Zenith Live 2018 – Zscaler Cloud Summit
The Ascension Global Technology team is proud to have been one of the Zscaler community members in attendance at the very first Zenith Live Cloud Summit. It was an honor and a privilege to be among the ranks of those at the forefront of cloud transformation at Zenith Live 2018 in Las Vegas.
The inaugural event, held from June 26th – 27th, was a conference for Zscaler customers, partners, and business leaders leading the way in cloud transformation. It was an incredibly inspiring meeting of the minds with CXO’s, network and security architects and practitioners, operations, risk and security professionals from around the globe in attendance.
The intensive two-day event included keynote and general sessions which delved into the latest cloud technology innovations and experiences of visionary business leaders driving digital transformations in their organizations. It was insightful to hear shared success stories with Zscaler’s innovative cloud security solutions.
Zenith Live Day One

On Tuesday, the full conference began with a welcoming address from serial security entrepreneur and Zscaler CEO and Founder, Jay Chaudhry. Jay spoke about his journey from humble beginnings growing up in a small village at the foothills of the Himalayas without water or electricity until he was in the eighth grade and tenth grade, respectively. After establishing a number of successful companies, Jay founded Zscaler – a pioneer in cloud security – in 2008 because he wanted to fix security.
Today, Zscaler is leading the way in pioneering cloud security and the Zscaler cloud handles about 50 billion transactions per day, securing it’s global enterprise users.
“Security has to be done in a fundamentally different way than it has been done before.”, says Jay. “You don’t control the network so you can’t secure it. The notion of network security is becoming irrelevant.”
The migration of applications into the cloud has driven the need for network transformation, which we are seeing as organizations move away from the hub-and-spoke model to new cloud-enabled infrastructures. Today the typical enterprise today uses 1000 different SaaS and it’s critical that users are securely connecting to each and every application.
Zscaler is providing leading-edge solutions through securing connections to cloud applications, providing fast access and the ability to connect from any device at any location.
The first day’s keynote presentations were given by:
- Scott Guthrie, EVP, Microsoft
- Chris Drumgoole, CTO, GE
- Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware
There were also video messages from Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, and Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Technologies.
Breakout sessions were categorized into tracks for Network Transformation, Application Transformation and Security Transformation. The sessions ranged from SD-WAN security, a deep dive into Office 265, Azure, Zero-Trust Security, best practices in Zscaler security and Zscaler Internet Access Deployment, new developments in Zscaler Private Access, and GDPR.
Zenith Live Day Two
The second day of Zenith Live keynote and general session presenters included:
- Anne DelSanto, EVP and GM, Salesforce Lightning Platform
- Frederik Janssen, Global Head, IT Infrastructure, Siemens
- Alex Philips, CIO, National Oilwell Varco (NOV)
- Abhi Ingle, Senior Vice President, AT&T Advanced Solutions
Break out and panel sessions covered data loss protection (DLP) for the world of cloud and mobility, new developments with Zscaler Internet Access, next-gen firewall for cloud, and how to secure partner access to your apps without VPN.
The summit of progressive leaders wound down with closing remarks from Jay who emphasized that the cloud transformation journey is just the beginning. Cloud is the future and the innovations and economics of cloud transformation technology are simply undeniable. Jay thanked the Zscaler team, the remarkable speakers, and all the fellow security professionals and industry leaders in attendance who helped to make Zenith Live 2018 a phenomenally successful event.
Zenith Live was truly a world-class event, providing a forum for technology innovators, progressive thought leaders and early cloud adopters who are driving cloud transformation and shaping the technology and business landscape.
Ascension Global Technology is truly grateful to be part of the Zscaler family and to have participated in the informative, inspiring conversations among those in the Zscaler partner ecosystem. The AGT team is already looking forward to next year’s summit.
If you missed Zenith Live, you can catch up on the recorded sessions of the keynote and general sessions at https://www.zscaler.com/zenithlive-2018-live-stream.
If you would like to find out more how Ascension Global Technology can assist you in driving digital transformation in your organizations with Zscaler, contact us today.