VMware man Piercy leaves for Zscaler

Northern EMEA boss to start at internet security firm in January

VMware's vice president for Northern EMEA Matt Piercy is leaving the firm ahead of a move to Zscaler in the new year.

Piercy joined VMware in 2005 and held a number of channel roles until 2008, when he became its vice president for northern EMEA. But in a post on LinkedIn, he confirmed he is heading for the VMware exit in the new year.

From 4 January 2016, Piercy will become EMEA vice president and general manager for Zscaler - a cloud-based internet security firm.

Former VMware channel man Ed Dolman also left the firm last month, joining Splunk. Vmware was not immediately available to comment on Piercy's departure.

Piercy described his time at VMware as "incredible" and said "it was going to take something special to make me leave". He said Zscaler is just that.

"Is it relevant? It's in the cloud - that's pretty relevant," he said. "It addresses the number-one technology impact area - that's also relevant. According to Forrester, 98 per cent of decision makers want an integrated security platform.

"It disrupts current thinking on security - trying to plug the holes in your own datacentre is a losing battle. It has the added disruptive benefit of being up to 80 per cent less expensive than on-premise appliances."

Prior to joining VMware, Piercy has worked at F-Secure and Citrix in a number of channel and UK leadership roles.

He said this experience, as well as that he gained at VMware, will hold him in good stead for the new job.

"[Zscaler] is ambitious and growing fast," he said. "My experience at VMware (and previously Citrix) lends itself well to a hyper-growth organisation. They prepare to one day be a public company [and] I have many years of experience in how that operates. All of that requires EMEA to make a major contribution - I'm familiar with that role and committed to the undertaking.

"In South Africa they think about security. During my time there I learnt a few lessons about protecting yourself. They say that in the wild, when confronted by a predator, you don't need to run faster than the predator, you just need to run faster than everyone else! They say that your home security will never be infallible, it just needs to be better than your next door neighbour's!"