Interesting Folks

Twitter

Jonathan Andresen (not John Anderson) is the Senior Director of Marketing & Products in the Asia-Pacific region for McAfee, a company he joined in March of this year. He has been working in the enterprise IT and telecommunications sector since 1996, relocating to Asia in 2003.

Prior to joining McAfee, Jon held various product, marketing, and strategy management positions in the Asia-Pacific working at MobileIron, Blue Coat Systems (Symantec) and Nortel Networks. Mr. Andresen’s career includes earlier positions with Teleglobe, MetroPhotonics and Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs.

For those who don’t know, from April 2004 to March 2009, Jon was on CanCham Thailand’s Board of Directors, and in his last year on the board held the Vice-President’s position helping then Executive Director Suzanne Thibault organize and manage many of the key Chamber events.

Jon is a native of Wakefield, Quebec, in the Gatineau hills. Bilingual, he holds an undergraduate degree in political science & economics from Queen’s University and Master's Degree in International Management (his thesis was on international telecommunication) from the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. His dream was to be a foreign service officer and work abroad. Through his Master’s Program, he was able to intern and work at Foreign Affairs with the Trade Commissioner’s service where he was tasked with positioning Canadian products in foreign markets.

Jon then came across an opportunity to work in government relations for Teleglobe, which at the time was akin to Canada’s AT &T. He became a lobbyist at the young age of 23, pushing the Canadian government to help Teleglobe tap into international markets as they were deregulating their telecom services. His first trip to Asia was on a Team Canada mission with then Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s team in November 1998 to Beijing.

Jon worked with Telegobe until it was bought by Bell Canada. At that point, he decided he wanted to learn a little more about how the telecom industry operated, so he went to work for Nortel Networks in 2000 as a marketing manager for optical networks, coming to work for them in Bangkok in late 2002 in their wireless division. Based in Bangkok, he covered all of Asia as the market was shifting from 2G to 3G.

He stayed with Nortel until 2009 when he joined Blue Coat Systems (which became Symantec, and is now Broadcom), a fast-growing enterprise security company which helped protect companies against viruses, hacks and other Internet security risks. He did their product marketing in Asia for six years. In 2014, he moved onto MobileIron, this time focusing on the end-user and securing iPads, tablets and Android devices.

Jon has always followed the latest digital technology trend moving from 2G to 3G with Nortel; then Internet for business and making the Internet secure with Blue Coat; with MobileIron it was protecting the end user’s products (iPads, tablets, Android devices) and now he’s at McAfee where he’s tasked with making the cloud secure (e.g. how do you secure data that runs on networks you don’t own, data centres you don’t own and on devices you don’t own).

Jon’s career has basically followed his three major interests: international business, the creative element of marketing and the change and dynamism of technology. Combining those three interests in a fast-moving region like Asia makes for a very interesting career.

He also finds it an especially exciting time to be in the digital world:: “IT used to support business, like a help desk, but now it’s driving business, whether it be the Internet, the Cloud, mobility or apps – it is driving new markets and new businesses, so whether you are a bank, in retail or even in the oil and gas industry, your business is being run on IT.”

“Cloud is one of the biggest trends I’ve seen in my career,” he continues, “and it’s growing faster than anything I’ve seen. Amazon wants to expand by triple digits, they are really transforming the whole industry and that’s what attracted me to the Cloud,”

Jon believes in hands-on marketing; he speaks at different events around Asia almost every week. He puts himself out there to engage with customers face-to-face. “I believe marketing is a people business. I get out there and talk to industry analysts, which is good two-way communication as I tell them what our company is doing and they tell me what the market is doing.” Jon sees marketing as being a business partner to sales, supporting sales through innovative campaigns, activities and messaging.

Jon and his staff of ten in Bangkok, along with their suppliers and resellers, are more than happy to address any of your computer or digital security concerns. McAfee has been doing just that longer than anyone. And Jon reminds people to be careful of what personal data you put in the Cloud and to change your passwords regularly.
McAfee
McAfee’s early work was groundbreaking – it was the first company to recognize that Microsoft and PCs needed protection and developed the first commercial antivirus software. John McAfee founded the company in 1987, resigning in 1994. Intel bought it in 2011 making it part of the Intel Security division. Then in 2016, Intel announced a strategic deal with TPG Capital to convert Intel Security into a joint venture between both companies called McAfee, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with Thoma Bravo maintaining a minority stake in the company.

McAfee is shifting from device to cloud security and as such its MVISION Cloud helps the world’s largest organizations unleash the power of the cloud by providing real-time protection for enterprise data and users across all cloud services.

Cloud is critical to business innovation and growth, but its use can put data, an enterprise’s most valuable asset, at risk. McAfee protects data across all cloud services with the speed, scale and user-centricity the cloud demands. With McAfee MVISION Cloud, enterprises can accelerate their business by leveraging technology and services to confidently identify, control and protect data and user activities across any cloud, on any device.

Contact Info
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.