Data security and compliance vendor Imperva has appointed former Fortinet regional director Jonathan Mepsted as its EMEA managing director to push European growth.
His role will be to drive expansion in key markets for the vendor including the UK, France, Germany and Italy and also manage channel programme development.
Speaking to CRN, Mepsted said: “I left Fortinet because I felt Imperva not only had tremendous vision, but it has an impressive customer base already and has managed to capture a number of large financial customers in the region.”
Mepsted added that the vendor, which operates a strict single-tier strategy and has no plans to go through distribution, is now investing heavily in employing more channel facing staff and has recently launched its official partner programme.
“We are looking for more partners, but not necessarily the classic networking security resellers – ideally they would be skilled in the application space along with database and network security as well and used to dealing with large bluechip companies,” he said.
However, he stressed that the firm is not looking to sign large numbers of partners and is very much a direct touch vendor.
“We are very proactive in generating end-user opportunities and getting our message out to customers, but everything is fulfilled through our channel,” he added.
Tim Kipps, sales director at Imperva partner Armstrong Adams, welcomed Mepsted’s appointment.
“Imperva’s products fill a niche in the market for protecting applications and it has a very informative partner extranet as well,” he said. “Jonathan is very driven and channel-friendly and we have a lot of confidence that he will maintain Imperva’s direct touch approach which is a popular strategy with partners.”
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