ISSUE 1394 • JUNE 2020
crn.com
WOMEN OF THE CHANNEL The human connection has never been more important PAGE 15
SOLUTION PROVIDER 500 Rising to the occasion PAGE 72
NEWS, ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVE FOR VARs AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATORS
The New Channel Normal In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, solution providers are transforming the way they do business even as they work to keep locked-down customers humming and uncover new paths to growth PAGE 10
CRN_June2020_Cover_fnlV-2.indd 1
6/8/20 4:57 PM
JW Marriott Desert Ridge, Phoenix, AZ August 19, 2020 • #WOTC20
Build Connections. Master Leadership. Leave Inspired. Keynote Speakers
Interested in Passes? Space is limited. Register today! www.womenofthechannel.com
PREMIUM PASS – $1,099 • P ass includes full-event access to WOTC West content, meals, receptions, and networking time
Cara Brookins
Linda Clemons
Val Wright
Best-Selling Author and YouTube House Builder
CEO and Body Language Expert
Author and Innovation Expert
PLUS PRE-EVENT: • V irtual Yoga Session with Allison Cohen
About the Attendees:
• Workshop: Why Self-Care Is the Antidote to Workplace Burnout Kalia Garrido, Founder of Healthy Women Leaders and Managing Partner of Great Data Minds Date: Tuesday, August 18
Emerging and Established Women Leaders From Across the IT Channel • Global team leaders • Channel program managers
• Cocktail Reception
• Vendor management executives
• W ebinar: Peak Productivity Tips to Achieve Results During and After COVID-19 Speaker Val Wright, interviewed by Allison Cohen
• Sales and marketing professionals • Culture and diversity executives • HR professionals
• V irtual ‘Happy Hour’ with The Wine Militia
• Vendors, solution providers, and distributors • CRN® Women of the Channel list honorees
STANDARD PASS – $699 • P ass includes full-event access to WOTC West content, meals, receptions, and networking time • P re-Event Virtual Yoga Session with Allison Cohen
508.416.1175 | thechannelcompany.com
Sponsorships and Reserved Tables of 5 or 10 Available! Contact Event Director Allison Cohen at acohen@thechannelcompany.com
© 2020 The Channel Company, LLC. The Channel Company logo is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
Computer Reseller News
June 2020
Columns 6 The Final Cut By Steven Burke
74
On The Record By Robert Faletra
The New Channel Normal
Features 8 Tech 10
These 10 companies are taking today’s cloud security services to the next level—helping businesses safely migrate to the cloud and prepare for and respond to cloud breaches.
10 Leading Fearlessly In this unprecedented time, female executives have been called upon to do the one thing many have avoided in their careers: get personal. Here are some of their stories as we recognize more than 900 Women of the Channel this year.
Stepping Up
For reprints and plaque requests, please contact The YGS Group at 800.290.5460 or http://crnlicensing.com CRN (ISSN 1539-7343), also known as Computer Reseller News, is published 14 times a year (February, April, June, August, October, December and 8 Special Issues) by The Channel Company, One Research Drive, Suite 410A, Westborough, MA 01581, and is free to qualified management personnel at companies involved in the reselling/distribution of computers/ networking systems, software and services. One-year subscription rates for all others in the United States are $209.00; Canada $234.00. Overseas air mail rates are: Europe $380.00; Mexico/South America $380.00; Africa $380.00; Asia/ Australia $480.00. Please mail all subscription inquiries along with checks or money orders to CRN, Dept. 100, P.O. Box 3608, Northbrook, IL 60065-3608. For renewals or change of address, please include the mailing address label appearing on the front cover of the publication. Periodicals postage paid at Worcester, MA, (and additional offices, if applicable). POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CRN, P.O. Box 3608, Northbrook, IL 60065-3608. FOR SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES call (877)705-5559 or go to crn.com/subscribe Copyright© 2020 by The Channel Company. All Rights Reserved. Registered for GST as The Channel Company, GST No. R13288078, Customer No. 2116057, Agreement No. 40011901. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: APC Postal Logistics, LLC PO Box 503 RPO W Beaver Cre, Rich-Hill ON L4B 4R6
CRN_June2020_TOC.indd 5
14 15
72
The 2020 Solution Provider 500 collectively generated more than $393 billion in 2019, an impressive feat. Yet even more impressive is how they are quickly pivoting to help businesses navigate this new remote-work world wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.
6/9/20 10:56 AM
There’s More Online Most-Read Stories
1. Michael Dell: Work From
Home Will Be ‘Permanent Feature’
2. HPE’s ‘Monumental’
Breakthrough: GreenLake Central Is Here
3. Oracle Cloud Preparing
To Introduce Nvidia’s New A100s
Carousels
Videos
5 Big Microsoft Teams Announcements That Partners Should Know
HP’s Alex Cho: ‘We’re Ensuring’ Productivity Scan here to watch the video on CRN.com
CRN® Magazine Is Now Available Online • Easily accessed from anywhere • Share articles via email or social media
Read Online Now at CRN.com/Magazine 4
JUNE 2020
Online_TOC_June2020.indd 1
6/2/20 11:03 AM
ADVERTISEMENT
How To
Succeed
by Seeing the Whole Story
Empower Your Remote Workforce With Acer Today’s workplace is wherever you are. That can complicate the day-to-day operations of a business. Thankfully, Acer solutions make life easier for our partners and their customers looking to streamline working from home. Start with the Acer TravelMate laptop line, powered by powerful 10th Gen Intel® Core™ processors, which delivers ease of use, processing power, communication capabilities and more. These laptops are also equipped with Windows 10 Pro, giving your customers access to the items they need, when they need them. Productivity climbs through the many business features and advanced connectivity options. It’s never been easier to work outside the office. Check out the Acer Chrome Enterprise Solutions line, engineered for a wide range of business sectors and enterprises. These cloud-built devices offer productivity, portability and power. Your customers can rest easy with a secure device that IT manages remotely. With cloud-ready or VDIready tools, both information and frontline workers have the perfect remote solution to be productive when they can’t be in a centralized location.
BENEFITS: Solution providers who join the Acer Partner Program enjoy these benefits:
• Best Products
Take advantage of an incredible selection of PCs, laptops, notebooks, monitors, accessories and more.
• Attractive Rebates
Automatic unit quantity based bid grids set up at distribution for ease of business.
• Unbeatable Support Engage your customers with custom resources through our partner portal, along with support reps that enhance your experience partnering with Acer.
To learn more about Acer product solutions, scan here.
Acer_CRN_Jun2020_HowToSucceed.indd 1
6/2/20 5:42 PM
THE FINAL CUT
Future Shock: COVID-19 Channel Upheaval THE OLD PLAYBOOK HAS BEEN THROWN OUT THE WINDOW By Steven Burke
IN THE 1970 BEST-SELLER “Future Shock,” Alvin Toffler wrote about the enormous structural change that was taking place as a result of the shift from an industrial to a super industrial society. The state of future shock is the perfect metaphor for the technology upheaval that is ripping through the channel in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Forget super industrial. The new future shock may well be the equivalent of a supercomputer for every home given the structural changes in the global workforce. The pandemic has exposed the fault lines in IT budgets and strategies, which are now shifting at a blinding pace to provide employees the computing power and support they need. So what does this future shock mean to solution providers? That’s the question Senior Editor Kyle Alspach takes on in this month’s cover story, “The New Channel Normal.” The deep dive on the pandemic impact—which includes data from the COVID-19 Channel Impact Study by our sister business unit IPED—shows that the solution providers that are thriving are changing at a rapid pace what they sell and how they sell it. The old channel playbook has been thrown out the window. Solution providers that do the same thing they were doing before the pandemic outbreak are going to find themselves grappling with the famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The bottom line is customers are speedily moving to pay-per-use cloud services and anytime, anyplace and anywhere business models. That’s good news for solution providers with an end-to-end suite of recurring revenue managed IT services. If you want a good example of a company that gets it and is moving at a blinding pace to help customers move to the new world order, then look no further than Anexinet, No. 212 on the 2020 CRN Solution Provider 500.Anexinet CEO Todd Pittman is one of the leaders who has put his Blue Bell, Pa., company at the forefront of the post-pandemic super industrial era. That means closing a blockbuster virtual sales deal with a national energy company for a new mobile and web app. “We’ve revamped our approach with our customers,” Pittman said, calling the virtually delivered project a major success that Anexinet is now replicating with two other customers. “Frankly, [the stakeholders] at our first customer were raving fans.” It’s no small matter that Anexinet—a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Platinum partner— is also betting big on HPE’s GreenLake pay-per-use platform. “Everybody wants to ensure that they have the capital required to keep their business operating through this uncertain time. And so I think that will continue to drive more conversations around leveraging the cloud, pay-as-you-go models, GreenLake,” Pittman said. The future shock, by the way, also applies to vendors. HPE CEO Antonio Neri, for one, is doubling down on an edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service strategy and accelerating HPE’s Everything-as-a-Service model in the wake of the pandemic. In Toffler’s amazingly prescient vision of the information era, citizens are, for the most part, inextricably linked to their homes, doing their own manufacturing and consumption from those electronic cottages. That’s the world we find ourselves living in now. Those solution providers that are able to absorb this kind of future shock are going to thrive. Those that don’t will disappear into the past. n
Women of the
Channel
Women of the Channel online offers the opportunity to: · Network with peers · Learn about channel trailblazers · Exchange career and life advice · Gain the tools for success
Women of the Channel online is the destination for female channel executives to discuss leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation.
Visit wotc.crn.com
BACKTALK: Are you changing how you sell and what you sell to avoid future shock? Let me know at sburke@thechannelcompany.com.
6
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_Burke.indd 1
6/5/20 2:08 PM
Get Recognized – Sign Up For Award List Application Alerts Sign Up Today! CRN.com/List-Alerts Managed Service Provider 500 Solution Provider 500 Partner Program Guide Channel Chiefs And More!
©2020 The Channel Company, LLC. CRN and The Channel Company logo are registered trademarks of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved.
