Former Adarma Security CEO tells all about new Palo Alto role

After four years heading up the cybersecurity partner, John Maynard sits down with CRN to run through his new role at Palo Alto Networks

John Maynard began his 2025 by swapping a channel partner cybersecurity specialist for a vendor.

After serving as chief executive officer of Adarma Security for four years, Maynard is now vice president of SASE, EMEA and LATAM at Palo Alto Networks.

He now takes ownership of the vendor’s SASE offering across the two regions, which includes the Prisma SD-WAN and Prisma Access portfolios as well as its Prisma Access Browser product, which Palo Alto took on as part of the Talon Cyber Security acquisition.

Maynard tells CRN more about why he made the career change, what is top of his agenda, and partner priorities.

Why did you leave Adarma Security?

After four years as CEO, the time was right for me to take a more international, expansive role in another high growth area in cybersecurity, so I decided to take up an exciting role at Palo Alto Networks.

I specifically wanted to re-enter the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) space after spending a number of years driving network, branch and workplace transformation. SASE is appealing because it’s one of Palo Alto’s core strategic priorities and is a highly valuable solution as clients transform their organisations to prepare for the future of work.

How did this new role with Palo Alto Networks come about? And when did you officially start?

I took six months out to spend time with my family and think about what I really wanted to do.

This gave me a chance to step back and speak to customers, friends, colleagues and partners.

From these conversations, I realised that I wanted to be part of a transformational force in the industry, with an ambitious organisation that aims to change the market. Many of my former colleagues have joined Palo Alto Networks and customers kindly referred me to the company. They felt it was a great match for the disruptive opportunity that I was looking for.

I’m a big believer in Palo Alto Networks’ platformisation approach, which sees several point tools consolidated into one integrated platform to drive ROI. SASE is a core part of this strategy as it benefits from an integrated approach, for example when it’s combined with our Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) or with Extended Security Intelligence and Automation Management (XSIAM).

This means that organisations can transition to cloud delivered network and security services at the speed that is right for them while consolidating tooling. Once I had met some of the Palo Alto Networks team who outlined this approach and the response it had received from customers and partners, the recruitment process progressed pretty quickly from there. I officially started on 3 February.

What are your immediate priorities in your new role? Do they differ from your long-term priorities for the rest of 2025?

The SASE portfolio is growing very quickly as we continue to increase market share. We’re creating larger deals from this and all of those deals are partner-led. This includes all types of partners from GSP’s, MSSP’s, GSIs, VARs or our distribution partners through implementation or through managed services, so it’s a real opportunity for the entire partner ecosystem to get behind this offering. On average, SASE deals are larger than NGFW deals and lead to significant upsell or expansion opportunities through the customer lifecycle.

My priority is to get behind our ecosystem and partnerships even further, building on our success to date in scaling SASE. There is a great opportunity for us to lead the narrative with our customers about network and security convergence, and how we can effectively build a zero trust network access solution for them.

So that is my priority - to make sure every team and every channel partner across EMEA and LATAM understands the value of SASE, has heard the Palo Alto Networks story and can articulate our differentiators to their customer base.

What’s the one thing you’d like to achieve in the role by the end of 2025?

We believe that the future of work will be done securely in the browser - work is an activity not a place.

That’s why we are really proud of our Prisma Access Browser solution. Therefore, one of the goals I’d like to achieve is to make sure every partner is leading with Prisma Access Browser into their customer base.

It's a very simple entry point which can lead to significant security improvements and risk reduction for our customers and opens up a more expansive discussion around architecting zero trust.

We have a truly holistic, natively integrated browser strategy for security fully integrated into SASE. I’m laser focused on making sure every partner and customer has had a conversation with Palo Alto Networks or one of our partners around the browser.

What are some of Palo Alto’s key technology areas that are driving the most amount of growth?

The next generation security part of our portfolio is growing particularly fast. This includes Prisma SASE as well as Cortex, our AI-powered SecOps platform.

We recently announced some great innovations in this area by introducing our Prisma SASE 5G solution which enables service providers to secure enterprise customers’ 5G networks, users, and devices while unlocking new revenue streams and building competitive differentiation.

We also recently announced the launch of Cortex Cloud that natively brings together cloud detection and response (CDR) and cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP) capabilities on the unified Cortex platform. These are exciting developments that I believe will fuel our growth.

Are you looking either to expand or reduce the number of partners Palo Alto works with in the UK?

Not all partners have expertise in the SASE space, so I will be onboarding existing partners that haven’t yet focused on this portfolio.

I will also be enabling those that have already benefited from SASE to do so even further.

There’s also a real opportunity for Palo Alto Networks to do more with service providers and system integrators in this space, both those who we already have a relationship with as well as developing new partnerships. This will be an area of focus, ensuring those types of organisations are enabled, and to help our partners deliver managed services around SASE products into their customers.

In which areas would you most like to see your partners invest over the next 12 months?

I’d like to see them adopt our secure enterprise browser at scale. It’s a combination of onboarding into the SASE portfolio holistically, doubling down into the browser strategy that we have, and then building full managed services around these offerings.

What are some of the top challenges currently facing the business?

The company is growing very quickly which is exciting, but it comes with certain challenges.

We need to make sure the channel partner ecosystem scales with us, by continuing to set our partners up for success through the support and training that our partner program provides.

We are innovating quickly and expanding our offerings, so we need to make sure that partners are confident in offering the full lifecycle of our services with customers. I’m very confident that we will meet these objectives, and in doing so the future will be bright for both Palo Alto Networks and our partner ecosystem.

And what about the top challenges for your partners?

We see some common challenges that our partners are facing.

This includes building a life cycle of partner services that are required for SaaS solutions, reducing complexity of supporting numerous offerings in the marketplace and keeping pace with the changes and innovations in the technologies that they offer.

These can be Herculean tasks for a large service provider, a MSSP or a GSI or even a VAR that is looking to move into advanced services but supports a very wide portfolio of technologies.

Palo Alto Networks can help because we offer a best-in-class portfolio across all the major domains and we drive large, integrated deals through platformisation.

This means that partners only need to make a single investment in a partner of scale to drive very high returns as we both scale, especially in our fast growing areas. We are also working with a number of partners to help them build out the lifecycle of services required.