Travers to traverse Fortinet's Northern European business

Former F5 and Juniper man officially unveiled in role covering UK and several other European territories

Andy Travers claims Fortinet is on a "strong success path" after officially joining the security vendor in the post of regional vice president for the UK, Ireland, Nordics, Germany and Holland.

CRN revealed the former F5 and Juniper bigwig was Fortinet-bound last month, a fact officially confirmed by the NASDAQ-listed vendor in a press statement today.

Travers quit his VP sales role at F5 Networks in the summer after four and a half years at the traffic management vendor, and was immediately linked to a number of roles, including the vacant MD post at Check Point – which has since been filled by Keith Bird. Before that, he spent three years at Juniper.

"I am convinced that Fortinet is on a strong success path and has a lot of potential to benefit from large industry markets such as the UK or Germany," Travers stated.

Barrie Desmond, group marketing director at pan-European Fortinet distributor Exclusive Networks, welcomed Travers' appointment.

"Fortinet is really a high-performance car, and it's just had a jet turbo fitted to it," he said.

"From an [Exclusive Networks] group perspective, it's very positive for us as there's someone new who is can be a guardian angel across four significant regions and Andy has a great track record at some of the bigger brands."

Patrice Perche, vice president of international sales and support at Fortinet, said: "As Fortinet is pursuing its goal of becoming the global leader in network security, it is critical for me to rely on a team of strong regional sales executives, who have the experience and proven success in achieving aggressive sales targets.

"To that end, I am delighted to have Andy on board. He has all the right credentials to help us market our industry-leading technology and address the major security issues faced by organisational IT departments. I am confident Andy will help us achieve the growth targets we have set ourselves for 2014 and beyond."