T E C H 1 0 : S ECU R ITY
Taking Cloud Security Services To The Next Level These 10 companies help businesses plan safe migrations to the cloud, identify and mitigate significant cloud-borne threats, and prepare for and respond to cloud breaches
By Michael Novinson
1. ACCENTURE
6. IBM
Accenture’s cloud security services provide a holistic approach that satisfies industry and regulatory requirements. The company’s security strategy and risk services help clients assess risk tolerance and determine the right level of security for their cloud ambitions, while identity and access management centralizes and streamlines access to cloud services. Accenture’s application services help customers design secure cloud-based applications, while the data protection tool determines the right data to migrate.
IBM’s cloud security services span both consulting and managed services to formulate a sound strategy and deliver the skills and expertise needed to safeguard the cloud. IBM’s intelligent log management tracks incidents and collects data, while the company’s security intelligence and operations consulting services extend protection across all IT environments. The services rely on IBM’s enormous threat and vulnerability database and can save businesses up to 55 percent on information security management.
2. ALERT LOGIC
7. PALADION
Alert Logic’s public cloud security services combine advanced technology and certified cybersecurity experts to keep customers safe, secure and compliant. The company helps customers reduce their attack surface by finding vulnerabilities with cloud-native capabilities. Alert Logic’s network security monitoring protects against threats, attacks and potential business risks. And the company’s log management service collects and normalizes log data with around-the-clock monitoring and analysis adding human intelligence.
Paladion’s managed cloud security services utilize a team of more than 1,000 cybersecurity specialists to deploy human insight and machine intelligence against incoming threats. The company’s Microsoft Office 365 service provides around-the-clock detection, deep visibility into usage, granular data protection controls and real-time protection of emails. And Paladion’s Azure service provides SQL database and storage threat detection, attack detection across the entire fabric as well as adaptive access and application controls to limit attack exposure.
3. ALTEN CALSOFT LABS
8. SECUREWORKS
Alten Calsoft Labs’ dynamic cloud security services encompass consulting to build security capabilities across all IT environments and managed services to safeguard the cloud. The company’s security intelligence technology provides deeper insight to stay ahead of future threats with speed and agility. And Alten Calsoft Labs’ cloud identity services enforce data access rights to prevent unauthorized and illegal reach. Services include cloud security strategizing, threat prediction and managed web defense.
Secureworks, part of the Dell Technologies portfolio of businesses, provides hybrid IT security across on-premises and multi-cloud deployments for popular platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The company’s services include cloud security monitoring to guard critical assets and cloud security consulting to advise on strategy, program, architecture and compliance. Secureworks’ vulnerability management team can scan cloud applications, APIs and devices, while cloud incident response services help businesses prepare for and respond to events.
4. AUJAS CYBERSECURITY
9. TRIANZ
Aujas can help businesses migrate securely to the cloud, protect critical cloud assets and safeguard users accessing those assets. The company starts by implementing a strong cloud foundation to ensure appropriate security configuration, controls and policies. From there, Aujas’ contextsensitive, customized risk management meets compliance needs and counters cloud threats and risks. Plus, Aujas can engineer and orchestrate cloud workloads and optimize cloud investments through cloud-native and commercial security tools.
5. CAPGEMINI Capgemini’s portfolio of advisory, stand-alone and end-to-end managed security services helps customers secure the hybrid cloud. Capgemini’s cloud security assessment provides insight into current or planned cloud computing projects, and the company’s cloud security advisory services help enable adoption. The company’s cloud protection services provide identity and access management, data protection, application security and infrastructure security, while cloud security monitoring ensures the security of ongoing operations.
8
Trianz’s cloud security services combine key technologies with governance, risk and compliance to stay ahead of cyberthreats. The company designs blueprints that manage risk while incorporating and scaling to address business needs and enable newer technologies. Trianz said migration to the cloud can help facilitate enhanced services in areas such as security analytics, monitoring and management, incident response and automation, which in turn help produce more secure hybrid architectures.
10. VERSPRITE VerSprite’s custom tools and reporting checks allow organizations to obtain real-time insight when changes occur in performance and security configuration. VerSprite’s cloud security audit runs checks against cloud infrastructure to identify security gaps and prioritize recommendations. The company also defines trust boundaries to help businesses decide where, how and what type of authentication measures are needed. VerSprite has built its continuous monitoring managed services around virtualization and application security. ■
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_Tech10.indd 1
6/3/20 10:35 AM
ADVERTISEMENT
How To
Succeed
by Seeing the Whole Story
Explore New Midmarket Opportunities With QuickBooks Q. What opportunities does QuickBooks see in midsized businesses?
A. Customers in the midmarket segment are often frustrated by financial management technology that just isn’t right for them. They face broken and inefficient workflows and lack central access to information. Frequently, they are overserved and have to implement, learn — and pay for — complicated, legacy ERP software.
This is where QuickBooks Solution Providers (QSP) come in. Many of our midsized customers have more than 10 employees. These are emerging companies whose leaders are optimistic about their growth and who want to invest in technology that improves productivity and scales with their business. In fact, many of these organizations have relied on QuickBooks solutions, both cloud-based and local, throughout their journeys, and QSPs are their trusted advisors and consultants along the way. They help customers navigate their challenges with easily customizable, “fit-my-business” financial management solutions. Since Intuit designs flexible solutions, many of our customers never outgrow our products.
Q. Why should midmarket channel partners add QuickBooks to their offerings?
A. The midmarket spectrum is enormous. In it, we see some great opportunities to
fill the gaps between accounting and technology, and between emerging and mature midmarket companies. Channel partners already know how to sell cloud and SaaS solutions. But for midsized businesses, it’s important to offer products that can also handle the tougher stuff, like inventory management, consolidated financial reporting and batch invoicing. Our API integrates easily with third-party solutions and implementation is straightforward. Our service bundling provides strong upselling opportunities. And our training and account management support make it as easy as possible for MSPs, CSPs, VARs and ISVs to improve their reach, attract new revenue and build their business.
Q. 2020 is a year of emerging trends. How is Intuit addressing some of them?
A. We see two important trends that drive midmarket behavior: The first is a
distributed, mobile workforce. Midsized organizations have more remote workers than ever before and even as the business climate improves, we think this trend will continue, so midmarket companies will rely more on cloud-based business management. Another trend is a push for increased productivity — which often translates into “employees working harder.” We answer that need by simplifying complex business tasks so they can work smarter. Our product line is designed to help customers manage change in their business, from accounting to forecasting to daily management, without missing a beat.
Sheldon Cummings
Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Partnerships
”
Effective problemsolving takes a combination of proven products, seamless integration and customization with third parties, and strong relationships with partners. We’re actively engaged in the midmarket and we invite you to join our team.
”
Sign up today! Apply online at quickbooks.intuit.com/QSP or contact QuickbooksSolutionProvider@intuit.com.
CRN_Apr2020_HowTo_Intuit.indd 1
6/2/20 11:50 AM
C O V E R S T O RY
The New Channel Normal In the midst of the global coronavirus crisis, solution providers are transforming the way they do business even as they work to keep locked-down customers humming and uncover new paths to growth
I
f you had asked Anexinet CEO Todd Pittman a few months ago to close a deal with a brand-new customer without ever meeting in person, he might have looked at you funny. But now, amid the global coronavirus pandemic, Pittman can proudly say his Blue Bell, Pa.-based solution provider business is a veteran of virtual sales. Anexinet secured a new customer—a national energy company—without an in-person visit, then collaborated virtually with 19 people at the customer to carry out the complex process of prototyping a new mobile and web app. “We have now moved into the next stage to start designing that,” Pittman said. “And we’ve been able to do all that without ever having to set foot at the customer’s location.” That was a first for Anexinet, which used collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and the Miro virtual whiteboard to deliver its “Kickstart” process for digital transformation projects as an online experience. Typically, such projects mean flying four staff members to the customer site for long workdays and numerous nights of hotel stays over the course of three weeks. The virtual model, though, “eliminates a lot of coordination that’s not really a value-add to the process,” Pittman said. “We’ve revamped our approach with our customers,” Pittman said, calling the virtually delivered project a major success that Anexinet is now replicating with two other customers. “Frankly, [the stakeholders] at our first customer were raving fans.” Anexinet’s ability to transform itself to do business in new ways is emblematic of the variety of shifts solution providers throughout the channel are making as they adapt to “the new normal” of doing business amid the far-reaching impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak. They are changing not only the kinds of solutions they sell but the vendors they work with to build them and the ways they sell them. In a time of uncertain budgets, for example, solution providers are evolving to increase their recurring revenue, particularly as
10
By Kyle Alspach customers are seeking to consume IT as a utility more than ever. That shift means that Braintree, Mass.-based IntraSystems is re-evaluating the vendors it focuses on, with the aim of emphasizing those that are consumption-oriented, said Paul Kunze, vice president of sales and marketing. “We’re looking at the business models they have, and aggressively saying to them, ‘You need to have a consumption model.’ We’re already seeing increased customer demand to move to that model,” Kunze said. “There will be new vendors [for us]—we’re looking to vet that out now.” Due to the changes in the market, the solution provider expects to move from 28 percent recurring revenue currently to 35 percent by the end of the year, he said. “What we’re seeing now is this [recurring revenue] model that we started on four years ago is aggressively growing even more now with what’s happened with the pandemic,” Kunze said. The coronavirus crisis is also expected to transform many of the fundamentals of running a solution provider business, spanning sales and marketing to events and travel—amid the evolution of a more tech-driven society. “There’s going to be a change from this, and I think it’s a permanent change,” said Paul Clifford, president of St. Paul, Minn.-based Davenport Group. “Our reliance as a society on IT was already growing and growing, and the pandemic has actually increased the reliance on IT. That’s not going back. So for solution providers like us, we’re going to have to adapt to those needs as they become even more important.” Solution providers, like other companies, have been forced to overhaul their approaches to sales and marketing as a result of stay-at-home orders and other travel restrictions. For salespeople, the pandemic has meant a “dramatic shift,” Clifford said. “We’ve got a team of salespeople and engineers who thrive on being out with customers, and they don’t get to do that.” And yet, the business world has been collectively learning how to communicate better over video. “It has forced us to learn
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_CoverStory.indd 1
6/9/20 11:19 AM
ing new customers, but iCorps Technologies CEO Mike Hadley said that’s exactly what’s been happening. “We’re forecasting for continued growth,” Hadley said. “Our security practice is really thriving. We’re landing new clients based on cybersecurity, based on the need for remote support, based on the need for collaboration with Microsoft Teams. We’re doing a ton of work with Teams, Office 365, Azure. We’re selling a lot of laptops, printers, firewalls, managed security.” Hadley’s Woburn, Mass.-based company is among the many solution providers that see the ramp-up in technology investments spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic as just getting started—with managed services, security, collaboration and cloud solutions among the areas set to keep growing in coming quarters. Many in the channel report continuing to be slammed with opportunities even after the initial shift to remote work and distance learning in mid-March, which helped buoy a record first quarter for countless solution providers. “We’ve actually been insanely busy—growing a lot faster than we were expecting,” said Chuck Crawford, chief strategy officer at Fishtech, a security-focused solution provider based in Kansas City, Mo. Amid the health and economic crisis, solution providers have redeployed to focus on the new growth markets as opportunities abound to enable everything from ongoing distributed work to cost-saving measures. Many solution providers see reasons for cautious optimism in the rest of 2020, particularly those that have a strong emphasis on recurring revenue streams, according to a recent survey of 265 solution providers by The Channel Company’s IPED Consulting group. (The Channel Company is the parent of CRN.) Sixty percent of solution providers expect a positive impact or no impact to their managed services businesses in coming quarters, the study found.
