Cato Networks hires Daniel Lee as new APJ sales leader

Daniel Lee (Cato Networks)

SD-WAN specialist Cato Networks is ramping up its investment in the region through hiring Daniel Lee as its new Asia Pacific and Japan vice president of sales.

In a statement, Cato vice president of worldwide sales, Alon Alter, said it was doubling down in the region with investments in sales, marketing, channels and through launching its cloud service infrastructure, Cato Cloud.

“Daniel’s leadership will enable us to accelerate our business expansion in the region,” Alter said. 

Lee has amassed 27 years experience in the IT industry previously holding leadership roles with companies such as Nokia, Check Point Software, Tipping Point, Rapid7 and LifeSize. 

In addition to Lee’s appointment, Cato said it was also expanding its headcount in Australia and was in the process of hiring a new regional manager and a dedicated system engineer.

Former A/NZ regional director, Ed Sawkins, left in May to pursue a new opportunity with Palo Alto Networks as its APAC sales specialist.

On top of expanding its regional headcount, Cato has also brought its managed SD-WAN service, Cato Cloud, to the region and has set up a new point of presence (PoP) in Perth in an effort to target the mining industry and businesses within Western Australia, marking its third PoP in the country in addition to Sydney and Melbourne. 

All up, Cato has about 15 PoPs in region including China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. A new PoP will also become available in the Philippines. 

In Australia, Cato is distributed by Orca Technology, Tradewinds and Westcon-Comstor and has partnerships with companies such as CyberRisk, Aleron, CoEvolve, Cythera and Opia Technology. 

CyberRisk recently detailed its involvement in helping footwear retailer, Aquila adopt Cato Cloud, helping to connect its environment across its 60 retail locations, mobile workforce, physical data centres, cloud data centres and cloud applications into a secure, managed SD-WAN service. 

Aquila IT manager, Mike Zidaj, said its retail outlets, headquarters, warehouses and Azure instances had been connected through an internet-based VPN, but at any one time, 30 per cent of stores were showing offline and there was no easy way of enforcing security policies on web traffic. 

“A lot of retailers were using MPLS to connect locations, but it was too costly,” he said. “We selected Cato because of its super quick and easy deployment. The single pane management gave us much improved control and visibility," Zidaj said.

“Users noticed more reliable access, and management was now able to see if staff were visiting websites that didn’t comply with our security policies — and take action.”