Former Entrust CEO to Head ZixIt

John Ryan, who resigned abruptly as CEO of Entrust Inc. earlier this year, took over the same post at ZixIt Corp. on Thursday.

Ryan replaces David Cook, ZixIts founder and the former president and CEO of the Dallas company. Ryan will also assume the title of chairman, which was formerly held by Jeff Papows.

Both Cook and Papows will remain with the company, Cook with the title of Founder and Papows as co-vice chairman.

Ryan served as president and CEO of Entrust from January 1997 until his resignation this February. Before joining Entrust, a provider of PKI software and services and a key ZixIt partner, Ryan was a longtime executive at Nortel Networks Inc.

ZixIt, a provider of secure e-mail and encryption products, has struggled to gain a foothold in a market that has taken much longer to develop than most observers estimated. At the end of September, the company had sold just 9,500 seats in the U.S. for its flagship ZixMail product, which only became a paid service in the first quarter of this year.

The company has recently expanded its offerings to include ZixBlast, a high-volume e-mail delivery system, and ZixVPM, a server-based mail encryption product.

ZixIT had no significant revenue and operating costs of more than $30 million during the first nine months of 2001, according to its most recent quarterly report.