how to bring [video meetings] into our skill set,” Clifford said. Even as lockdowns are beginning to ease, video communication—including for sales—is certain to remain higher than it once was, he said. “I see us incorporating it much more going forward,” Clifford said. “It’s not as good as sitting down and going out for a beer, but you can still get things done and not take as much time.” Mark Wyllie, CEO of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Flagship Solutions Group, said he used to travel to Atlanta every other week to meet with customers. “Am I going to go up every other week after this is all over? I don’t know,” he said. “I definitely think I’ll do more with either Zoom or Teams.” Flagship is utilizing collaboration tools to transform its messaging to clients from a traditional sales approach to educational, thoughtleadership and relationship-building activities, such as webinars. The company recently hosted a wine tasting event over video, shipping three wine tubes from Vine Box to each customer for sampling during a group video chat,Wyllie said. It’s been a lighthearted way to stay in touch with customers during a trying time, he said. Ultimately, the COVID-19 crisis marks an inflection point for the channel that requires adaptability and flexibility to thrive. “This change that our customers are going through will create opportunities for us to better serve them, help them innovate and bring new solutions to bear to keep pace with the turmoil that this pandemic has created,” said Anexinet’s John Kolimago, executive vice president and general manager for cloud solutions. Those that can adapt are finding new paths to growth, solution providers said.
Finding Opportunities Amid The Downturn An economic crisis might not be a time you’d expect to be land-
COVID-19 Impact By Technology Segment Significant Positive Impact
Minimal Positive Impact
Remote management/collaboration software
No Impact
24%
Unified communications
18%
Mobile devices and laptops
17%
Security business continuity
15%
Connectivity and bandwidth
15%
Endpoint security
Storage Servers
22%
6%
15%
26%
16%
29%
16% 23%
16% 32%
18% 22%
7% 14%
10% 5%
9% 12%
6% 7%
10% 13%
5%
26%
42% 38%
5%
15%
29%
13%
6%
16%
33%
21%
12%
14%
21%
25%
Don’t know
16%
27%
23%
13%
4%
20%
28%
7%
Significant Negative Impact
27%
16%
Cloud
Networking
Minimal Negative Impact
9% 11% 17%
11% 8% 11% 8%
Source: COVID-19 Channel Impact Study, IPED Consulting, April 2020
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_CoverStory.indd 2
11
6/9/20 11:19 AM
C O V E R S T O RY At solution provider 10th Magnitude, the managed services business has been growing faster than expected amid the pandemic and “will be a very strong part of our essential business, especially in the next six months,” said Lori Borg, chief growth officer at the Chicago-based company. According to the IPED study, 50 percent of solution providers expect growth ahead in their cloud business, despite the challenges in the economy. While customer spending overall is highly uncertain for the rest of 2020, “because so much of our revenue is recurring, we’re generally insulated from that,” said Tony Safoian, CEO of SADA Systems, a Los Angeles-based cloud solution provider. Safoian said that SADA recently closed several new deals, including one of its largest deals ever. “This crisis has just naturally created a much higher sense of urgency around digital transformation—that these are not optional things that customers can take forever on to decide,” Safoian said. Cloud solutions also have greater relevance due to the potential for cycles of restarting society and then having to lock down again if the virus returns, said Bob Bailkoski, CEO of global solution provider Logicalis Group, based in Slough Berkshire, U.K. “It’s likely that the lockdowns will become a feature of life for the foreseeable future—we’ll restart, then lock down, restart,
How much has COVID-19 affected your overall solution provider business so far? Significant Negative Impact Minimal Positive Impact
Minimal Negative Impact Significant Positive Impact
No Impact Don’t know
1% 6% 12% 17% 5% 34%
8%
39%
Source: COVID-19 Channel Impact Study, IPED Consulting, April 2020
lock down,” Bailkoski said. As a result, “businesses need to be agile. They need to be flexible. And therefore, there has got to be a public cloud component.” Shifting to operating expenses instead of capital expenditures should help to drive spending on cloud and other pay-as-you-go offerings, solution providers said. There’s no question that customers right now are focused on capital preservation, said Anexinet’s Pittman.
12
“Everybody wants to ensure that they have the capital required to keep their business operating through this uncertain time. And so I think that will continue to drive more conversations around leveraging the cloud, pay-as-you-go models, GreenLake,” Pittman said, referring to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s GreenLake pay-per-use offering. Scott Dunsire, CEO of Buffalo Grove, Ill.-based ACP CreativIT, said his firm anticipates continued growth for as-aservice solutions amid the broad interest in Capex reduction. Offerings in Device as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service, such as GreenLake, are poised to become more attractive to customers than in the past, Dunsire said. Device as a Service pairs PC leases with technologies for device management and security—though it has not been the preferred way for ACP CreativIT customers to procure devices to date. “But I think that the current conditions potentially could regenerate those conversations,” Dunsire said. Cost-cutting is also expected to drive greater demand for managed services in the form of outsourced IT, while cost-saving service management and automation technologies are seeing rising demand as well, solution providers said. Customers are clamoring to maximize the value they can get out of their enterprise service management (ESM) platform, typically ServiceNow, while also increasingly exploring automation solutions such as VMware vRealize Automation, said Stephen Ayoub, president of Chicago-based solution provider AHEAD. “They’re focusing on cost control within their IT environment and are becoming more open to looking at different ways of using technology, which maybe they weren’t open to prior to COVID,” Ayoub said. “There are so many manual processes that go along with IT. And the more that they can automate—from VMware all the way up to their ESM layer—it’s just a massive savings from a staffing cost.” For the coming quarters, security is another opportunity that solution providers are feeling bullish about. Following successful implementations of work-from-home solutions, “now we’re seeing a big pivot to securing those environments,” Anexinet’s Kolimago said. “That’s top of mind for many of our customers.” Along with seeing off-the-charts demand for VPNs, solution providers say they are finding multifactor authentication and cloud security to be key areas in the current environment. For security-focused solution provider Fishtech, demand is surging for solutions around identity and access governance, which ensures that employees only have access to the applications and data that they need. “Identity access governance is a huge push that we’re also leading with, to make sure organizations are looking at things holistically,” Crawford said. At the Davenport Group, many of the new opportunities uncovered since the initial work-from-home surge have been around security. In the past, protecting a business often meant providing security at just a handful of locations, Clifford said.
