Versa Networks Strengthens Marketing Team as Demand Accelerates for its Industry-Leading SASE Solution

Versa Adds Three New Marketing Executives – Dan Maier as Chief Marketing Officer, Gopal Bhagia as VP of Demand Generation, and Kevin Sheu as VP of Product Marketing

Versa Networks, the recognized leader of single-vendor Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), today announced that it has named Dan Maier, a former executive from GreyNoise, Anomali and Zscaler, as its new Chief Marketing Officer. In his role as CMO, Mr. Maier will lead Versa’s global marketing organization, including market strategy and positioning, branding, public relations, demand generation, digital marketing, product marketing, and channel and partner marketing.

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New Versa Networks CMO Dan Maier brings more than two decades of experience in executive leadership roles at emerging growth companies in cybersecurity, SaaS and AI to the Versa team. He has led marketing teams at companies ranging from seed-stage startups to public companies. (Photo: Business Wire)

Further adding to Versa’s growing marketing organization, the company has named Gopal Bhagia, former Senior Director of Global Demand Generation at Tenable, as its new VP of Demand Generation; and Kevin Sheu, former Bitglass Marketing leader, as its new VP of Product Marketing.

“I am excited to join Versa Networks at such an exciting and critical time for the company and the growth of SASE,” said Mr. Maier. “Versa is the clear market leader, with products architected from inception to natively integrate comprehensive security and networking functionalities. This is exactly what organizations need to simplify how they protect and connect their users, devices and sites. I look forward to helping the world understand what a great company Versa is, and also driving our growth and visibility during this pre-IPO expansion period for the company.”

Mr. Maier has more than two decades of experience in executive leadership roles at emerging growth companies in cybersecurity, SaaS and AI. He has led marketing teams at companies ranging from seed-stage startups to public companies, and he has deep cybersecurity marketing experience from GreyNoise, Anomali, Zingbox, Cyren, Zscaler, and Tumbleweed Communications.

Mr. Bhagia comes to Versa from Tenable Networks where he served as Senior Director for Global Demand Generation. Prior to Tenable, he had extensive experience in marketing automation/MarTech, product go-to-market strategies, and software development. Mr. Sheu previously held product marketing and marketing leadership roles at Bitglass, Vectra AI, Okta, FireEye, and Barracuda.

“We are thrilled to significantly expand our marketing team, and to have these three proven executives lead our marketing organization for the next phase of the company,” said Kelly Ahuja, CEO of Versa Networks. “Dan’s successful track record in cybersecurity, SaaS and AI will be of great benefit for Versa as we build our company for the future. With Dan, Gopal and Kevin we are well positioned to propel our continued lead in the rapidly expanding SASE space and execute on our growth trajectory.”

Versa simplifies how enterprises protect and connect their users, devices and sites to workloads and applications anywhere, anytime. As the leader in SASE, the fastest growing category in cybersecurity, Versa is the only company delivering a differentiated Unified SASE architecture that converges security and networking to ensure an improved security posture, enhanced user-to-application experience, and operational efficiency. Gartner has identified Versa SASE as having the most SASE components out of all 56 vendors Gartner evaluated and named Versa as one of the vendors delivering single-vendor SASE. Also, KuppingerCole Analysts AG named Versa a leader in every evaluation category in its recent SASE Integration Suites Leadership Compass report. In addition, Frost & Sullivan honored Versa with its SASE Global Enabling Technology Leadership Award for its industry-leading SASE solution. Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) also found that Versa SASE has the most SASE supported functions, as published in its industry report; while 650 Group recognized Versa as the market share leader for both Deployed SASE and Enabled SD-WAN. Finally, the CIO CHOICE 2023 Honor and Recognition program distinguished Versa SASE as the Most Trusted Brand by CIOs for SASE.

About Dan Maier

Prior to joining Versa, Mr. Maier served as VP of Marketing at internet scanner intelligence company GreyNoise, CMO of threat intelligence platform leader Anomali, and VP of Marketing at IoT security company Zingbox (acquired by Palo Alto Networks). He has also held senior marketing and strategy roles at Cyren, Zscaler, Tumbleweed Communications, and ABB. Mr. Maier earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA.

About Gopal Bhagia

In his previous role Mr. Bhagia managed Global Demand Generation for Tenable Networks, where he collaborated with cross functional marketing teams and had a successful roll out of a pipeline-focused data driven ABM and Digital Marketing program. Prior to Tenable, he worked in the FinTech industry, where he managed growth-focused marketing teams and the marketing technology stack. He holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and a Master of Science degree in Information Technology from Pace University, NY.

About Kevin Sheu

Mr. Sheu previously ran product marketing and marketing teams at Bitglass, FireEye, Okta and Barracuda. He also served as a strategy and technology consultant for L.E.K. Consulting and Booz Allen Hamilton where he worked with Global 2000 companies, private equity firms and government clients in the areas of network architecture design, top-line growth, market entry execution, investment due diligence, and customer / profitability analysis. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University, as well as an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

About Versa Networks

Versa Networks, the leader in single-vendor Unified SASE platforms, delivers AI/ML-powered SSE and SD-WAN solutions. The platform provides networking and security with true multitenancy, and sophisticated analytics via the cloud, on-premises, or as a blended combination of both to meet SASE requirements for small to extremely large enterprises and Service Providers. Thousands of customers globally with hundreds of thousands of sites and millions of users trust Versa with their mission critical networks and security. Versa Networks is privately held and funded by Sequoia Capital, Mayfield, Artis Ventures, Verizon Ventures, Comcast Ventures, BlackRock Inc., Liberty Global Ventures, Princeville Capital, RPS Ventures and Triangle Peak Partners. For more information, visit https://www.versa-networks.com or follow Versa Networks on Twitter @versanetworks.

Versa Networks, VOS, the Versa logo, and Versa Titan are or may be registered trademarks of Versa Networks, Inc.

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Versa Networks strengthens Marketing team with new CMO and VPs as demand accelerates for its industry-leading SASE solution