After 30 years in the data protection software business, David and Eran Farajun, the father-son duo in charge of the Canadian vendor that is Asigra, aren’t slowing down.
In fact, as the company turns the page on its 30th anniversary and begins year 31, the two are looking toward the next 30 years, starting with an entirely new management team put together in 2016.
Eran, the executive vice president of Asigra and responsible for the company’s global expansion, marketing, business development, and long-term strategic activities, and his father, David, the company’s CEO and founder of the business in 1986 in Toronto, have been mainstays in Asigra leadership.
The two were joined by five new executives in 2016.
“2016 was a people pivot year if you will,” said Eran Farajun. “We have a lot of new brain power, which is very exciting for us as a business.”
Each new member to the Asigra leadership team is new to the company in 2016. They are:
• Al Oliver, vice president of engineering. Previously vice president of IT operations at shop.ca.
• Mike Andreola, vice president of global sales. Previously vice president of enterprise sales at Atria Networks.
• Michael Stephens, vice president of marketing. Previously held senior executive roles at TeraGo Networks, Atria Networks, Group Telecom, and AT&T Canada.
• Vince Paladino, vice president of people and culture. Previously vice president of human resources at Quindell Solutions Inc.
• Andrew Bacon, director of global customer care. Previously held a leadership role at VMware Global Services in its technical support management division.
In 2017, Asigra will turn its head toward tackling some of the serious security issues that appeared in 2016.
“2017 is going to be the security year where we will be adding fibre security elements to our data protection to address the ransomware and zero day attacks in the marketplace,” said Eran. “We’re very excited to do that, and that’s what will be the big deal for us in the next year.”
While CDN wasn’t able to speak with David, Eran believes his father would agree with him on the coming year. The 73-year-old CEO still works in the office most days of the week, and with his engineering background is “knee deep into the technology”.
When it comes to the Canadian landscape in the coming year, the changes made to the leadership team is the first step to growing the company’s channel partners in south-western Ontario and across Canada as a whole. Eran credits the new management team for that saying, “a lot of them have really good relationships in Canada, so that has brought us a lot of awesome partner opportunities in Canada.”
Ultimately, Asigra is working to be even more successful over the next 30 years, and the Farajun family is excited to see what happens.
“Thirty years and it’s just the beginning. I think a lot of people think that after 30 years there’s not much to be excited about in the data protection backup and recovery but there is,” said Eran. “We have projects for at least the next five to seven years, and a roadmap for everything we want to get accomplished. The whole data protection space is evolving really fast, and in a very interesting way.”