F5 Networks today announced the appointment of Veritas and Cisco Systems executive Ben Gibson as its chief marketing officer (CMO) to take the company to the next level of marketing.
Based in F5’s San Jose office, Ben Gibson will be responsible for overseeing the network security company’s marketing strategy. F5 Networks aims to expand into the growth areas of application security and cloud application deployment.
“As we continue to expand our portfolio, we need an accomplished marketer who understands the evolving needs of the traditional data center customer we have worked with for two decades, as well as new buyers in emerging markets such as security and cloud,” said John McAdam, president and CEO, F5 Networks.
At Veritas, Ben Gibson worked as CMO and led a team of marketing professionals and spearheaded that company’s rebranding efforts following a spin-off from Symantec.
Prior to Veritas, Gibson spent 5 years as CMO at Aruba Networks. During his tenure, Aruba Networks doubled in annual revenue as it expanded from wireless networking into adjacent mobile security and location services.
“I’m a big believer in the role of marketing to anticipate new market trends and buyer behaviors. This role is particularly critical as IT organizations are going through a significant demographic shift with decreasing technology specialization and increasing focus on services and development,” said Ben Gibson.
Before joining Aruba, Gibson spent five years at Cisco Systems, most recently as vice president of Data Center / Virtualization Marketing, where he ran the outbound marketing strategy and execution for a number of Cisco’s application networking products.
Gibson has held leadership roles in product marketing at Meru Networks and Proxim Corporation.
Meanwhile, F5 Networks posted revenue of $496.5 million (+3 percent) in the third quarter of fiscal 2016 with a net income of $91.8 million.
F5 Networks said the Americas and Asia Pacific contributed strong sequential revenue growth, while EMEA revenues were down from the prior quarter against the backdrop of the UK’s referendum to withdraw from the European Union.
F5 Networks is targeting revenue of $515 million to $525 million in the quarter ending September 30, 2016.