Palo Alto Networks has hired Dave Peranich to lead its worldwide sales and channel efforts. Peranich takes over from Mark Anderson, who has been promoted to president of the security vendor.
Peranich joins Palo Alto Networks after having served in several roles over a nine-year career at Riverbed Technology. Most recently, Peranich was Riverbed’s president of worldwide field operations, but he previously held the titles of executive vice president of worldwide field operations and senior vice president of worldwide sales.
Prior to Riverbed, Peranich held other leadership positions with companies as diverse as Centrata, Siebel Systems, Remedy Corp. and Oracle.
“I am thrilled and honoured to be joining Palo Alto Networks. With our natively integrated and highly automated next-generation security platform, the company has delivered unprecedented growth to date, and I look forward to leading the sales and channel organization as we expand our global reach and redefine security in the digital age,” Peranich said in a statement.
Channel partners will quickly get the chance to hear from Peranich. The announcements of Peranich’s hiring and Anderson’s promotion were made right before Palo Alto Networks’ annual sales kickoff where the vendor will host 800 of its channel partners from around the world.
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Peranich will report directly to Anderson, who previously held the title of senior vice president of worldwide field operations. Over the last four years, Anderson led Palo Alto Networks’ sales organization, and the vendor attributed much of its growth in that time to Anderson’s leadership.
With his promotion, Anderson will be responsible for driving sales, go-to-market, support, customer satisfaction and business/corporate development. He’ll still have a hand in guiding Palo Alto Networks’ sales efforts, but the day-to-day operations have been passed on to Peranich.
“I am proud to take on the role of president and excited to lead our go-to-market success. We went through an extensive search process to find the right leader for our sales organization who can provide maximum focus as we scale, and Dave is the ideal addition to the team,” Anderson said in a statement. “Sales kickoff is the perfect venue to have Dave join our thousands of sales professionals and channel partners to assume leadership in our new fiscal year. I look forward to continuing our successful go-to-market track record and helping more organizations around the world prevent cyber breaches.”