Roy became Palo Alto Networks’ new VP and Country Manager for Canada last fall, and discusses the direction in which the company is headed in Canada.

Daniel Roy, who came to Palo Alto Networks last fall, discussed the changes that the company has made both before and after his arrival, and their direction going forward, believing that it puts the company in an extremely strong position.

Roy, now in the Canadian country manager role for approximately six months, spent much of his career at Cisco Canada, followed by Zscaler. His Cisco tenure took him significantly off his career path, which was originally intended to get into vehicles. Instead, in 2004, it took a far turn towards sales.

With Palo Alto Networks, things have also taken a significant deviation from that path the company was on when he joined.

Palo Alto Networks built a significant inventory of technology solution, but recently have placed a greater emphasis on the development of their own technology.

PAN integrated others tech acquisitions are a key move as any company reaches critical mass.

“We reached a situation where we all work together,” Roy said. “That’s been the strategy in the last five years since Nikesh Arora took over as CEO.”

“Upon my arrival, we decided to invest in our Go to Market strategy in Canada, and we hired more than 50 people,” he continued. “We have gone after the compliance market in particular. The entire cloud-based portfolio for us in Canada for the federal government. At the end of the day, the issue is who has a footprint in key areas. We now have a tremendous footprint in the SOC [Security Operations Centre. Our Prism Cloud is now fully integrated. In network security we are a leader in three aspects. That would require deep pockets.”

Roy said the progress made to date here has been outstanding.

“The in-product announcements have been a pleasant surprise and the strength of the portfolio has massively exceeded our expectations,” he stated. “Making sure that it all talks together have been compelling, and customers have been embracing it.”

Roy pointed out that customer worries about AI have been a significant contributing factor.

“I’m noticing a lot of concerns about AI, and how the bad guys will use it,’ he said. “The concern is that whatever we see from a breach perspective is only a fragment of what may be out there. This has really made the market more ready for the pivot to AI.”

Roy stated that while CIOs CFROs and CROs are all conservative on these kinds of issues for macroeconomic reasons, they also say they must transfer to AI.

“AI is something they are considering, because of the need to be cost efficient,” he said. “They have acknowledged that they cannot compete against it. It’s now an essential component of their stack.”

It’s also an issue which Roy said will continue to grow.

“There will be a lot more breaches,” he said. I remember in the IT telephony days, the  need for change was driven from the top down. As business requirements are pivoting, the platform for cyber will also be top down. It could be different. But it was successfully driven from the top down in IT telephony.”