Don't measure your skills in %
NPM & Troubleshooting
High level of expertise in Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics and Active Testing solutions at the pre-sales stage (finding key business and technical drivers to provide solutions and turn into key benefits), developing and establishing strong relationships with customers during the sales process, managing PoC process from start to finish and providing product expertise to fine-tune the solution at the post-sales stage.
Cybersecurity & Forensics
Providing best practices for retrospective investigation, DPI forensics, response, verification techniques and threat intel to our NetSecOps customers. Tigh relations and knowledge of the tech leaders in the industry for IoC detection, security vendors, SIEM, TAP and network packet broker players as well as traffic decryption and Continuous Threat Exposure Mangement, to enhance visibility into business-critical services.
Complex Architecture Advisor
Deep understanding of complex network infrastructure, cloud services, hybrid networks, SDN, SD-WAN/SASE and virtualization, and how to deploy the best and most effective monitoring strategies. I work closely with tech champions from Fortune 500 companies in the finance, banking, insurance and utilities sectors to operationalize and optimise their monitoring routines and incident response processes.
Cross-functional Team & Region
Act as the link between customers, distributors/partners, account teams, PLM and the R&D organisations. Provide feedback from the field to product development and write strategic deal enablement to remove the final obstacle to closing a deal. I am familiar with and sensitive to the various cultural working practices throughout Europe
BSD, Linux & Open-Source ecosystems
Proficient in using BSD, Linux, API and Open-Source solutions to build high-performing networks. Routing, network segmentation, containers, TCP/IP tuning, BGP, firewall & DNS sinkhole to reduce security exposure. I regularly monitor security announcements and learn various hacking, exploitation and evasion techniques.
Other
I am a native French speaker and am fluent in English and Spanish. Experienced in A3 problem solving, PDCA/MEDDIC and Agile/Scrum methodologies. I am an advanced TCP/IP troubleshooting trainer, experience of Wireshark (Top #5 SharkFest challenge) and Zeek. Co-founder of a non-profit, privacy-oriented ISP committed to net neutrality.
Professional milestones
Technical lead for high-performing sales engineers helping and guiding them to achieve their objectives and in the introduction of a new complementary Security Threat Forensics offering.
- Over $5M overlay annual quota implementing sales strategy established by the corp
- Establish strong relationship with key customers, partners, sales and management team
- Supervise European key accounts and influence strategy to deliver the best experience
- Implement whole pre-sales process from qualification, PoC/PoV to the final solution design
- Act as a leadership technical mentor for the sales director and for the EMEA team and channel partners
Technical advisor and voice of our top ten customers in EMEA, focusing on funnel addition, org mapping, liaising between Sales, PS and TAC, feeding customer requirements to PLM and R&D to remove technical obstacles.
- Cross-team collaboration to represent customer voice and to increase global satisfaction
- Secure maintenance revenue, customer retention and reached 120% of target with fully engaged customers
- Deliver product expertise, best practices and product roadmap to our top customers
- Prioritise and align internal development strategy to our top customers needs
- Create and maintain HA Worldwide demo lab for SEs and channel partners (+100 accounts)
Provide cutting-edge technology in the field of NPMD (Network Performance Management & Diagnostics) market increasing the business from an annual turnover of $1M to over $2M.
- Understand technical environment and key business drivers to provide the most valuable solution
- End-to-end project management and architecture design validation prior to the sale
- Project qualification, runnning PoC/PoV with success of criteria and scope of work delivery
- Manage partners network with trade-shows, regular product updates, training and product evangelization
- Advanced tuning, custom configuration and product performance optimisation
Educational journey
Euridis Business School, Paris X
2006
Sales Engineering Master Degree, Computer & IT Communications
University Sorbonne, Paris Nord
2004
University Technical Degree, Network & Telecommunications
Notre Dame High School, Verneuil
2002
Baccalaureate Diploma with major in Mathematics
Most proud of/key success
Right in my shoes, even in complicated situations
My ability to remain strong and upright in complicated internal situations and to manage dissatisfied customers has always paid off. The best proof of this is the time I have spent in various positions and the satisfaction of both customers and the company with regard to me.
Having a cross-functional perspective, being the best advocate for clients, and escalating difficult situations have allowed me to repeatedly turn situations around and leave clients satisfied.
My experience working in cross-functional teams has taught me how to adapt to different situations and get the best responses from all parties.
Think outside the box: building a worldwide lab for demo and SE wiki
“Think beyond limits” this expression is often overused, but it's not just a guiding principle in my personal life (having run a 100k ultra trail in the mountains), it's also a principle I apply professionally when I see an opportunity to improve a situation.
The best example: we didn't have a demo lab at company level that allowed us to be confident when demonstrating our solutions, nor a central location to share information between our teams, so I proposed and decided to build both.
My management trusted me, and it was an opportunity for me to learn about several technologies (cloud, virtualization, impairment, traffic manipulation and simulation, logs management...) to build a high-quality, real-time and resilient services (achieving 'five nines' availability) distributed across several geographical areas, which has been used for more than five years by all pre-sales teams and partners (+100 accounts) all around the world.
At the same time, I created and managed our internal SE wiki which became our main technical forum for our end customers and partners.
References
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislabac
https://www.linkedin.com/in/silvain-mittoux
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericledoucen