We’ve been talking about IoT security and the role of PKI and device identity for years now (literally our first “PKI for the IoT” webinar was back in 2014). More recently, you may have seen our VP of Product Management in the IoT space, Lancen LaChance has been featured talking about IoT Security in the automobile industry, how to combine PKI and TPM technologies, strong security for IoT manufacturing and much more.
But we're not just talking to the press and creating content about our IoT security offering, GlobalSign is making a significant investment in IoT by beefing up our engineering, product development and management capabilities. Consequently, our team has leveraged core Managed PKI technologies to deliver new products and invested in an infrastructure to scale for IoT systems.
With that said, we're very excited to announce the formation of a global business development team within GlobalSign. This team is headed by newly hired industry veteran, Jeff Rowland from the San Francisco Bay Area. Steve Roylance, who has already spent 14 years in the CA industry, many of these with GlobalSign, has joined the team to pave the way toward the service provider and the enterprise market. Ian Thomas in London has also recently joined the team, bringing 10+ years' experience in the IoT market.
Jeff Rowland
Executive Vice President, Global Business Development
Jeff has held a variety of sales, marketing and business development leadership roles in the technology industry for over 25 years. He has extensive experience in the information security market, including Identity and Access Management, Managed PKI and encryption for companies such as Identiv, HP, Symantec, PGP, iPass and Wang Laboratories.
Most recently Jeff was EVP, Global Sales at Sideband, an early stage cybersecurity start-up focused on providing analytics and machine learning solutions to the enterprise market. Jeff has a degree in marketing and finance from Southern Illinois University and studied at Manchester Business School in Manchester, England.
Words from Jeff
"My goal for GlobalSign and our Global Business Development team is to be the #1 provider of IoT security solutions in the market. In collaboration with our Product Management, CTO/Engineering and Marketing teams, BD will aggressively seek new market segments and build new revenue streams for GlobalSign."
Ian Thomas
Head of Global Business Development
Ian Thomas has over 25 years of field sales and sales leadership experience in selling complex software technologies. Prior to joining GlobalSign, he has worked with Apple, Rovi, IONA, Cognos and Progress Software.
Most recently, he was SVP of Sales for EMEA and led global sales operations for PrismTech, an IIoT platform provider and a founding member of the Industrial Internet Consortium. Ian has worked within major early adopter Smart Grid, Smart City, Smart Agriculture and Smart Manufacturing projects.
In the past four years, he's been focused on monetizing IoT/IIoT technologies by applying a proven business development methodology, that he calls Business Value Engineering which ensures close alignment with key stakeholders to deliver board ready business justification. Ian is well positioned to help companies that are transitioning their business models to embrace this IoT/IIoT opportunity.
Ian is a fellow at the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management, studied at Kingston University and is based just outside of Windsor in the UK.
Words from Ian:
"The Industrial Internet (IIoT) represents a significant market opportunity for GlobalSign. Quantifying the value we can bring to our customers is our greatest challenge but also our greatest opportunity. IIoT projects impact many more cross-functional business units than with typical IT expenditure. IIoT brings many shared benefits. In fact, over 61% of IIoT spending is funded by non-IT budget with security spending increasingly being funded outside CTO budget.
The danger with selling any mainstream technology is product commoditization. Perversely, the more complex the technology, the more often it is very low in the application stack and the easier it is for price pressures to emerge as its value is hidden.
Without being able to articulate business value, it is hard to defend simple price list models. Therefore, quantified growth, cost, and risk business cases must be co-created with the customer with an agreed quantifiable NPV presented as a result of the sales engagement.
'Business Value Engineering' represents a shift in the mindset of how we communicate with our customers (with some supporting tools and methods). BVE allows GlobalSign to 'lead with value'. IIoT customer engagements will center around achieving consensus on how our technology delivers measured and agreed business value within the scope of the customer's board-level investment metrics.
GlobalSign has a really strong product value proposition, built around a platform and products created by highly talented product engineering and product management teams. We also have an incredible marketing team, who have a great appetite for success in IIoT. I am very excited about working together with these teams and the wider GlobalSign team, to rapidly build this new incremental revenue stream for GlobalSign."
Steve Roylance
Business Development Director – High Volume Signing Services
Steve Roylance, Business Development Director of High Volume Signing Services has over 25 years in the IT industry and 14 years working for Certificate Authorities like Comodo, GeoTrust and GlobalSign.
Steve is one of the founding members of the CA/Browser forum.
Initially responsible for the GlobalSign's Business Development teams in EMEA, US and APAC, Steve also managed the WebTrust certification for GlobalSign.
Furthering this, he's been looking at strategic projects for GMO GlobalSign as a member of the leadership team. Steve leads our 'Trusted Root' projects and provides leadership for a number of teams across the organization involved in offline PKI processes.
Words from Steve
"Just after the millennium, many organizations looked forward suggesting 'Could next year be the year of PKI?' This question came in for some ridicule in the mid 2000's and we saw the question being asked less frequently as the decade came to an end. What many failed to realize is that the reason it died away was that PKI actually did arrive, albeit in stealth mode, under the guise of best practice and since 2010 we've seen an increasing reliance on PKI. Not only to power the top tier applications and ecosystems on the internet but as the defacto standard for security and interoperability.
It's been filtering down through initiatives such as HTTP2 and AOSSL towards 100% ubiquity and many more ecosystems are now using digital signatures as standard. For example, eIDAS regulations being updated and more recently mandated, to replace antiquated 1990's thinking. One of the major differences between when the question was initially asked and 2016 is the growth of the internet at levels around 900% especially across the developing regions.
The business development team are enabling third-parties worldwide to ensure their business solutions, which have a dependency on PKI, are not let down by their choice of PKI provider. As joint founder of the CA/B Forum and inventor of several technology solutions, I'm here to make the future and in turn help our partners and their businesses succeed.
I always look back with fond memories to a decade ago when I first entered the Trusted Third Party (CA) industry as 'next year is the year of PKI'. If you look back say 4-5 years, you'll see that it really was, but it was more of a subtle acceleration in all areas, smartphones, signing platforms, Extended Validation SSL and now we see certificates are everywhere, (or don't as they are akin to plumbing in most applications:- essential but invisible).
They secure billions of dollars in commerce and billions of conversations daily and it's not going to decrease any time soon so it's fantastic that the entire ecosystem is being bolstered on a daily basis by all stakeholders, by regulators, by standards bodies and interested groups. I look forward to the next decade."
If you would like to know more about our IoT Solutions, visit our website or contact us today.
