Karl Soderlund
Zscaler has appointed Karl Soderlund as senior vice president of worldwide partners and alliances and will be responsible for “advancing and modernising” the vendor’s partner program.
On top of taking charge of the channel team, which accounts for 95 percent of Zscaler’s business, Soderlund is tasked to develop and execute a “competitive” go-to-market strategy.
Zscaler COO, Dali Rajic underscored that Soderlund would be leveraged for his “deep partner expertise” and experience with the execution of “highly strategic” partner programs and described him as the “right industry veteran” to evolve Zscaler’s partner program.
According to the vendor, its partner demographic includes system integrators, managed service providers, solution providers, and distributors, and aims to add new classes of partners that will help enterprises take advantage of Zscaler’s Zero Trust Exchange platform.
“As we continue to make meaningful investments in our partner model, I am excited to welcome Karl to the company and am confident that his contributions will deliver results and support company growth,” added Rajic.
Soderlund has been named channel chief eight times over his career. Most recently, he served as senior vice president of Palo Alto Networks’ North America ecosystem sales, where he attracted and retained talent, architected channel programs and secured new partners.
Prior to Palo Alto Networks, he also held senior roles at Aruba Networks, Avaya, HP, Cisco Systems, and Fortinet.
“Zscaler is an innovator and leader in cloud security that has consistently delivered on the promise of zero trust while redefining network security with the world’s largest inline cloud security platform,” stated Soderlund.
“With a total addressable market of $72 billion, it was a clear choice to join Zscaler. I look forward to bringing my experience to dramatically elevate Zscaler’s partner program.”
