Thales regroups its digital assets and appoints new talents

Beginning January 1, 2018, Thales will regroup its digital businesses and expertise under a transverse Digital Business Unit. David Jones is appointed Senior Vice-president Digital Business Unit, Thales, effective on 8 December 2017. He will be based in California.

The Digital Business Unit will regroup :

• The Thales Digital Factory, in charge of steering and supporting the Group’s digital transformation through the development of new digital products for all activities, a start-up incubator and a Digital Academy.
• Thales eSecurity, a world leader in cyber security and data protection serving customers from offices based in the United States, United Kingdom and Hong Kong.
• Guavus, a pioneer in real time big data analytics based in the United States, Canada and India.
• 200 artificial intelligence experts with a strong presence in France (Plateau de Saclay) and a future site in Canada (Montreal), CortAix (Centre of Research and Technology in Artificial Intelligence expertise).

Key Points

• Creation of a Digital Business Unit regrouping Thales’s main digital businesses and expertise to support its customers’ big ambitions
• David Jones appointed Senior Vice-President, Digital Business Unit , effective on 8 December 2017.
• Olivier Flous appointed Vice-President Digital Transformation & Digital Factory in July 2017
• Cindy Provin appointed Chief Executive Officer of Thales eSecurity, effective on 1 January 2018.
• Faizel Lakhani appointed Chief Executive Officer of Guavus, effective on October 2017.

Thales is committed to accelerating the digital transformation across all areas of advanced technology, enabling its customers to make the right decisions in real time. To support its customers’ big ambitions, Thales has invested more than €1 billion over the last three years in key digital technologies, including the internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. 
 
Today, Thales strengthens its leadership team to drive digital transformation.

David Jones joins Thales as Senior Vice-President, Digital Business Unit, effective as of 8 December 2017. With 25 years’ experience leading innovative, enterprise software startups, as well as market leading companies like Cisco, HP and Iron Mountain, David is one of the foremost experts in digital transformation in the San Francisco Bay Area. He will bring his expertise in highly differentiated, digital offerings to accelerate the adoption of the Thales digital portfolio and drive digital transformation within Thales.

During his extensive career, David has worked with innovative, market leading companies to bring to market new digital technologies, improve operating results and expand their product portfolios. David joins Thales from HPE where he was Senior Vice President of the Security & Information Governance Business Unit.

Olivier Flous, Vice-President Digital Transformation & Digital Factory, is in charge since July 2017 of accelerating the Group’s digital transformation and that of all its customers through the Digital Factory. This structure is in charge of steering and supporting the Group’s Digital Transformation through the development of new digital products for all activities, a start-up incubator and a Digital Academy. The Digital Factory brings together the best experts in key digital technologies to serve Thales’s customers on its five core markets: aerospace, space, ground transportation, defense and security.

Cindy Provin is appointed Chief Executive Officer, Thales eSecurity, with effect from 1 January 2018. Cindy has a long and proven track record within the organisation. She has been responsible for leading and directing a high growth, profitable data security organization in her roles as President of Thales eSecurity, Inc. and Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer for Thales eSecurity. Over the course of this career, she was instrumental in driving Thales eSecurity’s position as a world leader in data security and its market leading position in hardware security modules and encryption. In her new role, Cindy will be responsible for leading a world-class organization, delivering a portfolio of security solutions, to protect data wherever it is created, shared or stored as customers digitally transform their organizations.

Faizel Lakhani joins Thales as Guavus Chief Executive Officer. Effective as of October 2017, he joins the Group’s newly acquired real-time, big data analytics business. This appointment reaffirms Thales’s commitment to digital transformation by delivering better intelligence to customers to help them make critical decisions, mastering every decisive moment. Mr. Lakhani brings extensive expertise in pioneering big data to the business as he has decades of experience in network intelligence, enterprise services, digital analytics and Internet of Things applications. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Lakhani served in several senior executive roles for leading network intelligence innovators and Fortune 1000 companies. Guavus will continue to bring machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions to the world’s largest service providers and extend these innovative solutions to industrial markets.