Geek of the Week: Assaf Rappaport
For the first time in our history, this week’s Geek of the Week brings a familiar company to the CloudWedge readership. Yes, someone from this company has previously won the Geek of the Week award. If you happen to keep up with this weekly column, you might have noticed that we tend to focus on companies that provide genuine added value to the cloud space. Proprietary software, game changing technology – these are some of the things that are most important to us when handing out this award. When a company gets bought out, it is likely because they are offering a product or service that cannot be found elsewhere (or they do it better than the competition).
Before we get to this company, allow us to introduce this week’s winner: Assaf Rappaport, CEO of Adallom!
Several months ago, we named Danelle Au (VP of Strategy for Adallom) as a Geek of the Week winner. Danelle wrote an in depth piece about Shadow IT vs. Emergent IT. Though cloud security is one of the largest niches within the cloud, many IT professionals are still unclear about the many dangers of the cloud and how to protect yourself against these threats. Adallom promises to keep your data safe in the cloud via its security platform with visibility, governance and protection for your data. Furthermore, as the cloud is ever changing, Adallom helps you proactively research threats, alerts you on new SaaS security risks, and works with you to improve your cloud security posture.
So, why did Mr. Rappaport win this week? If cased you missed it (unlikely since it was huge news), we reported that Microsoft acquired Adallom earlier this week. Though it was not officially confirmed, TechCrunch reported that the deal was worth about $250 million. While this is a massive deal, it should come as no surprise to people who understand Adallom’s easy to use platform. Adallom was founded in 2012 by alumni of the Israeli Intelligence Corps and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
As for Mr. Rappaport: according to the Adallom website, prior to Adallom, he worked at McKinsey & Company overseeing project strategy management in both Israel and Australia. Prior to McKinsey & Company, he served as a Captain and project manager in the Israeli Intelligence Corps. Assaf is a Talpiot military academy graduate, with an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Technion, where he has been recognized by both Cisco and Intel for innovations in CDN.
Congratulations Assaf!
