Aruba/HP Top Sales Executive Jumps Ship To F5
Aruba Networks' top worldwide sales and services leader is leaving to join F5 Networks to lead its channel and sales strategy.
John DiLullo, executive vice president of sales and services at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Aruba -- which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in May -- is slated to become the new leader of F5's global sales organization starting Aug. 31.
DiLullo, who has decades of sales and channel experience with companies like Cisco, Dell and Avaya, will be tasked with overseeing the company's sales and channel strategy as the Seattle-based company begins to focus on new areas such as application security, service provider solutions and cloud application deployment.
"F5 going out and getting someone who knows security, knows cloud, knows hybrid applications and knows the channel perspective, it's great, because that’s someone who's going to continue to try to drive solutions and programs for us channel partners, so that’s exciting," said Jim Quarantillo, a partner at Reston, Va.-based solution provider and F5 partner GuidePoint Security.
DiLullo has spent nearly two years at Aruba leading the worldwide sales and services team. He also was general manager at Avaya, where he held several top sales positions, including vice president of the Americas field operations. He also spent seven years at Cisco, serving as vice president of channels and worldwide distribution in his last role there.
DiLullo is replacing longtime F5 sale executive Dave Feringa.
"After 11 years of service, with sales that ranked in the billions, Dave Feringa has decided to step down on October 1 to spend more time with his family on the East Coast," said F5 in a statement to CRN. "We at F5 want to thank Dave for all that he is built, especially the strong global sales team and our lead position in the ADC market."
The appointment comes just months after longtime F5 CEO John McAdam retired from the company. McAdam was replaced by Manny Rivelo, who is striving to transform and expand its addressable market reach.
’F5 has grown far beyond its hardware roots into a company delivering hybrid application services on-premises, in the cloud, and as a service,’ said Rivelo in a release. "Our biggest growth opportunities are still ahead of us. We are excited to have someone with John’s experience in market expansion, channel management, and global networking sales join the team. With John’s leadership, we will continue to evolve our sales force to better serve our customers’ needs."
Quarantillo said partners are greeting the new CEO's vision for F5 with open arms, as it will create more sales and opportunities for partners.
"His plans are very timely," said Quarantillo. "If you look at what's going on with applications, you need a change, there needs to be a shift, and F5 is going more toward hybrid applications knowing that apps are going to live in the cloud and in the data center. They've got the right product set. F5 is everywhere -- it's in front of almost every application that we touch on a daily basis. They're already doing load balancing, application proxy, so for them to now start to peal it back and get more involved in security and cloud, it really isn’t that big of a departure to what they've been doing."
Quarantillo says GuidePoint has seen F5 sales increase in both volume and average deal size.
"F5 is just continuing to tweak itself and stay ahead of market demands," said Quarantillo.
Last week, F5 introduced its latest version of its Big-IP application-delivery software with nearly 200 new features that opened up $500 million of new addressable market for the channel, while also becoming available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.