John W. Thompson, Board’s Director, Illumio

Illumio announced that John W. Thompson, CEO of Virtual Instruments and former chairman and CEO of Symantec Corp., was appointed to its board of directors.

 He also serves as COB at Microsoft and is on the board of Liquid Robotics and Virtual Instruments.

“There is an enormous opportunity in front of Illumio,” he said. “As enterprise computing makes the inevitable shift to even more dynamic data center infrastructure and the cloud, Illumio is uniquely positioned to become the essential security company for this era.”

“John brings extraordinary knowledge, experience and insights to Illumio,” said Andrew Rubin, CEO, Illumio. “His long-term engagement with enterprise computing and security is second to none. He understands what it takes for an emerging company to successfully bring a new security paradigm to businesses of all sizes, from SMB to Fortune 50.”

Thompson currently leads Virtual Instruments, a privately held company located in San Jose, CA The company’s products are designed to ensure the performance and availability of applications deployed in virtualized and private cloud-computing environments.

While at Symantec, he helped transform the company into a leader in security, storage and systems management solutions. During his 10-year tenure as CEO, from 1999 to 2009, revenues grew from $632 million to $6.2 billion, and its worldwide workforce grew to more than 17,500 employees.

Since his retirement from Symantec in 2009, he has also been an active investor in early-stage technology companies, including Domo, StorONE, Taptera, Reviver and a number of other technology-focused companies.

He was also an investor in Illumio’s Series B financing.

In addition to Thompson, Illumio’s board of directors consists of Andrew Rubin, CEO, Illumio; Alan S. Cohen, chief commercial officer, Illumio; John Jack, board partner at Andreessen Horowitz; and Steve Herrod, general partner at General Catalyst.