Semperis Hires Tech Industry Vet Eric Purcell As New Channel Chief

The identity protection vendor is looking to expand its partner base under Purcell, formerly the channel chief at companies including Cradlepoint.

Semperis has hired a longtime technology channel leader, Eric Purcell, to head up an expanded push with partners in the fast-growing areas of identity protection and threat detection, the company told CRN.

Purcell most recently served as head of enterprise partner business at Ericsson, which he joined through the company’s acquisition of Cradlepoint, where he had been senior vice president of global partner sales since 2019.

In an interview with CRN, Purcell said that Semperis’ strong position in the critical segment of security for Microsoft’s Active Directory — a technology now decades old — was a key driver for him taking the channel chief role. In the tech landscape today, “identity is kind of the keys to the kingdom,” he said.

“When you think about a technology being built 25 years ago, and then you layer on all the new things that happened in the [technology] marketplace — whether that's mobile, IoT, cloud, the expansion in complexities of businesses globally — the number of entry points for bad actors just continues to grow,” Purcell said.

The hire comes several months after Semperis disclosed, in January, that it has crossed the milestone of surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Key capabilities from the company include identity threat detection and response (ITDR), which has gained traction in recent years as a key emerging category in cybersecurity.

Building Identity Practices

A top priority for Purcell will be around continuing the growth pace at Semperis by recruiting new partners, with a focus on helping more solution providers to build an identity security practice, he said. Semperis currently has 200 partners globally, the company said.

“We see it as a really rich opportunity for partners in building, I would call it, a holistic identity practice,” Purcell said. “We're going to be investing in that so that they can seize this opportunity.”

Without a doubt, Semperis has stood out with its capabilities around helping customers to address security-related issues related to Active Directory, according to Imran Salim, senior vice president of strategic solutions at CDW, No. 5 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 for 2024.

Semperis’ technology “helps customers evaluate their AD environment and gives them a glimpse of where they are with that,” Salim said. The tool can help answer the crucial question, “do they have any security vulnerabilities in [Active Directory]?”

Salim said he has known Purcell from previous roles and applauded Semperis for the hire of such a seasoned executive as channel chief.

Ultimately, “I think it helps them get more credibility,” Salim said.

The expectation, he said, is that Purcell will be “bringing some of that structure that he has built in other places — and bringing Semperis up a notch in terms of where they are, how they work and how they are viewed in the marketplace.”

Prior to joining Cradlepoint in early 2019, Purcell had spent half a decade at Box, most of which was spent as vice president of worldwide service provider channel sales at the company.

Earlier in his career, he spent 13 years in a variety of roles at Cisco, including as director of Americas partner sales for borderless network architecture.

In terms of expansion with partners, Semperis expects to invest in areas including enablement as part of helping solution and service providers to build identity practices, Purcell said.

The company has already seen an uptick in its work with partners including system integrators and MSSPs, and expects to continue adding new partners in these and other categories, he said.

All in all, Semperis expects to pursue a “targeted expansion plan” with partners going forward, Purcell said. “For me, it is really the opportunity to build on an incredible foundation — but [also to understand], how do we evolve and expand that globally?”