CDSA

Illumio Adds CMO, Announces Major Customer Gains

Data center and cloud cybersecurity specialist Illumio announced July 10 that it’s bringing aboard its first-ever chief marketing officer, bringing industry vet Bobby Guhasarkar over from Cisco.

The CMO news comes as Illumio shared that its experienced major growth in the past 12 month, with an 81% increase in protected workloads, a 120% increase in non-U.S. customers, and an 80% increase in customers overall.

“From business to politics, cybersecurity is the most important challenge we face today, and attackers are using incredibly sophisticated methods to target specific industries, including our Federal government,” said company CEO Andrew Rubin. “In order to fight this growing threat, it’s crucial to have the industry’s most talented, innovative thinkers. To that end, adding Bobby, a 20-year industry veteran with in-depth security, network, marketing, sales, and channel experience is invaluable to Illumio entering its new chapter.”

Guhasarkar previously led product marketing for Cisco’s security business, charged with managing a $3 billion–plus portfolio that spanned more than 10 product lines, covering cloud, endpoint security, email and networks. He came on board Cisco in 2015 via the acquisition of cloud security firm OpenDNS, where he was head of product marketing. Before that, Guhasarkar held positions with Aruba Networks and Juniper Networks.

Illumio adds Guhasarkar to its team amid a boom in business, that includes customer gains for its PCE Supercluster technology (a micro-segmentation and visibility solution that scales beyond 100,000 workloads), and an increase in employees (up 42% in North America, 450% in EMEA, and up 160% in APAC, in 2018).

“Segmentation is not a new concept, but it has been way too difficult to implement with firewalls and switches,” Guhasarkar said. “IT organizations spend months trying to get segmentation to work, only to be frustrated with failure. Illumio has cracked the code by decoupling segmentation from the network so when customers implement Illumio for workload protection, it turns out to be cheaper, faster, and safer than doing it with the network. I’m excited to bring Illumio’s game-changing disruptions to more enterprises everywhere.”