ConnectWise forms four Innovation Business Units and appoints new CISO
ConnectWise announced the formation of four Innovation Business Units led by general managers and the appointment of a new chief information security officer to speed innovation and improve partner experience.
Historically, engineering and product management have been performed by coordinated but independent teams. With this news, ConnectWise announces four new Innovation Business Units: Unified Monitoring and Management, Business Management, Cybersecurity, and Asio Platform. Each business unit will be led by a general manager who reports to ConnectWise CEO Jason Magee, each with its own dedicated product management and other resources.
These leaders will be accountable for engineering effectiveness for their respective product lines. They will be responsible for innovative roadmaps and on-time delivery, as well as driving a positive experience for partners across sales, product support, services, partner success and the broader ConnectWise system.
“We recognise that rapid, meaningful product innovation requires partner proximity and centricity, impeccable product management and engineering rigor, and leadership that connects all aspects of our operating model to ensure a meaningful partner experience,” said Jason Magee in his blog message to partners earlier today in reference to the new business unit structure. “This is why today I’m pleased to announce that ConnectWise is re-organising and appointing new leadership to drive the next generation of innovation for the TSP space.”
ConnectWise tapped industry leaders Jake Varghese as general manager, business management, and Ameer Karim as general manager, unified monitoring & management; and named ConnectWise leaders Raffael Marty as general manager, cybersecurity and Jeff Bishop as general manager, Asio Platform.
The company also named cybersecurity veteran Patrick Beggs as chief information security officer. “Over the last three years, we’ve made incredible strides in hardening our environments and formalising a compliant, best-practice oriented cybersecurity program,” said Magee. “But with the rapidly changing threat landscape, we intend to innovate deeper and faster in this area as well, which is why I’m pleased to introduce someone of Patrick’s caliber to our company and our partner community.” Beggs will report to CTO Steve Cochran, with former CISO Tom Greco and his team reporting to Beggs.
Leadership biographies
Patrick Beggs, Chief Information Security Officer: Beggs is a cybersecurity executive focused on leading global cyber operations. Beggs has more than 20 years of operational duties in information security spanning the commercial, federal civilian, defense, law enforcement and intelligence communities. Most recently, Beggs served as Cognizant Technology’s global cyber operations executive, where he led a team of more than 150 personnel operating across five countries.
Prior to Cognizant, Beggs led cyber operational capabilities for AIG, Booz Allen Hamilton, Amazon Web Services and Bank of America. In the public sector, Beggs served as the first deputy director/director of operations at the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC). Beggs is a former Army Infantry Non-Commissioned Officer and holds a B.S. in Political Science from Radford University.
Jeff Bishop, General Manager, Asio Platform: Bishop’s previous positions include chief product officer, vice president of ecosystem and vice president of ConnectWise Control (formerly ScreenConnect). Before joining ConnectWise in 2015, he was one of the founders of ScreenConnect, a solution that allows clients’ computers to be remotely controlled for fast, reliable and secure remote support. Bishop also worked for Agilent Technologies, a spin-off from Hewlett-Packard, in various roles including product management, marketing and engineering.
Ameer Karim, General Manager, Unified Monitoring & Management: Karim is a dynamic and seasoned executive who brings more than 25 years of experience working for some of the biggest brands in consumer electronics and cybersecurity. Karim joins ConnectWise from Absolute Software, where he was EVP of product management, leading the company’s product vision, strategy, roadmap, marketing and user experiences.
With more than two decades of experience in M&A, business development, engineering, product innovation, product management and marketing, he’s delivered world-class enterprise and consumer products by focusing on product-led growth and operational excellence. Karim has held several GM and executive roles with Symantec, a href=”https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/tag/hp/”>HP and early-stage startups in Silicon Valley.
Raffael Marty, General Manager, Cybersecurity: Marty has been at ConnectWise for the past seven months leading cybersecurity products. He brings 20-plus years of cybersecurity industry experience across engineering, analytics, research and strategy to ConnectWise. A thread of connecting data, artificial intelligence (AI) and security has continued throughout his career. Starting at IBM, he next spent time as a technical analyst for Silicon Valley startups and with Splunk, a leader in data analytics.
Marty later founded Loggly, one of the first cloud-based log management services, and spent time at Sophos being responsible for security analytics. He held the chief research and intelligence officer position at Forcepoint, where his team was responsible for cutting-edge research in AI to understand human behavior as it relates to cyber risk, helping detect adverse behaviors before the onset of insider crimes. He also partnered with product teams there to provide new security intelligence that helped protect customers from all types of cyberattacks.
Jake Varghese, General Manager, Business Management: Varghese is a seasoned product executive and general manager with more than 20 years of cross-functional leadership experience. He has successfully led and delivered partner-focused innovation resulting in hyper growth at leading companies such as ServiceNow, Microsoft and Tanium.
He has also previously co-founded and served as CTO for a successful startup: Optio3, an AI-powered, cloud-based operations management solution that provides visibility into connected IoT. He has deep technology and business expertise in all areas of software as a service (SaaS), with an emphasis on digital transformation and modernisation of IT systems including service management, operations management and business management.