Don Ward Email & Phone Number

Southlake, Texas, Us

Gradient Cyber is a differentiating leader in Managed XDR platform solutions, addressing underserved mid market clients across all verticals. We provide an end to end product and services solution offering clients & partners full turn-key, co-managed, or self-service options for addressing 'any' network and endpoint cybersecurity detection, protection, IR, and reporting objectives. We integrate efficiently and effectively with customer and partner cybersecurity tech stack solutions, providing differentiating 24/7 value.

Charlottesville, Virginia, Us

Took on global sales role in addition to services leadership as company streamlines for efficiency during challenging PMF and customer budget cycles.

Charlottesville, Virginia, Us

Senior Executive Management team member responsible for all pre and post sales product and services operations, product & services strategy, deployment & pricing, customer success, partner and customer training & enablement, corporate operations & onboarding.Mission Secure stops OT cyber threats head-on, protecting OT networks and safeguarding operations - keeping customers’ critical operations up and running and safe from disruption.Mission Secure’s offerings include: Full 24/7 Managed OT Security as a Service (SaaS) offerings, IT/OT Cyber Risk Assessments with detailed network analyses, Red Teaming and non-intrusive/safe Penetration Testing, an OT Cybersecurity Platform providing OT/ICS/IOT Network and Asset Visibility, Network Segmentation/Protections, Signal-Integrity Monitoring at Purdue Model Level 0, and Managed Services delivering 24/7 IT/OT Network Monitoring, Incident Response & Remediation (IRR).

Independent Professional Trader in Equities, Options, Futures, and Forex. Developed IT quantitative tools and strategies to back-test both discretionary and algorithmic trading strategies.Served as executive IT & organizational consultant in various corporate projects, inclusive of public/private/hybrid Cloud and SaaS support infrastructure, organizational best practices for building high-skill set support/success teams, and M&A integration of pre & post sales technical teams to drive CSAT and loyalty.

Santa Clara, California, Us

Arista Networks is a leader in building scalable, high-performance and ultra-low latency cloud networks with low power consumption and a small footprint for modern datacenter and campus environments.

Houston, Texas, Us

HP acquired 3Com in 2010 for $2.7B. Led and directed Global Security Product operations for Customer Success & Experience for over 10,000 top Enterprise, Service Provider, Government, and K-12/Hi-Ed customers.

Marlborough, Ma, Us

TippingPoint was acquired by 3Com in January 2005 for $442 million and operated as a standalone division of 3Com with specific revenue and P&L targets. Led and directed Global Operations for Customer Success, inclusive of Pre and Post Sales Engineering, Support Services, and Professional Services.

TippingPoint took off from Pre-Revenue in late 2003 to attaining $32 million in fiscal 2004. During this time of extreme growth, in addition to managing and growing the Sales Engineering Team, I led all Support Services and Technical Training Team functions. Matured Technical Assistance Center (TAC) processes, adding to contact center infrastructure, created detailed processes, grew support team, and massively reduced call wait times, email response times, and time to resolution on support tickets/cases.

During this Pre-Revenue period for the company, was tasked by CEO/Founder John McHale to take on a specialized role with primary focus on landing one or more key strategic partners to scale our number one customer sales vertical at the time (Higher Education). Landed and signed an Enterprise Reseller Agreement with Dell that added a quarterly revenue run-rate ($1-1.5m) going into Fiscal 2004. Spent focused team effort enabling their 100+ person Higher Ed Sales Teams (inside & outside sales) with sales training, ROI documents and PowerPoint "Pitch" decks.

Hired and managed SE Team from Employee #1. Spent considerable time taking alpha and beta level products to customer sites for beta and POC testing, working closely with TippingPoint Development Team for continued improved functionality. Responded to RFI/RFPs and competitive presentation requests from the field. Launched and refreshed SE field tools (demo kits, KB, new-hire on-board training).

Pre and Post Sales Systems Engineering Team Lead. Toplayer’s primary focus was on an appliance for load balancing application packet flows to servers, firewalls (FW), and intrusion detection systems (IDS). Other advanced features included IP quality of service (QOS), traffic shaping (TS), and distributed denial of service (DDOS) mitigation features.

Led small team of BD Account Managers and Technical Marketing Specialists in the Metro Optical Ethernet/Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) space. Traveled North America meeting with prospective large ILEC/CLEC Service Providers to vet out product planning features, respond to RFI/RFPs, and doing competitive market/segmentation analysis. Partnered with both Juniper and Cisco to perform MPLS Interoperability Testing. This was a Pre-Revenue company of which eventually filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

Led small team of BD Account Managers and Program Managers to seek industry partnerships/alliances in the Broadband DSL space. Vectris was a Cisco Powered Network Provider, rolling out managed broadband Internet DSL services to retail and commercial customers throughout the Texas and the Central US. Signed major National Reseller Agreements with AT&T Broadband Services and Rhythms. This was a Pre-Revenue company, and based on market timing and the up-take of Broadband Cable versus DSL, the company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

San Jose, Ca, Us

Received Sales Engineering Excellence Award for North America from John Chambers in 1996. Progressed from entry-level Systems Engineer (SEII) to the highest promote-able ranking (SEIV) - CCIE #1571 Routing & Switching. Served instrumental roles in winning competitively held accounts from Alcatel/Ascend/Xylan, Bay/Wellfleet/Nortel, Cabletron, 3Com, Fore, and IBM. Served as Technical lead on L2/3 routed network designs, multi-service FR/ATM WAN/MPLS backbone network designs, High Availability Co-location Internet Commerce Designs, and VPN Security Solutions. Served as SE Virtual Team (SEVT) Lead, driving requirements and direction for routing, switching, and multi-service product lines.Served as Multi-services technical-sales-overlay (Austin - $60m goal, San Antonio - $30M goal). Achieved 201% of sales quota (#1 Multi-service MAM in Sales Operation, #2 in company). Served as technical project lead on the Texan 2000 RFO (statewide MPLS backbone – $30+m Cisco products), and green-field IXC and NSP CLEC market for multi-service offerings in Central and South Texas.