Cylance layoffs hit Australian shores

Cylance has restructured and as a result 50 percent of the local staff was let go or voluntarily resigned, CRN understands.

Following a report by The Register saying that as many as one in five employees had been terminated worldwide, Cylance responded to CRN's enquiry without giving too many specifics.

"Over the past three years Cylance has experienced unprecedented growth. Like every company, as we reach our annual planning cycle we assess our needs and critical growth areas for the coming year and we make some changes in the organization to realign our team and operations," said a spokesperson.

"The changes that were made were very modest and we remain about 800 full-time employees who are already executing on next fiscal year’s plans to bring Cylance fully into the next stage of maturity as a late-stage startup."

CRN understands that, as the company had invested heavily in establishing its local presence, once it had its distribution partnerships defined Cylance realised it did not need as many marketing and sales people.

As CRN USA reported, the majority of layoffs hit the company's sales and marketing departments.

On 1 December 2016, the security vendor appointed Arrow as its first local distributor to cover Australia and New Zealand.

Cylance appointed six local executives in December 2016 including former FireEye head of channels Lani Edwards.

Rick Ferguson and Anthony Farr were appointed as enterprise sales managers and Vlado Vajdic, Mark Jones and Stephen King were hired as ANZ sales engineers.

As a private company, Cylance does not have to disclose financial results and other details to the public.

"As we enter a new phase in our global expansion, we have made some changes in executive leadership in key markets, including Australia and New Zealand and Asia-Pacific. We’ve brought in John Giacomini to head up our global sales effort and our director of international business operations Daniel Bernard will lead the expansion of Cylance go-to-market operations in Asia-Pacific and Australia and New Zealand," the spokesperson told CRN.

"As always, our focus remains solidly on our customers and partners, and on removing legacy antivirus and weak protection layers to protect the world from cyberattack. Cylance is on pace to more than double revenues year over year in FY17."

Founded in 2012, Cylance is a US-headquartered vendor that uses artificial intelligence to prevent cyber threats.

Cylance announced its Sydney office in 2013 but only in October 2015 it appointed its first reseller, Aquion.

Cylance has since contacted CRN to clarify that the changes affected 4 percent of Cylance employees globally. The company refused to confirm who left the Australian business.

Updated 3:52 pm 27 April to clarify how many staff were affected globally.