Imperva taps Gigamon’s Nelson Soon to lead regional channel sales

Nelson Soon (Imperva)

Cyber security vendor Imperva has recruited Nelson Soon, former Gigamon Asia Pacific (APAC) channel sales senior director, as its new channel sales vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ).

Based in Singapore, Soon’s newly created role sees him report to Micheal McCollough, Imperva’s Boston-based global vice president of strategic growth.

Soon has been tasked with providing operational leadership for the growing channel team in APJ, expanding solutions-oriented strategic partnerships and driving value for Imperva’s partners through differentiation in the market.

“In the competitive cyber security market, Imperva is delivering the most comprehensive solutions to protect all digital experiences – from the edge to applications to data,” Soon said. “No other company has this combination of broad security coverage, strong technical depth and market expertise."

“With such a strong offering, the APJ market is ripe with potential for partners. I’m excited to work closely with our partners and their customers [to] navigate and solve the most complex challenges in cyber security,” he added.

Soon has over two decades of experience in technology channel sales, coming to the role after more than six-and-a-half years with Gigamon, first as channel sales director across APAC and Japan and then as senior channel sales director for APAC.  

Prior to Gigamon, Soon spent close to two years at Extreme Networks as the networking vendor’s director of channel and services sales for APAC and Japan. He has also held sales leadership roles with Ixia and Agilent Technologies.

“Nelson joins at a time when the opportunity is limitless for partners to grow their business and influence in the region by building services on Imperva solutions,” said the vendor's APJ regional vice president, George Lee, who himself joined Imperva from RSA Security in July last year.

“His extensive experience will benefit our partners and position them as trusted advisors to our customers,” he added.

In his new role, Soon will work closely with existing partners to expand the influence of Imperva by developing an effective and productive partner ecosystem in the region.  

It is hoped he will also scale collaborative go-to-market partner activities to increase channel revenue while maturing the Imperva Partner Program to meet the needs of resellers, distributors and global systems integrators (GSIs) across APJ.

“With evolving product delivery models, rapid proliferation of applications and digital disruption, Nelson is the ideal leader to work alongside partners to support our customers as they pivot back to growth and mature their security efforts,” said McCollough.  

“He is a strong channel advocate and his understanding of the diverse business cultures across the region will create new routes to market and accelerate repeatable revenue.”