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_CoverStory.indd 3
6/9/20 11:20 AM
“Now you’ve got literally hundreds of endpoints with potential security problems. It’s a whole different game,” he said. “The threat actors are aware of that as well. They’re working to get in and they know that you’re vulnerable.” There are numerous signals that the need for enabling workfrom-home is not likely to dissipate any time soon. A recent survey of CFOs from PwC suggests that half of companies plan to permanently allow remote work as an option for applicable roles—while 26 percent are already planning to reduce their real estate footprint. The crisis has “changed people’s perspective very quickly, in a way that technology providers never could have, about workfrom-home and work-from-anywhere,” said Zac Paulson, CEO of Fargo, N.D.-based solution provider TrueIT. “In one fell swoop, in the middle of March, we taught the whole world that all those tools work just the way we said they did. And we could have never done that. I’ve been doing this for about 15 years now, and even though the technology has existed, we used to always sit there going, ‘How are we ever going to convince people this is possible?’” Customers will also re-examine their usage of office space, he said. “I do think that we’re going to see the real estate market change,” Paulson said—citing estimates from research firm Gartner that even if companies see a 5 percent loss in productivity from remote work, they will still save 20 percent on costs for real estate. For businesses that do keep their offices, the concept of hoteling—where employees don’t have assigned desk spaces at the office, but are scheduled to come in as needed—is likely to make a comeback, said Kelly Yeh, president of Chantilly, Va.-based Phalanx Technology Group. Hoteling can enable employers to have fewer workers in the office at a time, which is good for social distancing and provides the benefit to employees of continued working from home and less time commuting. “We’ve just had a proof of concept of eight weeks of 100 percent teleworking,” Yeh said. “If businesses were able to be as productive as they normally are and didn’t really feel like there was that much of an interruption, then there’s no reason to not allow more fluid on-site work.” The return to the office is also creating brand-new opportunities for solution providers around supporting crucial health initiatives such as temperature measurement. Salinas, Calif.-based Alvarez Technology Group is now providing several solutions for checking temperatures of employees or students before they enter the workplace or school each day, said CEO Luis Alvarez. The company’s Thermal Protect temperature testing solutions include two types of thermal cameras—one that can screen 30 people a minute, and one that can screen 30 people a second. Alvarez Technology Group is also reselling a temperature-taking kiosk developed by HP Inc. and kiosk manufacturer Meridian. Demand for the Thermal Protect solutions has been huge, and
the company is now exploring other technologies that might be useful to help businesses operate their offices safely, Alvarez said. “We’re building a toolkit that we call ‘Get America Back To Work,’” he said. To keep workers connected wherever they happen to be located, collaboration tools are expected to continue to be among the most important areas for solution providers. Videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex have been surging and will continue to play a pivotal role, solution providers said. Maryann Pagano, CEO of New York-based BlackHawk Data, said that now that many customers are getting used to remote work, there remain opportunities to enhance work-from-home deployments with business-grade collaboration tools and security. “Tech Data and Cisco have offered us MDF, which doesn’t come easy for people like us because we’re small. We’re going to run a campaign with Cisco on work-from-home solutions like Cisco Umbrella, Cisco AMP or Duo for security, as well as on different collaboration tools—whether it’s Webex Teams or Webex Meetings,” Pagano said. Virtual desktop infrastructure is also having a moment as a core component of many remote work deployments. For instance, delivering Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop—with the help of Azure automation platform Nerdio—has been among the fastest-growing areas for 10th Magnitude since the shift to workfrom-home began, Borg said. “When I’m looking at the strategic direction of the business and how we can serve enterprise organizations going forward, we expect that there will be a lot more opportunity to deepen our relationships with organizations around Windows Virtual Desktop,” she said. Alvarez said the massive changes left behind after the Sept. 11 attacks can give some sense of how COVID-19 might transform society. “If you told people before 9/11 that someday, to get on a plane, you’ll have to take off your coat and your shoes, they’d look at you like you’re crazy. But now that’s the new normal,” he said. With the current crisis, Alvarez said, “We’ve been looking at this and saying, ‘What is going to be the new normal from this? And how can we help people, and get in front of people we previously haven’t been in front of?’” Anexinet’s Pittman also sees this environment as “a great opportunity for us to expand our reach and do more with more clients”—especially when it comes to using a virtually delivered approach for digital transformation projects, as his company has rapidly learned to do during the pandemic. “When you think about being bound by time and space, and having to fly people into different places, clearly that’s a competitive disadvantage when you’re not as close to the client. I think this opens up a whole ton of clients that may have [previously] been averse to a virtual model,” Pittman said. “For us, it offers a great opportunity to expand and grow and provide our services to a wider set of clients.” n
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_CoverStory.indd 4
13
6/2/20 5:04 PM
Leading Fearlessly In A Time Of Crisis The COVID-19 pandemic has called on female executives to do the one thing that many have avoided in their professional careers: get personal By Gina Narcisi
T
anaz Choudhury, president and CEO of TanChes Global Management, used to put on her red lipstick— her “warpaint”—at the beginning of every workday to ready her mindset to get business done. Now, she’s putting it on each morning for a different reason: to give her employees and customers a small sign of normalcy during a chaotic time. “It went from being my own tool for confidence to becoming a signature of confidence,” Choudhury said. “The way you portray yourself during a time of crisis can make a big difference to someone else. Being a woman leader in a predominantly male environment really puts the focus back on me at times like this—I truly feel like the matriarch of the organization.” Leading fearlessly is key to being an effective and transformational leader during the best of times. But as the COVID-19 pandemic hit this year, the phrase has taken on a whole new meaning. Most businesses were forced to close their doors, and employees began working from home to help slow the spread of the virus. But it wasn’t just professional lives that were upended by the crisis. Schools across the U.S. began closing their doors in March and students of all ages were required to learn at home, sparking brand-new challenges for working parents. The importance of human connection, executives told CRN, is the silver lining that has emerged from the COVID-19 crisis. Sugar Land, Texas-based TanChes took a multifaceted approach to responding to the pandemic both internally and externally. For clients, TanChes still had to be a trusted solution provider and put the right connectivity and security technologies in place to help customers work remotely, very quickly. But Choudhury also found herself “playing therapist” with anxious clients, as well as with her own employees. “We had to change from being just a trusted adviser to being more human,” Choudhury said. “Not only were we dealing with issues professionally, but we were dealing with personal issues as well because this is happening to all of us at the same time.” In the midst of the pandemic, 77.5 percent of respondents in a
recent survey of channel women from CRN parent The Channel Company said that they believed their voice and ideas were more important than ever. At the same time, 23.7 percent of respondents said that senior leaders were turning to them at this time to keep the company going. Leading fearlessly in a time of crisis, ironically, calls on women to do the one thing that many have actively avoided in their professional careers—showing their human side, executives said. “I think my team might be surprised by how personal I’m getting on calls and sharing a bit about my life and asking about theirs—sometimes, even skipping over work things to ask how their families are doing and what they are looking forward to when this passes,” said Elissa Livingston, senior vice president of growth and strategy for cloud optimization startup CloudCheckr. “My team and, frankly, my customers and partners have been amazing about expressing empathy and understanding at this time.” Livingston has been making herself available visibly during the workday via videoconferencing tools since Rochester, N.Y.based CloudCheckr started to work remotely in March. Replacing in-person interactions and one-on-one meetings with connections across new tools has been critical, according to Livingston. “Making sure team members are OK and understand they are still an important part of the business and team right now is huge,” she said. “I’m certainly still as busy as I was before, but I’m being more intentional with my time.” For Livingston, becoming more tactical and less strategic was an important adjustment to make. “It’s hard to look a year out and plan for in-person events,” she said. “Right now, it’s about improving the day-to-day things. This has given us an opportunity to look at the micro-level elements of our business. It’s giving us the opportunity to look inward.” On the following pages, CRN honors more than 900 women across the channel for their unique strengths. For more on each honoree, go to the Women of the Channel database on crn.com. ■
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_WOTC_Intro.indd 1
15
6/5/20 3:15 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Daria Abbaei
Barbara Abboud
Director, Partner Enablement
Director, Partner Sales
Ivana Abruzzese Sr. Channel Marketing Manager
Michelle Accardi Pres., Chief Revenue Officer
Kaspersky Lab
Star2Star Communications
In the past year, F5 has acquired Nginx and Shape Technologies. A key priority for the channel organization is enabling partners around these solutions. Abboud is focused on doing just that and driving solution-led engagements with customers.
Abruzzese increased adoption of the Kaspersky United Program upward of 15 percent and delivered valuable campaign elements and incentives to increase pipeline and drive revenue. She also aligned business plans to drive revenue through multi-marketing strategies.
Ac c a r d i released new offerings including a virtual workspace integrated with UCaaS (powered by Citrix Workspace and Star2Star) and enhanced partner programs with better training materials and more personalized service for partners.
Dee Dee Acquista
Amanda Adams
Pelin Agar
Karlene Alameda
SVP, Global Channels
BeyondTrust
Sr. Dir., European Alliances
CrowdStrike
Finance Director, Turkey
Field, Channel Marketing Mgr.
Barracuda Networks
Ingram Micro
Acquista star ted her new role at BeyondTrust in March. She plans to leverage the power of the channel for growth and scale by enabling the strongest security sales and technical teams to hunt and fish for new business opportunities.
CrowdStrike’s national partner program grew over 80 percent in 2019 from 2018, with three national partnerships growing over 200 percent. By providing programs and initiatives for these partners, Adams’ team aligned investments to accelerate partner-sourced business.
As Tech Data’s finance director of Turkey, Agar is focused on achieving financial targets. Over the past year, she has helped increase profitability and revenue and partnered with sales teams, which have become strong allies.
Alameda and her team have focused on enhancing channel and partner programs. She has worked with key stakeholders and rolled out the changes to channel partners so they understand what’s new from Barracuda Networks.
Power and cooling represent a foundational solution within the IT channel. Under Alexander’s lead, Ingram Micro transformed a historically operational, infrastructure-minded business into a strategic growth category for all stakeholders.
Bethany Allee
Beatriz Almeida
Carrie Almeida
Megan Amdahl
Abi Aminu
Channel Account Manager, Southern Europe
Federal Business Manager
SVP, Operations
Skout Cybersecurity
F5 Networks
As soon as Abbaei moved into her role, she began working on documentation for internal and external use. As Skout Cybersecurity had never had a partner enablement team, she helped build the team, delegating responsibilities and instituting a plan based on success criteria.
Executive Vice President
Cybera
Webroot, an OpenText
Tech Data
Channel Sales Exec. Director, EMEA Data Center Group
Lenovo
Acedo-Rico Gonzalez scaled the data center business units in the EMEA channel through the creation of motivated channel sales teams. She leveraged her expertise in channel planning, including controlling sales budgets and forecasts.
Kimberly Alexander Sr. Vendor Business Mgr.
Nvidia
Insight Enterprises
Manager, Global Programs, Strategy, Americas
Company
Thales
Allee led marketing strategy for growing the channel program from four to 36 partners in 12 months. She also launched a new portal that is now used by all partners. She and her team exceeded a marketing-driven pipeline goal by 212 percent.
Almeida transformed one of the most challenging regions into a profitable business, supported by a robust channel. She has increased revenue by 30 percent, optimized profitability by enabling current partners and expanded the partner network.
Almeida identified and on-boarded focused federal partners and invested in developing these partners via training, marketing investment and account planning. She also helped launch the Federal Partner Competency Club program.
Amdahl’s team oversees strategic sourcing. Through Insight Enterprises’ sourcing optimization program, she and her team look to optimize purchasing power through consolidation of the vendor portfolio and a strong RFP process with distribution partners.
Rather than focus on the expansion of the current Gemalto program, Aminu helped design a new partner program through interviews with partners and internal stakeholders. It has features to drive partner profitability, segmentation and simplicity.
