Ian Raper (Check Point Software)
Big Switch Networks sales manager Ian Raper has been appointed as Check Point Software Technologies’ new managing director for Australia and New Zealand.
Raper comes to the role after just over two years at Big Switch Networks. He has also done time at Palo Alto Networks, Riverbed Technology, DELL EMC and Cisco.
The new appointment comes just a couple of months after the cyber security solutions vendor’s former managing director for A/NZ Scott McKinnel stepped into a new role with Tenable as its regional manager in A/NZ.
McKinnel had been Check Point A/NZ managing director for just over two years at the time of his departure.
Raper’s primary focus in his new role will be increasing business growth for the company in the region, with a strategy to operate a “single policy” across all assets and to ensure customers are protected even in their most vulnerable channels.
Check Point claims its new direction aims to continue to deliver strong and profitable growth, leveraging the experience of its full suite of security solutions through high levels of automation to reduce the cost of security, along with its so-called single policy.
According to Raper, the company’s strategy has been well received and adopted in the A/NZ markets.
“Check Point is the market leader in cyber security and I’m excited to join and lead this very specialised team of IT experts and professionals in our region. Together, we will forge ahead with our offerings and security solutions to enable partners and customers advanced protection across all of their existing and new assets,” Raper said.
The appointment comes as Check Point works to accelerate its investments in technologies, partnerships and skills in the region.
In January, Check Point decided to backtrack on plans to tier-grade partners entirely on customer activity following confusion within the channel.
The security vendor had intended to replace its traditional results-based partner schemes in 2020 with an activity-based program that would reward their customer engagement efforts.
However, head of worldwide channel sales Frank Rauch told ARN at the time that Check Point would continue to reward sales revenue and deal registrations after partners complained the metrics were too vague.
“What we do well is really listen to feedback, and part of the feedback was pay grade,” he said. “[Partners were saying] we just need a little bit more clarity in the program about how we're going to be able to make money. So now we combined both concepts.”
