Check Point reorganizes management chain of command

By Ellen Messmer
Network World Fusion, 03/03/99

As Check Point Software Technologies begins a massive reorganization, its spitfire CEO is taking a much-deserved hiatus.

Tirant Riemen On the heels of its best sales year ever, Check Point is reorganizing its management structure to have what executives say will be "better integration" between the company's Israeli headquarters and its American subsidiary. As part of this restructuring, Dr. Deborah Triant Rieman, who has been CEO of the American subsidiary for four years, will move to an advisory role on the board of directors. Triant Riemen is credited with leading the company's sales success.

Although Triant Rieman's former position will be eliminated, Executive Vice President Jerry Ungerman will take over much of her day-to-day activities in the Redwood City, Calif. office.

The Israeli parent firm, headed by President and CEO Gil Schwed, who founded Check Point in 1993 with Marius Nacht and Shlomo Kramer, has spearheaded the technical development of Check Point's line of firewall and VPN products. Now, the Israeli parent will have a bigger role in marketing strategy, particularly internationally where Check Point now has sales offices in major European cities and the Far East. Also, the American subsidiary may change its identifier from Inc. to Ltd., which is used by the parent firm.

For 49-year-old Triant Rieman, who married Swedish computer industry executive Peter Rieman last August, the transition to the quieter advisory role seems welcome.

"I was brought in to build the sales and marketing out of the U.S., and Check Point is now well-established," she says. She now looks forward to spending more time with her two children from a previous marriage - while building a life with her husband and his 7-year-old child from an earlier union.

Based on her track record, Triant Rieman deserves a hiatus from the grueling demands of travel, sales meetings and conferences that she admits "can take a lot out of you."

When hired away from Adobe - Check Point offered up a Silicon Valley-style package of start-up stock-ownership benefits - the tiny Israeli-based firewall vendor had about $6 million in annual sales. Last January, Check Point reported $141 million in revenue, with $69.9 million in net profits, which put it No. 1 in marketshare, according to International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.

Through an unusual combination of technical and marketing savvy, Triant Rieman drove Check Point forward in the security arena by building relationships widely across the network industry so that dozens of firms would design their software or equipment to work with Firewall-1. Check Point calls this technical initiative the OPSEC Alliance.

In addition, Triant Rieman and her staff cultivated the network industry as sales channels. They eventually enlisted the likes of Bay, Xylan, FORE and Nokia as OEM channels. Firms such as Sun and IBM, which had built their own firewalls, are selling Check Point's FireWall-1, as well. Some of the ISPs, including UUNET, AT&T, Sprint, MCI and foreign carriers such as Deutsche Telekom, have bought Check Point equipment for managed firewall services.

Triant Rieman credits FireWall-1's technical design, based on so-called "stateful inspection" of network packets, for the company's continuing success in an increasingly crowded market. Check Point has also worked hard to keep adding support for dozens of separate applications to its firewall for users wanting to securely manage specific groupware, database or authentication technologies. Check Point was also early in the VPN market; and it has endured through the laborious interoperability testing done by the ICSA on behalf of the auto industry.

Triant Rieman claims her only disappointment is in failing to convince Cisco, which markets the competing PIX firewall, that the two companies have strong reason to cooperate on both the marketing and the technology fronts.

"We haven't managed to yet, but I would love to see us develop a relationship with Cisco," she says.