we see a whole array of threats and we’re able to identify them and in most cases quarantine and apply security fixes to our Cloud. We do about 100,000 updates per day and as soon as we do an update, everyone is protected automatically.”
Robertson hinted it will launching a partner program that will be based on the partner’s commitment to the technology and understanding of what Zscaler does.
“We want them to be certified from a sales and technical competency level. But we also want to work and develop relationships with them,” he said.Read more: VExpress adds Mailprotector to its portfolio