Margaret Amori
Jennifer Anaya
Sue Anders
Liz Anderson
Michelle Andreas
Federal Partner Business Manager
SVP, Marketing, Global Technology Solutions
Manager, Government Contracts, Programs
VP, Marketing
APS Payments
Logicalis U.S.
Amori solidified solutions into 14 proposals. She has helped Nvidia win multiple awards as a subcontractor, including two large AI-related IDIQ contracts, one at $885 billion of contract ceiling and another AI-related R&D contract at over $600 million of contract ceiling.
Anaya brought more collaboration, customer focus and business excellence to marketing initiatives worldwide via the Global Marketing Summit, where attendees conducted planning and shared projects that support partner growth.
Anders helped secure the Sourcewell Co o p e rat i ve Purchasing contract for the third consecutive term, giving Mitel’s 200-plus channel partners, who are authorized selling agents, a competitive advantage in public sector sales opportunities.
Anderson oversaw implementing a to-partner e n a b l e m e nt strategy to help partners more easily identify prospects and rolled out a partner communication strategy to keep partners up to date on current programs and initiatives.
Andreas led development of a customerc e n t r i c approach to marketing in the channel, emphasizing customer stories and executive thought leadership. She did this through a dedicated content and media strategy and a strong web presence.
Nvidia
16
Irene Acedo-Rico Gonzalez
Ingram Micro
Mitel
VP, Marketing
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_1-120.indd 1
6/5/20 3:20 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Teresa Annibale
Maria Ardila
Marcella Arthur
VP, Global Accounts
Latin America Channel Director
Unbound Tech
Zscaler
Functionize
Annibale opened up a whole new business area for Evotek with a different approach to solving a problem. This created a new go-to-market strategy for the organization and differentiation in the market.
Ardila and her team focused on expanding three key pillars: cloud security adoption, artificial intelligence and Security as a Service. They have provided partners with programs that promote their excellence through enablement, promoting sales and support in various processes.
Understanding the channel and how the commercial requirements have changed are critical to the implementation of a revenuerich channel program. In joining Unbound Tech, Arthur aims to position the company as an innovator laser-focused on expanding the channel.
Ashworth Ambrose is passionate about building and maintaining meaningful relationships. She is known for her positive attitude, willingness to connect others, and drive to help those starting out in the business, especially but not limited to women.
A s t ro m h a s held the role of operational manager for the Functionize Summit Partner Program since its inception. The program includes a deal registration workflow design, conceptualization, a secure partner portal and a robust training program.
Tricia Atchison
Kam Attwal Kaila
Kim Austin
Kristina Austin
Raluca Avram
Group Dir., Worldwide Partner Enablement, Marketing, Microsoft Business
President
Business Development Manager
Sr. Director, Global Alliances, Partner Cloud, Industries Marketing
Bitdefender
Atchison developed a global e n a b l e m e nt framework to guide partners through the learning process. She provided opportunities for joint demand generation with key alliance partners to help expand reach.
ITBD’s sales cycle is often centered on uncovering pain points an MSP has around talent, which is a longer conversation than a typical product sale. ITBD accelerates that process by sparking engagements with educational content.
Austin has been tasked with several strategic projects in order to help Intuit reach its next-level goals, from finding new ways to reach additional segments within the channel to collaborating with the marketing team on content creation for the channel.
Austin and her team mobilized to support the launch of Dell Technologies Cloud, Dell Technologies On Demand and new flexible consumption offerings for partners. They also created awareness of the value that partners provide.
A v r a m put more emphasis on Bitdefender’s MSP Partner Program, launched a new lead generation program through a channel marketing automation tool and improved the channelfacing communications flow.
Tracey Awad
Mira Ayad
Andrea Ayala
Lorraine Azzinaro
Wendy Bahr
Global Lead, AWS Marketplace Channel Programs
Channel Engagement Manager
Chief Operating Officer
Rubrik
Evotek
Sophos
IT By Design
Citrix Systems
Assistant VP, Commercial Video
VP, Marketing
Intuit
Dawn Ashworth Ambrose Channel Manager
Dell Technologies
Irina Astrom Program Dir., Global Alliances, Channels
Sr. Manager, Worldwide Partner Program
Chief Commercial Officer
Amazon Web Services
Datto
Aspire Technology Partners
Awad and her team grew activations year over year in a challenging environment. They launched a Door to Door program and incorporated the ability for partners to sell AT&T business solutions with distributors.
Ayad launched the new AWS Solution Provider Program and led its international expansion. She also defined the AWS Marketplace Channel program strategy to create more peer-to-peer opportunities and programs.
Ayala streamlined Datto’s vendor alliance programs, engaging with channel vendor partners globally to help build out strategic partnership initiatives. She also managed the sponsorship and vendor participation of two large MSP partner conferences globally.
Azzinaro cont r i b u te d to distributor-led initiatives and led the vetting and on-boarding for all ecosystem partners. She also oversaw expansions in managed services operations and supervised the implementation of Aspire Technology Partners’ ITIL-based processes.
Bahr has built strong alliances with NetApp, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. Rubrik has seen tremendous success in the first year with the Rubrik Velocity Partner Program, and she says she is proud that 100 percent of customer business is done through channel partners.
Julie Baldwin
Emily Ball
Amanda Banker
Corey Banner
Laura Barbaro
Head of Cloud
Marketing Manager
Sr. Mgr., Partner Experience, Worldwide Partner Org.
Director, Partner Success
Americas Managing Director, IoT Sales, Marketing
Since joining SUSE in December 2018 to lead cloud strategy, Baldwin and her team grew the cloud business by 64 percent year over year by deepening relationships with public cloud providers and local and regional service providers across the globe to ensure customer and partner success.
Ball established TBI’s video program with a state-ofthe-art studio. She also led several strategic revenue-generating channel campaigns with providers and partners and used TBI’s marketing resources to increase partner engagement.
Banker is a pivotal par t of the team responsible for launching VMware’s game-changing partner program, Partner Connect. Her team coordinates all stakeholder communications as well as all asset development and training engagements.
A big focus for Banner over the past year was to drive partner retention and growth. In support of these efforts, she developed various partner campaigns to drive awareness around the value of partnering with Axcient and to support partners’ go-to-market strategies.
AT&T
SUSE
TBI
VMware
Axcient
Intel
Barbaro shared with channel par tners an engagement model for IoT solutions that enabled them to accelerate their business in a range of market segments, with specific use case solutions resulting in solving real IoT business problems.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_1-120.indd 2
17
6/5/20 3:20 PM
ADVERTISEMENT
Dell Technologies Celebrates 30 Accomplished And Remarkable Women Of The Channel We’re thrilled to celebrate the 30 inspiring women of Dell Technologies, who have contributed so much to aid our partner community. The images you see below are the faces of the best and most influential women channel leaders who help partners maximize their relationship with Dell Technologies. While we’re proud and excited for all these Women of the Channel, we want to highlight those who have earned multiple awards since 2011, including Mary Catherine Wilson (10 times), Heather Wilcox (eight times), Cheryl Cook (six times) and Maureen Gaumer (six times). Congratulations to all award winners!
POWER 100
POWER 100
POWER 100
POWER 100
POWER 100
Cheryl Cook
Erica Lambert
Joyce Mullen
Shawn Trotter
Mary Catherine Wilson
Kristina Austin
Lauren Berntson
Tamara Booth
Stephanie Bray
Diane Brode
Sr. VP, Global Partner, Embedded and Edge Solutions Marketing
Sr. Dir., Global Alliances, Partner Cloud and Industries Marketing
Sr. VP, Global Channel, Alliances, Embedded & Edge Services Sales
MDF Operations Team Lead, Channel Partner Marketing
President, Global Channel, Embedded and Edge Solutions
Vice President, Global Alliances Presales
Vice President, North America Channel
Sr. Manager, Global OEM Channel Operations & Programs
Senior Director, Global Marketing
Senior Director, Global Partner Marketing
Dell Technologies PartnerIncrease Program:Your Simple. Predictable. Profitable.™ Expand Your Portfolio. Profitability. Exceed Your Customers’ Expectations. Learn more at star2star.com.
Dell 2020_WOTC_spread.indd 1
6/2/20 4:31 PM
Natalie Crawford
Nikkia Despertt
Kathleen Flaherty
Kelli Furrer
Maureen Gaumer
Sarah Griffin
Tina Hanson
Kathy Kenneally
Tina Mentschik
Sarah Meyer
Kathleen Meza
Brinda Robin
Susanne Schuetz
Patty Scire
Caroline Scott
Nicola Sheppard
Sarah Shields
Cindy Spring
Beth Villalpando
Heather Wilcox
Data Center Lead, CDW
Director, GTM & Programs, Global Alliances
Director, Dell Technologies Partner Program Strategy
Director, Global Partner and OEM Business Transformation
Director Readiness & Adoption, Channel Services
Director, Cloud Partner Marketing
Program Manager, Edge and IoT Ecosystem
Vice President & General Manager, Central & North Europe Channel
Senior Director, Channel Services
Senior Director, Global Channel, Renewal Sales
Director, Channel Marketing, EMEA
Director, Global ISG Channel Specialty Strategy and Programs
Vice President, Federal Channel and Alliances
Regional Senior Channel Manager, Austria
Senior Director, North America Strategy and Programs
Director, NA Distribution and National Solution Provider Marketing
Senior Director, Global Partner Ecosystem and Program Marketing
Director, Dell Channel, VMware Sales & Go to Market
Director, Channel Marketing, North America
Director, Client Solutions Field Marketing, Channel
Join our network: delltechnologies.com/partner/womensnetwork
Dell 2020_WOTC_spread.indd 2
6/8/20 10:50 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Amanda Bedborough
Joy Belinda Beland
SVP, EMEA Operations
Sr. Director, Cybersecurity
As HP evolves its print business, one of the top priorities continues to be a shift toward managed print services. As the leader of the MPS channel in HP’s largest market, Beach plays a critical role in spearheading this transition from an indirect perspective.
B edborough led the transition to term-based sales from perpetual licences with minimal channel disruption. She also launched a new Secondary Storage virtualized software solution as well as a new partner portal.
