Acronis Partner Day UAE 2024: Security-empowered value and growth

Ronan McCurtin is the Vice President for Europe, Middle East, Israel and Turkey at Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection solutions. With more than 20 years of experience in the international IT and software industry, Ronan brings extensive experience in this segment, where he has successfully led multiple teams. He is highly qualified and experienced in developing and improving channel business and customer relationships to create efficient distribution channels and partnerships. These efforts include working with resellers and managed service providers.

Gaidar is the President at Acronis, overseeing technical and business education for partners and employees, strategic initiatives for developing the business of Acronis partners, and global partner communication and marketing organization. Gaidar has been with Acronis since 2013, serving in various roles: Business Manager / Chief of Staff to the CEO, General Manager of Consumer Division, Vice President of Online Sales, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Success Officer. For more than six years, Gaidar has primarily focused on helping service providers build and grow their business with Acronis. Before joining Acronis, Gaidar was an Investment Director at a venture capital firm, Runa Capital, and held various roles at Microsoft, primarily responsible for developing technology startups, web development and service providers. Before his corporate career, Gaidar was a scientist specializing in Raman spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations and a software engineer, leading various projects focused on data storage, management and analysis. During his university years, Gaidar worked as a part-time managed service provider, serving the needs of small business customers.

Markus holds a degree in Information Electronics and has more than 25 years of experience in the IT industry with extensive expertise in Business Development, Marketing, Sales, as well as Presales and distribution of products and services. He held various Sales and Channel positions in which he, amongst other things, imparted technological expertise to Partners. Moreover, he was responsible for the expansion of the Channel Business and provided a reputable and knowledgeable reference point for Suppliers as well as Partners. Markus’ mission at Acronis is to drive strategies and share technological expertise with Partners, Customers and Resellers. He works on all Channel levels and is responsible for Acronis trainings and workshops throughout EMEA.

Kevin Reed is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Acronis, bringing over 20 years of experience in the cybersecurity industry. He has a proven track record of driving security initiatives that emphasize practical risk mitigation over mere compliance. Kevin’s expertise spans across DevSecOps, Agile methodologies, and the development of robust security frameworks tailored to modern business needs. Kevin’s career is marked by significant achievements, including the implementation of cryptographic protection for one of Europe's largest banks, the establishment of a security organization from the ground up for a NASDAQ-traded search engine company, and leadership of IT operations and infrastructure for Southeast Asia's leading e-commerce platform, Lazada. At Lazada, Kevin focused on bolstering the company’s IT infrastructure, ensuring network security, and managing incident response. His efforts successfully defended the platform against large-scale DDoS attacks and enhanced the overall reliability and performance of the company's technology stack. Kevin holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Kingston University. Since joining Acronis in early 2019, Kevin has redefined the company’s security strategy, developed cutting-edge security solutions, and launched a public bug bounty program that ranks among the top on external platforms. He leads the Acronis Threat Research Unit (ATRU) on a global scale, driving research on embedded device security, uncovering vulnerabilities (CVE-2020-3928, CVE-2020-3929, CVE-2020-3930), and collaborating with Singapore CERT to protect customers from potential threats. Kevin is an active participant in the cybersecurity community, frequently sharing his expertise at workshops, conferences, and meetups, including HITB and Div0 in Singapore. He has also developed and led a comprehensive training program that has equipped over 40 individuals with the skills needed to embark on careers in cybersecurity.

Denis Cassinerio is Senior Director and General Manager of South EMEA for Acronis and has over 30 years of experience in sales development, channel building and business evolution in the Enterprise cyber security market. At Acronis, he is responsible for the region partnerships and South EMEA sales operation’s, supporting the company's commitment to delivering integrated, automated cyber protection that solves the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) challenges of the modern digital world. In addition to a significant experience in Information Technology and Cybersecurity, Denis studied in Business Communication at the IULM in Milan and obtained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Cumbria, Carlisle (UK).

Paul is the Worldwide Director for Sales Engineering at Virtuozzo, supporting the Sales team in delivering solution positioning and all pre-sales and supporting activities. Previously, in Paul’s 30-year career he has worked in large (and small) datacentres, on mainframes, Unix/Linux and Microsoft platforms. He has held leadership positions in various organisations in areas including data centre transformation solutions, hyper converged solutions, data protection technologies and cloud management platforms. Paul has worked with various on-premise and cloud based technologies and uses this experience to support the growth of the Virtuozzo business. Paul is passionate about helping customers understand and embrace new concepts around data centre and cloud technologies.

Ryan brings over a decade of storage and data management experience to Acronis leading our commercial enterprise sales organization. Acronis’ enterprise sales team is focused on helping organizations improve their business continuity plans and reduce cyber exposure in historically difficult computing areas such as the edge, endpoints, industrial automation, and R&D labs. Ryan began his sales career selling knives door to door and holds a BS in Sales & Business Marketing from Western Michigan University.