CRN Exclusive: Tanium Names Former Cisco Exec To Lead State, Government, Health Care And Education Push

Tanium has named former Cisco executive John Maxwell to be its regional director, leading its business around state and local government, health care and education, the company announced Thursday.

Maxwell joins the company after a long career at Cisco, spanning back more than 20 years, most recently as Cisco's operations sales director for U.S. commercial security.

Maxwell officially started in the new role this week. He announced his departure from Cisco on LinkedIn last week.

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Maxwell's appointment comes on the heels of multiple recent executive changes at Tanium, including the departure of multiple top-level sales executives and COO and CFO Eric Brown. Tanium also appointed former Veritas executive Rick Kramer as vice president of channel sales last month.

In an email to CRN, Maxwell said he decided to make the jump to Tanium because he saw it as an opportunity to solve a critical security need for customers, who he said are struggling to adapt their IT and security operations to public and hybrid cloud-based platforms. That need is particularly acute in the government, health care and education vertical, he said.

"The opportunity to help transform the government, health care and education vertical is huge. Organizations in this space are struggling with the necessary IT and security resources to meet their goals, and the Tanium platform can solve their needs today," Maxwell said.

As Tanium expands its vertical practice in these areas, Maxwell said the company sees "huge market opportunities given the size and scope of endpoints requiring management across these segments." The push follows on strong growth last year in the vertical market area, the company said.

One area Tanium might find challenging in these markets is the company's high price point, with its products usually reserved for high-end enterprise, but Maxwell said a flexible pricing model and return on investment will help overcome that challenge in this space.

Maxwell said he plans to lead investments at Tanium around additional resources, vertical user groups to share best practices, and dedicated customer programs.

"We have already done a lot in this space, and will definitely continue to be visible within this customer base moving forward … I am joining a team of leaders in the industry, and I expect to learn tremendously from what they have already accomplished and to build something even stronger together," Maxwell said.

Chris Konrad, global practice lead for security engagements at St. Louis, Mo.-based World Wide Technology, said in an email that he expects Maxwell's appointment will help Tanium accelerate its business in these vertical markets. He said WWT already does a "significant amount" of business in the health care and education markets, as well as state, local and federal government.

"Having John onboard enables WWT and the Tanium team to engage faster, conduct proofs-of-concept faster, and land and expand the WWT and Tanium footprint," Konrad said.

Konrad said WWT had seen particular opportunities with Tanium around Windows 10 migrations. He said WWT could help reduce migration risk and complexity with a solution that integrates WWT's CPMigrator with Tanium and Dashworks.

Maxwell said he would be looking to leverage partners, like WWT, as he drives Tanium's business in the state and local government, health care, and education verticals.

"Partners are critical to our success, and we are fundamentally critical to theirs … When looking at the different routes to market, it will be important to have a diverse set of partners, ranging from local to national value-added resellers, to achieve our mission," Maxwell said in an email.