CEO Gary Steele Interview: "Rolling Up Email Security SaaS"

[Updated July 6, 2010: Complete multi-part interview is now online.]

Proofpoint CEO Gary Steele (pictured at left) recently spoke with entrepreneurship blogger and Forbes writer, Sramana Mitra at length about his background, Proofpoint's business and trends around email security, SaaS and other topics related to the enterprise markets that Proofpoint serves.

The first part of Mitra's multi-part interview is now posted at sramanamitra.com. In segment one of "Rolling Up Email Security SaaS," Gary talks about his early background, education and how he made the leap from the engineering world to high-tech marketing to CEO and how he came to join Proofpoint in its pre-funding days.

Read the interview here: "Rolling Up Email Security SaaS, Part 1," Gary Steele in conversation with Sramana Mitra. Even though I know Gary pretty well, I learned a few things about him by reading this and look forward to the rest of the series.

Update 7/6/2010: The rest of this series is now online at Sramana Mitra's site. I've put direct links to all six parts below, along with short notes about the topics covered:

Part 1: Gary Steele's background and early career:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2010/06/30/rolling-up-email-security-saas-gary-steele-ceo-of-proofpoint-part-1/

Part 2: How Gary came to Proofpoint and the company’s early development:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2010/07/01/rolling-up-email-security-saas-gary-steele-ceo-of-proofpoint-part-2/

Part 3: Proofpoint’s first customer successes and the early days of the cloud:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2010/07/02/rolling-up-email-security-saas-gary-steele-ceo-of-proofpoint-part-3/

Part 4: On competition and customer satisfaction:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2010/07/03/rolling-up-email-security-saas-gary-steele-ceo-of-proofpoint-part-4/

Part 5: Ramping Proofpoint’s business and email security, DLP and email archiving product development, acquisitions:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2010/07/04/rolling-up-email-security-saas-gary-steele-ceo-of-proofpoint-part-5/

Part 6: On future prospects for Proofpoint:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2010/07/05/rolling-up-email-security-saas-gary-steele-ceo-of-proofpoint-part-6/