Versa Expands Executive Leadership Team to Lead Global Expansion and Meet Accelerating Worldwide Demand for Secure SD-WAN

Former Executive at Cisco, VMware, Akamai, VeloCloud and Apstra Michael Wood Named New Chief Marketing Officer

San Jose, Calif., February 12, 2020

Versa Networks, the leader in Secure SD-WAN, today announced it has named long-time Silicon Valley marketing executive Michael Wood as its new Chief Marketing Officer. Mr. Wood joins Versa to drive brand awareness, product marketing, demand generation, and corporate communications.

“It is an exciting time to be joining the Secure SD-WAN leader,” said Mr. Wood. “Versa’s exceptional growth last year included more than 200,000 software licenses sold, more than 1,000 new customers globally, 100 Service Provider partners, and the introduction of the cloud-delivered Versa Titan service. My vision is to significantly increase this rapid growth and accelerate our global momentum through the expansion of our on-premises, service provider hosted, and cloud offerings.”

Mr. Wood brings three decades of executive marketing experience and success with industry leaders such as Cisco, VMware, Akamai, VeloCloud, and Apstra. His expertise embraces product management and marketing, business scaling and outbound marketing. He has extensive hands-on experience in networking as a service, virtualization, SD-WAN, and the cloud and security sectors.

“We are delighted to welcome Michael to our team,” said Kelly Ahuja, CEO, Versa Networks. “His success with innovative companies and winning products is a perfect match for Versa and the direction we are heading. Enterprises realize that Secure SD-WAN is necessary as part of any network transformation for a highly secure, scalable, and reliable WAN edge.”

About Michael Wood

As CMO, Michael leads the Versa marketing organization to drive brand awareness, messaging, positioning, product marketing, demand generation, analyst engagements, press relations and corporate communications. He is an industry veteran with 30 years of experience in marketing, product and engineering at companies such as StrataCom, Cisco, Akamai, VeloCloud, VMware and Apstra.

Mike holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Technology (Computer Electronics) from San Jose State University.

About Versa Networks

Versa Networks, the leader in SASE, combines extensive security, advanced networking, industry leading SD-WAN, genuine multitenancy, and sophisticated analytics via the cloud, on-premises, or as a blended combination of both to meet SASE requirements for small to extremely large enterprises and Service Providers, and via the simplified Versa Titan cloud service designed for Lean IT. Thousands of customers globally with hundreds of thousands of sites trust Versa with their networks, security, and clouds. Versa Networks is privately held and funded by Sequoia Capital, Mayfield, Artis Ventures, Verizon Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Liberty Global Ventures, Princeville Capital, RPS Ventures and Triangle Peak Partners. For more information, visit https://www.versa-networks.com or follow Versa Networks on Twitter @versanetworks.