Chillisoft lands in Australia with Gavin Lawless at the helm

New Zealand headquartered cyber security distributor Chillisoft has strategically branched out into the Australian market, hiring Gavin Lawless as its new Australian CEO. 

While Chillisoft has serviced Australian partners for over a decade from New Zealand, this new phase marks the beginning of a dedicated, locally led operation under Lawless’ leadership. 

“Gavin will be a fantastic leader for our Australian operation and addition to our A/NZ senior team, sharing our ambition, experience, and values,” Chillisoft founder and director Geoff Cossey said. 

With a long-term vision of strengthening and expanding its vendor relationships beyond New Zealand, Chillisoft has been strategically assessing the right time and approach to establish a dedicated presence in Australia. 

Chillisoft’s existing New Zealand vendor portfolio features ESET, Netskope, Mimecast, CyberArk, Thales (Imperva), ExtraHop, WatchGuard, Exabeam, and Qualys.

“We are excited to ignite our focus in serving the Australian market,” Chillisoft Group CEO Alex Teh said. 

“With over three decades of IT industry experience—spanning vendors, distributors and some of the biggest names in the business – Gavin has a proven track record of driving massive growth and building strong, scalable operations. His leadership, strategic vision, and deep understanding of the market make him the perfect fit to lead our Australian expansion.”

Significant distribution consolidation has happened in the A/NZ landscape in past few months including companies like Arrow ECS deciding to exit the A/NZ market and acquisitions such as Orca Tech and Tech Data, Nextgen and Exclusive Networks, and Wavelink becoming part of Infinigate.

This consolidation has created an opportunity for Chillisoft to accelerate its Australian business with a differentiated value proposition, focusing on helping cyber security vendors grow and scale across the market. 

This expansion is not only about extending existing vendor partnerships but also about identifying and onboarding complementary vendors that align with its commitment to delivering cyber security solutions.

“Chillisoft in New Zealand has done a fantastic job over the past 25 years in building a business which is highly respected and differentiated. I have observed and respected Geoff and Alex from a distance as they have provided formidable competition in NZ,” Lawless said. 

“Now being able to start something special in Australia with them, and to build on the very solid NZ foundation is an excellent opportunity for us as a business and for me personally.”

Chillisoft has spent 25 years providing cyber security solutions in the Oceania region and differentiates itself through a high focus on technical excellence, providing services such as 24/7/365 white-labelled MDR and IDR as well as vendor level pre-sales and partner support. 

Chillisoft offers vendor level pre-sales demo’s and PoCs for SMB and mid-market businesses has benefitted partners and vendors whose resources are often more focused on enterprise customers.

In the lead up to joining Chillisoft, Lawless spent six years as the Australian managing director for Nextgen. He also led Avnet Technology Solutions from 2005 to 2012 where he took the business from a $50 million to a $250 million operation with organic growth and then a $500 million company after the completion of the acquisition of itX at the end of 2010. 

Prior to Nextgen, Lawless led enterprise sales and the channel business for Infor and then as a sales director at Oracle before making his way back into distribution when he joined Nextgen in 2018.