Beland oversaw a team of security experts to develop a vendor-agnostic, foundational cybersecurity certification for MSPs. She also cultivated training around security awareness for MSPs to follow as an entry point to cybersecurity expertise with clients and prospects.
Heather Bell
Hedy Belttary
Monica Benatti
Patty Benitez
VP, Global Enterprise Channel Sales
SVP, Sales
Marketing Director
Vicki Batka
Sr. Director, Global Channel Sales
VP, Partner Org., Asia-Pacific Japan, Greater China
Cisco Systems
HP Inc.
Although new to Armor, Barnhart has built a team of elite channel sales experts that can bridge the gap between managing/ building relationships and helping their MSP and VAR partners pivot and develop net-new Security-Software-as-a-Service offerings for customers.
As Cisco transforms, Batka has been working with par tners to focus their businesses and has been developing new revenue models to deliver high-value services. Every day more partners seek help and guidance on this journey.
Amy Belcher VP, Global Partner Marketing
Armor
Xerox
Sectigo
Head of Managed Print Services Channel Sales
DataCore Software
ConnectWise
SVP, Channel Sales
Laserfiche
NTT
APS Payments
Belcher is responsible for enabling channel expansion through effective global partner programs, channel enablement and marketing. She developed the strategy for the company’s first Global Partner Summit, hosting over 900 participants from around the world.
Bell has worked to deliver significant revenue growth, PKIcertification-focused training, new strategic partners globally, and has attracted and retained experienced candidates for senior leadership roles that will drive growth in North America.
Belttary developed the strategy behind a new licensing model for Laserfiche that prioritizes flexible pricing and caters to the needs of solution providers and customers. These efforts have increased awareness for solution providers and customers and accelerated adoption.
B e n at t i developed a project called the Latin America Integration Program that gathered the best practices of the Brazil, Chile and Mexico offices and from that, started an integration and expansion program to the other Latin American countries.
After building a successful channel team, B e n i t e z ’s vision was to establish processes that would allow APS Payments to scale and on-board additional channels faster. She achieved this by implementing turnkey, partnercentric programs the moment new integrations were launched.
Cynthia Bennett
Harsha Bennur
Lauren Berntson
Rachael Bertrandt
Gunjan Bhardwaj
Director, Partner Tech Strategy, Government
MDF Operations Team Lead, Channel Partner Marketing
Dell Technologies
Global Corporate Controller, Principal Accounting Officer
Insight Enterprises
Vista IT Solutions
Bennett is zeroed in on growing and developing the team and providing management and leadership opportunities for them. She and her team will focus on identifying what makes them successful as recruiters and implement best practices to stay ahead of the competition.
B ennur has led the channel technology strategy for Microsoft government-focused services and solutions partners. She directed the technology strategy for her team of strategists to build capacity and capability around industry outcomes.
Berntson worked with channel partners and across multiple divisions within Dell Technologies to deliver best-in-class partner MDF investment management. Careful administration of these investments has been key to supporting partners.
Bertrandt supported leadership on key financial decisions, ensuring Insight meets its fiduciary responsibilities. She brings clarity to ambiguous situations, no matter how complex, because finance’s mission is to support and enable the business.
As vice president of technology operations at Vi s t a I T Solutions, which specializes in enterprise solutions, infrastructure, cloud, software development and more, Bhardwaj leverages her experience to transform ideas into innovative solutions.
Carisa Bianchi
Diane Bierman
Heidi Biggar
Jennifer Binet
Bridget Bisnette
VP, Controller, North America
VP, Strategic Partnerships, Sourcing
Director, Worldwide Partner, Sales Enablement
SVP, Enterprise Sales
Sectigo
Riverbed
The Strategic Pa r t n e r s h i p and Sourcing department was formed in 2019. Bierman has been tasked with strengthening channel relations while identifying partner programs to increase financial stability. She is working to align goals with vendor partners.
Biggar developed the messaging for Commvault’s partnerfocused sales plays for cloud, recovery and infrastructure modernization as well as the new Partner Program, enabling partner and internal sellers on channel-relevant messages that drive revenue.
Binet has fine-tuned the partners Sectigo works with by identifying key partners and regions, establishing relationships, contracts, educating sales teams and building traction while establishing Sectigo as an emerging technology partner in the enterprise space.
Bisnette focused on attracting and retaining talent, to the benefit of Riverbed’s business and partner experience. She continued mentoring and coaching teams to improve performance, providing a support structure for talent and revealing opportunities for growth.
VP, Talent Acquisition
Impact Networking
Insight Enterprises
New to Insight, Bianchi has been immersed in learning the c o m p a n y ’s business and back-end operations, leading Insight’s North America accounting function, and driving the North America finance integration of Insight’s acquisition of PCM.
20
Tami Beach
Liz Barnhart
Microsoft
MNJ Technologies
Commvault
VP, Technology Operations
SVP, Global Partner Sales
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_1-120.indd 3
6/5/20 3:21 PM
ADVERTISEMENT
Achieve Your Spectrum Of Channel Success The Spectrum Partner Program Continues Expansion
POWER 100
Q. How has the Partner Program evolved in the past year?
A. We called 2019 the “Year of the Partner” with a highly defined focus on improving the partner experience. We expanded our team of dedicated sales leadership and resources in the field by hiring a third channel director, allowing the team to do more with our partner community. In doing so, we shifted product trends to ethernet and managed services, while implementing partner briefing sessions to drive awareness of more complex product offerings. Internally, we launched training and product refresher requirements for the channel team to improve product knowledge and help partners sell our solutions. Additionally, we noticed channel success with increased average revenue per unit (ARPU) and early adoption of our managed services offerings. Q. Considering the Partner Program’s recent success, what are Spectrum’s plans in the coming months?
A. One of our goals for 2020 is to increase white-space selling with our partners
and encourage a broader sales range of our portfolio. Since many partners focus sales efforts on our fiber internet access service, we’re ramping up awareness and enablement activities around selling more fiber products. With voice, ethernet and several managed services product offerings now available, we’re spreading awareness, knowledge and training on these portfolio offerings to increase ARPU and recurring revenue sold through the channel. It’s time to enable our partners’ potential.
Q. How can your channel partners be more successful going forward?
A. We’re working with partners to sell more across our business portfolio. Spectrum Enterprise is a powerful foundation for mission-critical, network data and cloud-based applications for our partners to leverage. We’re a great fit for IT decision makers from organizations with multiple network sites or a single location, which is why we say, “Spectrum has you covered.” Partners work with us to leverage our nationwide network, reliable solutions and experienced team to grow business — now and in the future.
Michelle Kadlacek Vice President, Partner Program, Spectrum Enterprise
”
One of our goals for 2020 is to increase white-space selling with our partners and encourage a broader sales range of our portfolio. It’s time to enable our partners’ potential.
”
Seeenable how you can enable your potential throughwith partnering See how you can your potential through partnering with Spectrum at partners.spectrum.com Spectrum at partners.spectrum.com.tar.com.
CharterSpec_2020_WOTC_Advertorial.indd 1
6/7/20 1:37 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Laura Blackmer
Bethany Blackwell
SVP, Dealer Sales
Director
Channel Sales Dir., Managing Director for Latin America
Jennifer Bodell
Shannon Bodnar
VP, Channel
Sr. Director, Americas Channel, Commercial Marketing
Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A.
Carahsoft Technology
Blackmer is focused on building the Workplace of the Future for the channel, which is defined by products and strategies. She is always looking for new ways to assist dealers with go-to-market strategies and provides access to top-notch marketing.
B l a c k w e l l ’s goal has been to solve the procurement challenges related to solution-selling for Salesforce. With a goal of increased visibility for the vendor community and a solution-delivered approach for customers, she has brought to market a total package solution.
One key component Lexmark partners were in need of was better credit terms. In Blom’s role, she drove key conversations with the corporation to make sure Lexmark was able to support strategic partners by meeting their credit needs.
Bodell listens to par tners and takes the dialogue back to Pax8 so the company can find new solutions to strengthen the business. She also manages Pax8’s 100-plus channel events, including Mission Briefings, bootcamps and the Wingman conference, which will be held virtually this year.
Bodnar added a new sales organization to her team’s responsibilities. This was an entirely new through-channel model, and she had to create a marketing strategy from scratch while also maintaining a high ROI and trackable investments.
Katie Boeh
Michelle Boers
Leslie Bois
Lauren Bonaca
Lori Bonenfant
Director, Customer Experience
Country Manager, Canada
VP, Global Channel, Alliances
Sr. Manager, Partner Marketing
Director, Commercial Channel Operations, Business Group
Boeh and her team assembled a Partner Advisory Council with an aim to further understand partners’ challenges and how APC by Schneider Electric could steer strategy and offers in a direction that would enable their business initiatives.
In 2020, Boers helped launch the third successful Lifeboat Canada Emerge event, where vendors and resellers found much value in attending. In addition, she signed on a new vendor to Canada, which does not use distribution, and has exceeded expectations in all aspects.
Bois’ focus was on driving the organization to a partnerled model and transitioning away from a direct model. She implemented a “land with channel initiative” to align selling efforts to the strengths of partners. This helped to drive an increase in the percentage of sales with partners.
Bonaca led the launch of the Datadog Partner Network. The network currently has over 350 partners. She has developed a deep understanding of the challenges partners face and all her initiatives are geared toward ensuring seamless execution.
Bonenfant and her team deliver programs to ensure partners are fully supported throughout their customers’ solution life cycle. She develops the channel strategy to broaden Verizon’s reach, expand the portfolio and create differentiated value.
Elena Bonvicino
Tami Booth
Heather Bouvier
Lisa Box
Catherine Boyce
VP, Global Alliances, Presales
Channel Teritory Director
VP, Strategic Alliances, Business Development
Sr. Channel Manager
APC by Schneider Electric
Manager of Channel, Italy
Lifeboat Distribution
Lexmark
Veracode
Pax8
Datadog
Nutanix
Verizon
Veeam
Dell Technologies
B o n v i c i n o ’s responsibility is to manage the whole channel community of over 4,000 partners. She has implemented different, specific tailored plans for each of them to create and enable the correct winning mentality to address their targeted market.
