Executive Team

Paul Rochester | Chief Executive Officer
Paul Rochester has served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Layer 7 since 2009. He brings over 30 years of success in growing technology businesses on a global basis. Prior to joining Layer 7, he was the President and CEO of PS’Soft, Inc., an ITIL service and asset management software company with offices in the US, the UK and France and more than 2,000 installations worldwide. Prior to PS’Soft, Paul was CEO and President of Conformative Systems, a high-performance XML appliance vendor with its own proprietary chip architecture. Conformative was sold to Intel in 2005. From 1995 to 2003, Paul was General Manager and Senior Vice President for Sun Microsystems, growing his startup system integration division into a global billion dollar business and the fastest growing business at Sun. In 1999, his responsibilities expanded to include Sun’s global IT, call center and network infrastructure (SaaS/Cloud computing model). Overall, he was responsible for over 5,000 direct personnel. Paul has public board and audit committee experience with Evolve Software (now owned by Oracle) and has been a member of several private boards as well as an active investor/advisor to several startups. He has an MBA from the University of Ottawa and a BSEE from Queen's University.

Praveen Gupta | Chief Operating Officer/Chief Financial Officer
Praveen Gupta is responsible for ensuring that Layer 7’s customer experience – from signing to implementation to post-sale support – is truly outstanding. His team includes Professional Services, Customer Support & Success, IT, Legal, Administration and Finance. Praveen has spent most of his 25-year career building rapid-growth organizations – 15 of those years building and operating technology companies. Before joining Layer 7, Praveen's most recent role was as CFO of fSona, a leader in wireless communications technology. Praveen co-founded Eftia OSS Solutions and secured $40 million in venture capital funding. As a partner at Opcom Solutions, Praveen successfully negotiated Opcom’s sale to GE Capital Technology Management Solutions. Praveen holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Delhi University and is both a Certified Management Accountant and a Chartered Accountant.

K. Scott Morrison | Chief Technology Officer
Scott Morrison is the Chief Technology Officer at Layer 7 Technologies, providing the visionary innovation and technical direction for the company. He has extensive technical and scientific experience in a number of industries and universities, including senior architect positions at IBM. He is one of the four co-editors for the WS-I Basic Security Profile. Scott is a much sought-after author and speaker. He has published over 50 book chapters, magazine articles, and papers in medical, physics, and engineering journals and is co-author of the upcoming university textbook "Cloud Computing: Principles, Systems and Applications" published by Springer-Verlag. Scott has recently spoken at more than 70 shows around the world, including InfoWorld, JavaOne, GigaOm STRUCTURE, SOA World, Gartner and IDC conferences. 

Follow Scott on Twitter: @kscottmorrison

Dimitri Sirota | Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer
Dimitri Sirota is an accomplished entrepreneur and a pioneer in the security field. Prior to co-founding Layer 7 Technologies, Dimitri co-created the award-winning Virtual Private Network provider eTunnels Inc. Dimitri spearheaded its early marketing and business development activities, establishing eTunnels as a leader in secure connectivity for the extended enterprise. He has also worked in senior product marketing and channel development roles at AT&T and Telus. Dimitri holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from McGill University and a Master of Science in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia. 

Follow Dimitri on Twitter: @l7sirota

Jeff Miller | Vice President, Sales
Jeff Miller brings over 15 years of sales and marketing experience to Layer 7, building direct and indirect sales teams for technology companies where SOA, cloud and security have been the focal point. Prior to joining Layer 7, Jeff was the Business Unit Executive for IBM Datapower, Cast Iron and SOA Appliances in North America; he was Vice-President of Sales for Datapower before their acquisition by IBM. Previous to DataPower Jeff held sales leadership positions in SOA, cloud and SaaS startups such as Actional and Grand Central Communications. Jeff entered the software and security space in the early 90’s, where he was part of the original team at the Internet security and reporting software startup Telemate.net. Jeff started in sales and marketing with Telemate.net and became the Executive Director of Sales, helping the company realize exceptional growth that lead to a successful IPO in 1999 and eventual sale of the company to Verso Technologies.

Phil Walston | Vice President, Development & Product Management
Phil Walston provides product management and development leadership for Layer 7 and also acts technical liason for Layer 7's technology partners. Phil has been defining and managing technology products for global customers for more than 15 years. Prior to joining Layer 7 Technologies, Phil managed various high performance routing, switching and traffic management product lines at PMC-Sierra, a leading provider of broadband communications and storage semiconductors to the communications industry. Phil was also previously Product Marketing Manager at Business Objects (Crystal Decisions), where he was responsible for managing Crystal Reports, the world standard in enterprise reporting software. Phil began his technology career at Nortel Networks, where he held product management and strategic marketing roles for a variety of products ranging from fibre optic communications systems to network management software for global telecom providers. Phil holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan.

Matt McLarty | Vice President, Client Solutions
Matt McLarty is focused on customer success, providing implementation best practices and architectural guidance to ensure clients receive the maximum benefit from Layer 7’s products. Matt brings over 15 years of technology leadership to Layer 7, with a particular focus on enterprise architecture, strategy and integration. Prior to joining Layer 7, Matt led the global IBM technical sales organization responsible for application integration software and solutions, notably helping to grow the SOA Gateway business substantially over a five-year period. Before joining IBM, Matt worked as a Senior Director and Enterprise Architect focused on SOA, electronic payments and identity management.

Francois Lascelles | Chief Architect
Francois Lascelles guides Layer 7’s solutions architecture team and aligns product evolution with field trends. Francois joined Layer 7 in the company’s infancy – contributing as the first developer and designing the foundation of Layer 7’s Gateway technology. Now in a field-facing role, Francois helps enterprise architects apply the latest standards and patterns. Francois is a regular blogger and speaker and is also co-author of Service-Oriented Infrastructure: On-Premise & in the Cloud, published by Prentice Hall. Francois holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal.

Follow Francois on Twitter: @flascelles

Fred Tummonds | Vice President, Engineering
Fred Tummonds has over 18 years of experience managing fast-growing, distributed teams in a variety of software companies. During this time, Fred has developed deep expertise in business intelligence and analytics for cloud-based services. He has successfully managed and led product development teams at both Fortune 500 and start-up companies and has a proven track record of defining, building and delivering customer-driven products. Fred spent 11 years at Business Objects/SAP where he was VP of Enterprise Reporting. Prior to joining Layer 7, he was responsible for Product & Engineering at Vivonet – the leading provider of SaaS-based point-of-sales systems for the hospitality industry. Before Vivonet, Fred was the co-founder and CTO at Indicee, a SaaS business intelligence company, which won the 2010 BCTIA Most Promising Startup Award.