2023 CHANNEL CHIEFS

Observe.AI

Jon Heaps VP, Channel

Heaps built a team of established channel veterans who joined an unknown vendor to the partner community and generated tremendous awareness in a short period of time. The team has now built a program that brings in 40 percent of overall revenue.

Opengear

Bryan Keepers Director, Channel Sales Americas

Keepers combined efforts with account mapping and net-new customer sales incentives to create millions in revenue and tens of millions in pipeline as well as increasing the overall reseller base.

Oracle

Ross Brown SVP, Partner Ecosystem, Professional Services

Brown is moving Oracle to a partnerled model with Oracle Alloy, a complete cloud infrastructure platform that enables partners with a full range of cloud services to expand their business.

Palo Alto Networks

Anar Desai VP, Americas Channels

Desai is ensuring partners lean in more to bring their customers a partnership that helps address the attack surface across their entire enterprise by providing solutions for network, cloud and endpoint security.

Okta

Bill Hustad SVP, Partners, Alliances

Hustad pivoted the partner strategy to leverage more partner motions while looking to magnify the value coming out of the existing partner goto-market. A key theme has been reinvestments in service integrator and provider strategies.

OpenText

Cybersecurity

Justin Gilbert

Sr. Director, MSP Channel Development, Cybersecurity Solutions Under Gilbert’s leadership, the company empowered partners during the shift to Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience, helping them layer on high-value services from its security and compliance portfolio.

Oracle

Dale Weideling Group VP, North America Cloud, Technology Alliances, Channels Weideling reinvested in global systems integrators, assigning partner manager and cloud architects developing the North America Oracle Cloud Infrastructure practice and propelling engagement.

Palo Alto Networks

Tom Evans VP, Worldwide Channel Sales Evans was focused on building the partner of tomorrow, implementing a comprehensive channel sales strategy focused on frictionless selling, routeto-market expansion and continued partner program evolution.

One Identity

Andrew Clarke Global Head of Channels, Alliances Clarke enhanced partner portal content through better navigation and relevance. He also improved partner enablement to instill business and presales skills and launched a “partner perspectives” series for deep technical product learning.

OpenText

Cybersecurity

Ghassan Lababidi

VP, Partner Marketing, Enablement, Cybersecurity Solutions

Lababidi has been leading the charge in launching a new channel program. Accomlishments included building out key benefits and driving sales alignment to ensure business growth.

Oracle NetSuite

Craig West GVP, Channel Sales, Alliances

West led the way as more Oracle NetSuite partners experienced record years and unprecedented revenue, growth and customer acquisition. The partner ecosystem is larger and healthier than ever.

Palo Alto Networks

Karl Soderlund SVP, North America Ecosystem Sales Soderlund rolled out a specialization program based on partner demand. This specialization enables partners to become more profitable and allows the company to bring new technologies to market quickly through them.

Onit

Marc Palombo VP, Strategic Alliances

Palombo grew Onit’s partner deal pipeline by over 300 percent, a record year for partner-involved deals. Onit AppBuilder certifications are up over 300 percent and partner leads are converting at over 30 percent to drive joint sales pipeline.

Ooma

Dave Beagle Sr. Director, Business Channel Sales

Beagle launched Ooma AirDial, a POTS replacement offering designed for life-safety applications, through the channel. This has enabled partners to “land and expand” and increased the opportunity flow over 40 percent from the previous year.

Khoury reorganized sales and customer success teams around partnerdriven sales. This has included targeting OEMs and global systems integrators and training teams to pursue those accounts.

Paessler AG

Peter Campisi

Regional Manager, Channel Sales, North America

Campisi reorganized the channel team to better enable partner growth and development. Paessler AG is now better positioned to develop closer relationships with partners by starting with a solid business plan.

Pax8

Jennifer Bodell SVP, Channel

With Bodell’s leadership, Pax8’s education and enablement programs have become critical to partners’ success. They provide insight into how Pax8 can enable their business and empower their success.

Porro led the global channels strategy to deliver growth of net-new logos by over 2X, the overall new business (net-new logo plus expansion) by over 3X and the partner ecosystem year over year by almost 100 percent.

Paessler AG

Mike Gonzalez VP, Sales, Marketing, Americas Gonzalez realigned the team more closely with Paessler AG’s most active partners to better understand where growth opportunities lie. This allows the company to bring more value to those partners.

Pax8

Nick Heddy Chief Commerce Officer Heddy worked with Microsoft, helping it understand the impact New Commerce Experience has had on the channel. He also was integral in adding AWS to Pax8’s portfolio, providing partners access to another key hyperscaler.

Pax8

Ryan Walsh

COO

Walsh led the expansion of Pax8’s product offering globally with brands including Intuit, Amazon and Adobe as well as vendors such as CyberCNS, Pillr and Exclaimer. He also presented at numerous industry events.

Pondurance

Tim Horigan Director, Channel North America

Horigan focused on execution, adjusting and growing. He increased the number of Pondurance partners by 23 percent and significantly increased channel contributions to opportunities and revenue.

Pure Storage

Mike Marinchak VP, Americas Partner Sales

Marinchak was recently promoted to his new position and so far has increased partner value and contributions and drove investments in attracting new customers to Pure through its 100 percent partner model.

Quantexa

Dax Aiken VP, Global Alliances

Aiken achieved 130 percent of the channel sales revenue target in his first 12 months in his role. He also acquired five new partner-led sales logos to Quantexa and created a partner-led program to land and expand Quantexa in the Middle East.