Booth works with partners to ensure they understand the value of alliance partnerships. She also educates internally within Dell sales and presales to show the value of partners, especially when it comes to multi-cloud and winning the design war on Dell’s behalf.
As channel territory director, Bouvier grew iland’s channel business in the Northeast in 2019 by 160 percent. She accomplished this by adding new partners and aligning with very strategic vendors.
Box spearheaded the Hubspot integration with WP Engine, concluding her 10th year as head of WomeninDomaining, and gave back by promoting DomainConnect as an open standard for DNS providers to work with various service providers.
B o y c e exceeded her quota by 141 percent in 2019. She was able to expand her partner base by recruiting and educating IT consultants, MSPs, VARs and integrators. Her extensive relationships with master agents have contributed to her overall success in the channel at Vonage.
Meitra Bozorgzadegan
Lynn Brading
Kelly Brady
Stephanie Bray
Judith Breen
Director, Digital Experience Alliances
Director, Worldwide Partner Business Enablement
Sr. Manager, Global OEM Channel Ops., Programs
Director, Strategic Partnerships
Director, Channel Sales
22
Carlota Blom
Sungard Availability Services
Perficient
Bozorgzade gan executed on joint goto-market strategies at the field level with several key alliance and technology partners. She also grew relationships with strategic regional partners and on-boarded new partners to join the ecosystem.
Brading advanced the relationship with Adobe by increasing software sales, achieving certifications and specializations, and maintaining positive customer references. Perficient added three Adobe specializations and became a Platinum Partner.
iland
WP Engine
Vonage
NetApp
Dell Technologies
Insight Enterprises
Brady proved the success of NetApp’s Channel Evangelist career development program, which has allowed her to expand it to all employees within the worldwide channel organization. It involves developing employee business skills and mentoring.
Bray embarked on a journey to ensure Dell is reaching its full potential with partners and is focusing on collaboration with the broader partner ecosystem. This hinges on the interlocking role she has with channel leaders to ensure harmony.
Breen built a strong team of product managers and partner-funded resources, emphasizing diversity, collaboration, structure, efficiency and strategy. She and the team consistently exceeded budget targets.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_1-120.indd 4
6/9/20 11:29 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Diane Brode
Rebecca Brennan
Tara Bresnahan
Director, Sales
Carahsoft Technology
Sr. Manager, Channel Marketing, Americas
Sophos
Dell Technologies
Brennan has helped Splunk grow its public sector business by 20 percent over last year. She has invested in several programs that enable the partner ecosystem, allowing it to generate net-new opportunities, nurture existing customers, and provide the best solutions to customers.
Bresnahan oversaw all channel marketing strategy and execution for several Sophos national partners. This included managing a multimillion-dollar annual MDF budget, developing sales enablement programs, and overseeing sales incentives and promotional initiatives.
Victoria Brumbaugh Director, Global Partner Sales Strategy, Operations
Brumbaugh provided trend analysis and program design frameworks to achieve a shift to subscription, significant growth of net-new customers, and increased productivity of the partner ecosystem. She also developed the Focus Partner Program.
Susan Bullwinkle
Qlik
Regional VP
Evotek
Luciana Broggi
Jill Broyles
SVP, Global Head of Channel Strategy, Global Accounts
Account Executive
Brode’s team launched an enhanced MDF experience as well as made continued improvements to the lucrative MyRewards partner incentive program. This resulted in increased partner loyalty and increased partner earnings and spend year over year.
B ro g g i wa s instrumental in developing and implementing HP’s new market structure to its global channel organization. This work was both internal and external to ensure a seamless transition and provide greater efficiency and resources for channel partners.
Broyles helped bring in a $12 million deal last year, which included a complete SD-WAN refresh, switching stacks at clinics in the network, as well as the deployment and management for those services. She also brought in 11 new clients across New England.
Christina Bryant
Nancy Buckley
Donna Buffett
Toni Buhrke
Sr. Account Manager
East Manager, Channel Sales
Palo Alto Networks
Sr. Director, Worldwide Partner Enablement
Citrix Systems
Forescout Technologies
Bryant’s goal for partners is to make sure they are aware of everything SolarWinds MSP offers. Overall, she helps customers identify gaps, provides solutions and assists in coordinating training to implement the solution.
B u c k l e y ’s accomplishments are based on a foundation of relationships established throughout her career. She puts a strong emphasis on developing and executing plans that combine company and partner business objectives to overachieve and deliver on results.
Buffett helped partners understand the latest Citrix messaging, products and programs. Partners could then educate their customers on how Citrix technology leads in delivering digital transformation with higher productivity and higher profitability.
Buhrke used her technical presales experience to expand curriculum for enablement around architecture, troubleshooting and deployment best practices. She works closely with her post-sales counterpart to ensure smooth coverage for all partners and distributors.
Meredith Bunker
Charla BuntonJohnson
Traci Burch
Laura Burdine
SolarWinds MSP
Director, Channel Marketing
LogMeIn
Sr. Director, Global Partner Marketing
HP Inc.
Sr. Manager, North America Distribution
NWN
Dir., Worldwide Channel, Inside Systems Engineering
Sales Operations Manager
Global Director, Channel, Field Marketing
Citrix Systems
Adapture Technology Group
WekaIO
Bullwinkle came on board in January 2019 to launch a new market, establishing and developing the Colorado territory. During the year, she hired a team, met with 50 partners and selected 20 to focus on, and with them drove $9 million in sales.
B u n k e r engaged with partners to develop customized marketing plans and drive leads. She also supported the vertical go-to-market strategy and built out marketing for key verticals as well planned and managed the Jive Partner Advisory Board.
Bunton-Johnson launched the Weka Innovation Network, a global partner program, and implemented the partner portal. She will be driving the new AI/machine learning competency as well as partner playbooks to enable partner goto-market success.
Burch achieved 55 percent growth in revenue due to her initiatives working with her distributor. They implemented growth goals and a clear path to success, along with specific lead generation programs that have led to success.
As the company ’s CRM administrator and sales operations expert, Burdine led the development and execution around improving the internal sales process. This resulted in a higher level of client service capabilities and more streamlined executive reporting.
Jennifer Burl
Beth Burnside
Christine Burrows
Elizabeth Burton
Anna Busch
VP, Marketing, Corporate Social Responsibility
Owner
CMIT Solutions of Erie
National Account Manager
Eaton
Sr. Partner Marketing Manager
Amazon Web Services
Sr. Director, Partner Business Management
SAP
Burl takes great pride in sharing her insight with others in the channel. This year she conducted channel training for the HPE Digital Marketing workshop and presented channel strategy at the HPE Global Partner Summit to share key insight to channel success.
CMIT Solutions of Erie experienced 47 percent growth in revenue in 2019. In addition to managing this growth effort, Burnside continued to streamline operations, add staff and complete her dissertation proposal as a Ph.D. candidate.
After joining Eaton, Burrows was able to use her insight and experience to help jump-start new initiatives, including launching several successful sales and reseller campaigns, implementing new pricing strategies and streamlining processes for warranties and renewals.
Bur ton is a champion for some of the company’s largest strategic managed partners. She leverages her decades of experience in technology and marketing to create innovative strategies and tactics that drive sales to and through the channel.
Busch drove cloud adoption, customization and delivery across 80 percent of top North American partners. She also implemented a proposal-based marketing program to drive pipeline growth and aligned the North America channel program across industry best practices.
Worldcom Exchange
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_1-120.indd 5
23
6/5/20 3:23 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Christine Bush Sr. Government, Major Account Manager
Louise Butler Sr. Account Manager
Salena Butler VP, Channels
Mechelle Buys du Plessis
Sr. Director, Global Alliances, VMware, Dell Technologies
SolarWinds MSP
Working closely with Sharp’s channel partners, Bush focuses on the value of understanding the customer’s workflow environment. Sharp MFPs natively streamline workflow and eliminate the need for additional software on the network.
Bustamante’s team last year delivered 42 percent yearover-year revenue growth by expanding the channel, routes to market, and launching new partnerships with Pure Storage and Tech Mahindra.
Butler helped run a proof of concept for SolarWinds Endpoint Detection and Response, putting forward a number of partners to assist with the project. Choosing the right partners was key to a successful initiative, and partners felt the benefits.
Butler leads the North America Partner Council and is a key s t a ke h o l d e r in Infor’s Global Council. The councils help prioritize areas of improvement, and this feedback delivers positive changes for the betterment of partners.
Key to Buys du Plessis’ success is deep engagement with channel and OEM partners. The close development and cadence with channels and OEM partners set her apart.
Laura Cairns
Addison Caldwell
Cherie Caldwell
Heather Campbell
Jessica Campbell
Sr. Manager, Customer Success
Partner Success Engineer
Dir., Global GTM Strategy Collab., Global Partner Org.
Chief Experience Officer
Federal Channel Account Manager
Cairns led the development and successful implementation of SolarWinds MSP’s values system, which defines how people are expected to behave toward each other and to customers, and cultivates a culture that promotes teamwork.
After partners sign on to a solution, if they can’t get on-boarded, or fully understand how to continuously get more value from it, then they won’t stick around. That is what Caldwell addresses on the on-boarding team, which has grown rapidly over the past year.
U n d e r C a l d w e l l ’s direction, fiscal year 2019 collaboration channel growth was up 9.7 percent and recurring revenue was up 33 percent. She also recruited new partner types and simplified partner certifications.
Campbell launched ARG’s value realization process last year. The process builds on the business value identification in ARG’s consulting process and carries it beyond deployment to ensure that clients fully implement and operationalize the benefits of new technology.
To support the acceleration of the channel business through partners and make it easy to do business with Red Hat, Campbell is focused on getting the sales team in front of the right partners that are going to help support their goals and expand Red Hat’s footprint.
