Cato Networks announced the appointment of Frank Rauch as the new Global Channel Chief. The company also inducted several new faces in its channel leadership team to meet the growing channel demand for SASE and SSE.
As Global Channel Chief, Frank will be responsible for driving the channel ecosystem globally, enabling partners everywhere to profit from the enterprise shift to cloud-native networking and security. With more than 30 years of leadership experience, Frank has successfully led, developed, managed, and grown global partner ecosystems at Check Point, VMware, and HPE. He has also led field sales, inside sales and strategy organizations. He and his teams have been recognized with over 150 channel awards, and he has been personally recognized with 17 CRN Channel Chiefs awards, Lifetime Achievement award, and has been ranked consistently in the 50 Most Influential Executives.
“The cloud is the enterprise’s present and future, appliances are its past. Forward-thinking channel partners know their future lies in the cloud, but they need the right platform and technology partner to profit from the cloud,” says Rauch. “After doing my due diligence, I found Cato to be that partner. Cato’s, cloud-native SASE platform is unique in the industry, differentiating Cato’s channel partners from their competitors who are still focusing their business around appliances”
“I’m excited to welcome Frank to the Cato team,” says Alon Alter, Chief Revenue Officer of Cato Networks. “SASE is the future of enterprise networking and security. With the Cato SASE Cloud, partners can get to market quickly with new reoccurring revenue streams, delivering differentiated converged enterprise networking and security capabilities and value-added support services.”
As SASE and SSE have gained traction among enterprises, and to meet the demand, Cato has further expanded its channel leadership team.
Robert Holley joins Cato as the AVP for VAR, Resellers, and Service Providers, Americas. Robert has spent 20 years in the telecommunications, IT, and technology industries, building successful relationships and teams across sales and marketing, most recently at Versa Networks.
Shane Hallen has joined Cato as Director of Service Provider Sales, Americas. Before Cato, Shane served as the Strategic Sales Manager of Service Providers for Cisco Meraki. He will be focused on establishing partnerships with Service Providers in the Americas.
Paolo Maestripie has joined as Director of Service Provider Sales, EMEA. Maestripieri spent three years at ThousandEyes (now part of Cisco), where he led the alliances practice with global partners as the Client Partner Director of Service Providers and Global Systems Integrator. Before Thousand Eyes, Paolo served as the Global Alliances Director of Orange for Zscaler for more than six years.
Rounding out the leadership changes, Cato veterans, Ron Hamlett and Mark Draper have been promoted to AVP for Channel Sales Americas (Ron) and EMEA (Mark). Their expanded roles in leading channel efforts align with Cato’s growing channel investment across both regions.
