Crossbeam Appoints New Country Manager in China
Crossbeam Systems Inc., which provides next-generation security platforms for high-performance networks, has appointed Bi An as country manager for China. Based in Beijing, Bi will be responsible for heading up Crossbeam’s sales and partner operations, helping expand the company’s presence throughout the country and drive demand for its line of X-Series security platforms.
“Bi An brings an impressive background to Crossbeam, having successfully led the sales and channel organizations at other leading security companies in the region,” said Andy Clark, director of Crossbeam’s sales and operations in the North Asia region. “As an established business leader, with deep in-country expertise and extensive security industry relationships, Bi will be a great asset to Crossbeam as we look to significantly expand our operations throughout China.”
According to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker, with APEJ (Asia-Pacific excluding Japan) recovering ahead of and faster than the US and Europe, the outlook of the security appliance market remains relatively positive and is expected to reach US $2.485 billion in customer revenues by 2014.
“The market opportunity for Crossbeam in China is substantial, as companies look for security solutions that can help them respond to the growing number of sophisticated security threats, while simplifying the complexity and cost of security management,” Bi said. “Crossbeam’s X-Series platforms have a great advantage in meeting customer demand for consolidated, high-performance security. I look forward to the many opportunities we can develop for Crossbeam in China.”
Bi brings to Crossbeam more than 15 years of sales leadership in the IT networking and network security industries in China. Before joining Crossbeam, he was the country sales director for Isoftstone, where he led the sales and channel efforts that enabled the company to sell its network security products, solutions and managed services into key customer accounts within the telecommunications, banking, government and large enterprise markets. Before that, Bi was country manager for Fortinet China, where his operational, sales and marketing leadership led the company to more than quadruple sales, realizing more than $8 million in revenue during his tenure. Bi was also country manager for Ciphertrust China, where he helped the company secure its foothold in China and achieve US $1.5 million in revenue before its acquisition by Secure Computing. He also served as sales director in China for Juniper-Netscreen and as channel manager for IBM China. Bi holds a B.S. in computer science from Xi'an University of Technology.