Simon Church
Career so far I was promoted from managing director, Integralis UK, and was previously vice president of security services at VeriSign.
If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be and what would you do? Personally and professionally I am in a great spot so I am happy to be me.
Cloud – friend or foe? More of an associate at the moment. Organisations today need to consider their path to the cloud, and how they can remain secure, manage risk and maintain budgets in the meantime. Cloud is out there today and has been out there for a long time. The route to mainstream adoption is allaying people’s security fears.
Has 2011 been as bad as everyone said it would be? There is no doubt that we are facing challenging times right now. However, I have been pleasantly surprised by the way that many of our channel and vendors continue to adapt to new technologies and new solutions as a result. There is a step change in the channel market place; the days of one-off capex purchasing are on the wane, driving a value added service wrapper around great technology delivered in line with the clients Opex model is where the market is developing. It’s a complex marketplace, we can either help our clients or let them suffer alone.
What would you have as your last meal? My colleagues would expect me to say my sales director’s liver with a rather fine Chianti!
Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with? I would rather take the stairs!
Have any of your predictions come true this year? Yes, we can see that personal IT and social media have entered the corporate space blurring the lines between the business and the personal and raising issues of security. Also, people are finding that the return versus risk ratios of cybercrime are increasingly attractive so that criminals no longer need getaway cars and guns to make off with huge amounts of money.
What do you see as the channel’s biggest challenge in 2012? In 2012, the channel will need to adapt to challenges at a global level, and work with partners to provide new solutions, from securing the mobile office to keeping up with the evolving threat landscape.
What is the best part of your day? Springing out of bed, realising I’m still alive & making sure I don’t end the day thinking “if only I’d done that”.