Skyport Systems Appoints Art Gilliland as CEO

Security infrastructure developer Skyport Systems has appointed former Hewlett-Packard executive Art Gilliland as CEO, responsible for leading the fledgling company following its latest round of funding and the implementation of its new Global Channel Partner Program.

Gilliland is the company’s first official CEO, taking over for interim CEO Stefan Dyckerhoff of Sutter Hill Ventures, one of Skyport’s major investors. He has worked in the security industry for 15 years, and served in leadership positions at companies including IMlogic, Symantec and, most recently, as senior vice president and general manager of Enterprise Security at HP.

“Art’s extensive operating experience in the security industry, combined with his creative vision for Skyport and Skyport’s unique and powerful security offering make him a perfect fit as we move into this next phase of revenue growth and product development,” said Dyckerhoff, in a statement.

Gilliland said he believes Skyport has a unique opportunity to capitalize on the massive shift in enterprise security that is leading many CIOs to take on a more active role in protecting environments rather than relying on simply throwing a firewall around their most valued assets. With companies now managing dozens and even hundreds of different policies, Skyport stands to benefit by providing application segmentation and compartmentalization solutions to protect customers’ resources from being jeopardized.

“People are really tired of the next ‘silver bullet,’ the next ‘thing,’” said Gilliland, in an interview with The VAR Guy. “So rather than just continue to plug the gaps, I think what they are going to start to thing about is, ‘what can I do to re-platform?’ Today is the time when companies may re-platform their environment for security … and Skyport is the system that you are going to [want to] re-platform on.”

Skyport made its Skysecure Server generally available last month, and the company launched its Global Channel Partner Program in July. Looking ahead, Gilliland said the company will need to focus on educating customers on the importance of rearchitecting their security practices and changing the way they think about enterprise security.

“The big challenge for us and with our partners is, What are the ways in which we can accelerate the sales process and really solve the problems for our customers that allow us to scale as much as we can?” he said. “That has to do with where we are in our maturity.”