F5 has announced the appointment of Tom Fountain as Executive Vice President of Global Services and Chief Strategy Officer. In this role, he will head F5’s global support, professional consulting, educational services, customer success, manufacturing, and technology services operations.
In addition to the expanded role leading Services, Fountain will continue to oversee the company’s long-term strategy and corporate development programs. Fountain will succeed Steve McMillan, who was recently named President and CEO of Teradata, beginning June 8, 2020.
“Tom has had a tremendous impact on F5 since joining the company in early 2018. He has brought new rigor to our strategic planning process, spearheaded the transformative acquisitions of NGINX and Shape Security, fostered the launch of F5 Cloud Services and Aspen Mesh, and developed strong technology partnerships through our Business Development initiatives,” said F5 President and Chief Executive Officer François Locoh-Donou. “Tom will bring this same energy, thoughtfulness, and customer-centric approach to our world-class Global Services team as F5 continues its evolution to become the leader in multi-cloud application services.”
As a member of the F5 Executive Team, Fountain will continue to report directly to Locoh-Donou from F5’s offices in San Jose, California.
Fountain joined F5 in 2018 from the security company McAfee, where he was Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development. In this role, he was responsible for defining the company’s corporate strategy, building its technology partnerships and strategic alliances, managing the business’ operations, and leading corporate development. Prior to McAfee, Fountain held multiple leadership roles at Juniper Networks, including General Manager of the company’s Content & Media Business Unit and Vice President of Corporate Strategy. Earlier in his career, Fountain was a principal at the venture capital firm Mayfield Fund, the co-founder of network security firm Ingrian Networks (acquired by SafeNet), and a faculty member at Stanford University where he taught electrical engineering and computer science.