Kane Fraser (Devo Technology)
Cloud-native data analytics and security solutions vendor Devo Technology is embarking on an expansion into Australia and New Zealand under the leadership of Kane Fraser, former Splunk financial services strategic account director.
Based in Massachusetts, United States, the privately held vendor is in a period of rapid growth and expansion, having successfully accomplishing a US$60 million Series D funding round late last year.
In conjunction with the funding round, the company welcomed former LogMeIn chief operating officer and the co-founder and former leader of IBM’s security business unit, Marc van Zadelhoff, as the company’s new CEO.
With the fresh injection of funds, the company has entered into a period of accelerated growth, and now part of that growth is expected to come from the A/NZ region.
“The Australian market is well positioned to take the next step in their digital transformation, which has only been progressing faster than expected due to the pandemic,” Zadelhoff said. “Having learned so much during my past visits to the region, I’m very excited to introduce Devo to this market and offer a logging and security analytics platform that can keep pace with the cloud-first ambitions of CISOs in the region.”
Fraser, who has been entrusted with the company’s expansion in the local region as its new regional director of sales for A/NZ, was appointed in March. He came to the role from fellow cyber security player Splunk, where he spent over half a decade. Prior to Splunk, Fraser did time at RSA, Symantec, McAfee and Hitachi Data Systems.
Fraser has now been tasked with leading the company’s market entry through talent identification and recruitment, channel and partner ecosystem acceleration and driving revenue and expansion.
The company said in a statement that Fraser’s pedigree in cyber security, specifically security analytics, makes him the ideal candidate for this assignment.
For Fraser, at least some of the impetus behind the jump from Splunk to Devo was the chance to get to work with a new technology stack.
“I spent five years looking after the same organisation, and while I loved it, I was looking for the next innovative technology,” Fraser told ARN. “And Devo got in touch.”
Indeed, Fraser was approached by an acquaintance who happened to be a Devo board member.
“We’re going to centre our strategy around the partner ecosystem,” Fraser said. “We recognised from day one we’ll need the partner ecosystem to scale in the market.
“We know the types of organisations that rely on data to secure their businesses, and we’ll work with partners to have conversations with those organisations,” he added.
Devo has a pre-existing distribution partnership in A/NZ with emt Distribution. In some incredibly fortuitous timing, publicly listed cloud software distributor Rhipe acquired emt Distribution for $11 million in early April, giving the smaller distributor the resources to scale its reach in the market just as Devo was looking to scale its reach in the market as well.
The expansion into the local market is accompanied by the introduction of the company’s global partner program, Devo Drive, which was launched in the US and Europe in February.
Together, Devo and its partners provide data logging and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions with performance, scale, and cost advantages not possible with constrained, legacy solutions, the company said in a statement announcing the program’s launch.
“Devo Drive enables partners to leverage the benefits of the industry’s premier platform for security operations and quickly maximise customer value,” said Gary Pelczar, vice president of business development at Devo, at the time. “Devo is gaining tremendous traction in the market as enterprises move beyond the constraints of legacy SIEMs that have long restricted their performance and ability to scale.
“The best way to meet this growing market demand is to extend our reach through a network of partners that offer services dedicated to security. Devo Drive will help partners amplify their role as trusted advisors to their enterprise customers.”
Bolstering Devo’s A/NZ market entry is David Fairman, Netskope APAC CSO and venture partner at SixThirty, who has come on board as a new company advisor for the region.
“I’m excited to see the innovation in Devo’s platform now available to the Australian market,” said Fairman. “Enterprise organisations are rapidly expanding to the cloud with exploding security data volumes, creating an environment that’s ripe for disruption with a solution that out-scales and outperforms what’s currently in the SEIM market.
“Security teams are under heavy scrutiny to lower operational costs and the SEIM is a big line item in the budget. With Devo’s architecture and how it tackles logging and analytics, this will be a game changer.”
According to Fraser, A/NZ is likely to be just the first step for the company in the greater APAC region, with a further expansion into the region on the cards.
“We picked Australia and New Zealand because it’s a mature market, and it’s also ripe for disruption,” Fraser said. “If it goes well here, we’ll expand in the future.
