Farnborough, United Kingdom - 1 November 2012 – Blue Coat Systems, Inc., a market leader in Web security and WAN optimization, today announced the appointments of three senior sales and marketing executives who will help drive the company’s go-to-market strategy and execution across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Mark Tickle joins Blue Coat as the regional business and sales leader for the United Kingdom, and Pat Dunne has been named channel director for the region. Additionally, Shirley O’Sullivan has been appointed vice president of marketing for EMEA.

Mr. Tickle has extensive experience as a business leader in the security market with a proven track record of increasing sales. As a sales director for the U.K., he will help grow the company’s Web security and WAN optimisation sales to increase market share. Prior to joining Blue Coat, Mr. Tickle was managing director in EMEA at Webroot, where increased sales and integrated Email Systems Ltd. Earlier, he held various sales positions at BlackSpider, Surfcontrol and Websense.

Mr. Dunne is an experienced sales and marketing professional with over 20 years of experience in direct touch and channel sales. As the channel director for EMEA, Mr. Dunne will drive the channel programme for the U.K. and EMEA. He will be focused on ensuring tight engagement between Blue Coat sales and channel partners. Prior to joining Blue Coat, Mr. Dunne held sales positions with leading technology companies such as Websense, Sun Microsystems, Trend Micro and NetIQ. He has also worked at several successful start-ups, including Elron, FTP Software and Neoware.

Mr. Dunne and Mr. Tickle will report to Stuart Henderson, vice president of sales for EMEA.

In her new role, Ms. O’Sullivan will be responsible for building on the company’s recognised leadership in the Web security and WAN optimisation markets. She will work closely with the field and channel partners to drive alignment and execution of go-to-market strategy across the region. She will report directly to Chief Marketing Officer Steve Daheb. Prior to joining Blue Coat, Ms. O’Sullivan was the director of field and channel marketing for EMEA at Riverbed Technology. Earlier, she held a variety of security product marketing and channel roles at Nortel Networks.

Ms. O’Sullivan comments, “The adoption of bring your own device initiatives, cloud-based applications and social networking within the enterprise are eliminating traditional security boundaries and fundamentally changing how businesses need to secure their networks. Blue Coat is uniquely positioned to help businesses throughout EMEA securely embrace these changes through an industry-leading Unified Security solution that delivers the same policy and protection infrastructure across on-premise appliances, virtual appliances and cloud to ensure truly seamless universal web security for all users, on any network or device.”

Further information (external website)