Rachel Canales
Brooke Candelore
Kate Canestrari
Nicole Cardenas
Elizabeth Carlin
Product Manager
Sr. Director, Partner, Alliance Marketing
Director, Channel Marketing
Sr. Channel Account Manager
Sharp Electronics
SolarWinds MSP
Infor
Liongard
VP, Central Region
NTT
Rackspace
Cisco Systems
ARG
Red Hat
North America OEM Channel Sales, Strategy Executive
BrightGauge, a
ConnectWise solution
VMware
Canales developed a new channel program that identifies top channel sales individuals and rewards them for their efforts. She created stronger relationships with her primary partners’ sales organization, netting a pipeline that has grown five times.
Candelore aims to mature BrightGauge as a product by providing advanced analytical capabilities and continuously improving partners’ experience by reducing friction in the web application. To build a strong channel business, she believes one needs to bridge the tech skills gap.
Transforming how partners engage and market with VMware has been a key mission for Canestrari. Focusing on operational improvements and launching innovative programs like PartnerNow and Partner Connect make it easier for partners to engage with VMware.
Cardenas transformed Pivot3 into a partnerled business by developing a new program designed to maximize partner return. This transformation included streamlining processes, identifying tools and creating a go-to-market strategy that supports Pivot3’s routes to market.
Carlin’s main initiative is to i n c re a s e Spirion’s brand awareness and product/service visibility to strategically identified partners. She is utilizing her training, mentoring and motivational skills to build positive relationships that will maximize sales potential.
Kim Carlton
Kristin Carnes
Lauren Carson
Andrea Carter
Kelly Carter
Director, Channel Sales Development
Director, Global Channel Programs, Operations
Director, Marketing
Legrand AV
Regional Director, Marketing, Northern EMEA
Ingram Micro
Carlton drove an effort that is changing the way channel sales teams can work with channel partners to sell Intel-based products. She delivered the first phase of this project with the second-generation Xeon Scalable processor launch.
C a r n e s accelerated investment in McAfee’s PRM platform. This continues to provide partners with a more comprehensive, simple view of their business. She also launched a new rebate program that provides predictability and greater earning potential for partners.
Carson’s team was responsible for combining the par tner contracts across all Legrand AV brands for 2020, as well as formalizing the Reseller Partner Program. Her leadership drove both of these projects.
C a r t e r strengthened the bond with Sophos’ channel, managing the Northern EMEA partner events. She talks to partners to better understand local needs and how to help her international team deliver them.
Lenovo
Intel
24
Adrianna Bustamante
McAfee
Pivot3
Sophos
Spirion
VP, Finance, Canada CFO
Carter elevated her game around channel financing by bringing new solutions and education to partners. She has pursued and engaged flexible finance partners, as well as developed innovative financing programs that differentiate both Ingram Micro and channel partners.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_1-120.indd 6
6/5/20 3:23 PM
ADVERTISEMENT
Become An EcoXpert With Schneider Electric Differentiate Yourself, Increase Profit, Grow Your Business
Q. How does the EcoXpert™ program enable partners to stay ahead of industry megatrends so they deliver value to their customers?
A. There are two driving forces changing the way our customers design, build, oper-
ate and maintain buildings: sustainability and human-centricity. Climate change is forcing our customers to reexamine their contribution to carbon emissions. Studies suggest that buildings consume almost 30 percent of the world’s energy, accounting for nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gases. Now, couple that with stringent regulations escalating all over the world and you quickly see the driving force facing our partners. Additionally, there is a growing demand for human-centric buildings. Buildings need to adapt to their occupants and deliver a more personalized experience. Our partners are anticipating that regulations and occupant demand will change the infrastructure requirements for new buildings and drive the retrofitting of existing buildings. Through our training and certification paths, our EcoXperts are at the forefront of these trends, ensuring building owners and managers are implementing the very best in both electrical and digital solutions. Being able to deliver on both the technology and expertise are the real differentiators for our EcoXperts. They are delivering the buildings of the future, today.
Q. What is the mission of the EcoXpert program?
Jaimie Giarrusso
Director, Global Marketing, EcoXpert Partner Program
”
A. Our mission is quite straightforward. We aim to connect expertise, ignite growth
and enable success for our EcoXpert partners. EcoXperts are the implementation arms of EcoStruxure™, our open, interoperable and IoT-enabled architecture and platform – as well as Wiser™, our connected technology for homes. We not only train and certify each partner on these technologies, we also deliver top-notch benefits such as priority support and marketing tools, which further enable our EcoXpert channel partners to deliver best-in-class services and solutions to their customers.
Q. What makes EcoXpert different from other channel programs in the market?
A. EcoXpert is the only partner program built on one global framework and made up of a cross-expertise ecosystem of partners. The program spans 11 areas of competency in building automation, power management and services. It also offers specialized training in a variety of vertical segments. Through our nearly 4,000 EcoXpert partners in 74 countries, this ecosystem truly cultivates collaboration and innovation that delivers superior solutions and local support to customers all over the globe.
(We have) the only partner program built on one global framework and made up of a cross-expertise ecosystem of partners. This ecosystem truly cultivates collaboration and innovation that delivers superior solutions and local support to customers all over the globe.
”
Unleash potential – join theProfitability. EcoXpert program. Expand your Yourgrowth Portfolio. Increase Your ExceedOne Yourprogram. One network. Endless opportunities. Learn more at se.com/ww/en/partners/ecoxpert. Customers’ Expectations. Learn more at star2star.com.
Schneider_2020_WOTC_Advertorial.indd 1
6/2/20 4:40 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Sandy Carter
Rowena Case
VP, Public Sector Partners, Programs
Head of Channel Marketing, Western Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa
Amazon Web Services
Rachel Cassidy
Head, Partner Marketing, Communications, Corporate Events
SUSE
SVP, Global Channel, Cloud
Aimee Catalano Global Partner Marketing Executive
Google Cloud
Nutanix
DXC Technology
Carter created mechanisms that improved the value partners bring to customers and that AWS brings to partners. She launched the Public Sector Partner Competency Awards based on customer results, revenue, and Amazon’s Leadership Principles.
Case has developed a number of campaigns to deliver alongside a complex and raw sales cycle for partners to easily utilize. She listened to partners’ business strategies to create collaborative tactics that conveyed blended value propositions.
By expanding the team with the addition of channel marketing roles, Case equipped partner sales and drove the creation of integrated channel plans. She directed the launch of elements critical to partnering across strategic and operational aspects.
Cassidy is architec ting the evolution of SUSE’s channel strategy to help partners build out open-source practices to take advantage of the growth in adoption and support joint customers in edge computing, IoT and digital transformation projects.
Google Cloud’s channel marketing organization continued to evolve to meet the fast-growing demand of partners. Catalano introduced new marketing campaigns and hosted partners as full attendees at the Sales KickOff conference for the first time.
Lanay Cerilli
Chanel Chambers
Caroline Chapin
Sr. Director, Product Marketing
Director, Global Partner Programs
Beatrice Charbonnier
Carmela Chartrand
Executive Director, Partner Planning (Purchasing) U.S. Technology Solutions
SolarWinds MSP
Datto
Cerilli spends a lot of time making sense of the sale and learning from the numbers. To add more operational efficiency, she advocated for increased automation and machine-to-machine learning.
Chambers’ focus has been on providing the advanced security services MSPs need to protect their businesses, and their customers’ businesses, from security threats. She launched 11 new service offerings, many of which were in the security part of the portfolio.
Sarah Chaseling
Ingram Micro
EMEA GSI Alliance Manager
VP, CFO, Channel, Ecosystem Finance
Veeam
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Chapin was critical to finalizing the global partner program merger strategy (Datto and Autotask), driving partner marketing engagement and launching a new Datto Developer Partner Program to support over 170 third-party vendor integrations.
Charbonnier has developed relationships with the key global systems integrators located in Europe. This includes managing highlevel executive meetings and making them identify Veeam as a key partner as well as setting up account mappings.
Chartrand prepared co m p re h e n sive “channel economics” evaluations to help transform related channel investment operating models and optimize top-line growth and HPE profitability. She also enhanced the Partner Ready rebate program.
Karen Chastain
Vivian Chavez
Jennifer Cheh
Emily Chen
Sr. Director, Global Alliances
Sr. Director, Channel Programs
SVP, Marketing
VP, Product Management
Sr. Manager, Partner, Alliance Marketing, APJ
Episerver
Chaseling is responsible for the go-to-market strategy in A s i a - Pa c i f i c Japan with Cisco, AWS, Hitachi and VMware. She has forged new stakeholder relationships between Commvault and its technology alliances throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
Chastain led the launch of Episerver App Marketplace to provide a single source for customers to find pre-vetted partner solutions that easily integrate with their existing Episerver solutions. She led the team and built and executed the launch plan.
Over the past year, Chavez focused on becoming an extension of the sales team in support of their growth and success. She also was the conduit for large master agents and the top tier of partners focusing on key ActiveCore/SD-WAN and midmarket initiatives.
Cheh expanded the reach of NEC with partners, salespeople, design engineers and end users through NEC Technology Showcases and partner training events. She also delivered promotions, programs and tools that drove growth through the channel.
Chen worked with HP/Synnex to launch various projects, enabling Synnex to have exclusivity for key product lines with HP. She exceeded the growth targets for revenue and profit and gained momentum, making a difference in the existing and new product lines Synnex carries.
Julia Chen
Connie Cheng
Vanessa Chet
Marie Cheung-Ong
Tina Chiao
VP, Global Partner Transformation
Worldwide Channel, OEM Programs, Operations Mgr.
Sr. Manager, Americas Distribution Strategy, Planning
Chief of Staff, Americas Commercial Channel Sales
Carahsoft Technology
Cheung-Ong collaborated with the channel leadership team to drive growth in strategic areas and execute partner engagement strategy. She also continued to lead the community outreach program, HP Channel for Change.
Commvault
26
Victoria Case
Comcast Business
Cisco Systems
Qumulo
Cisco Systems
Chen enabled partners to achieve higher wallet share and profitability through new buying centers and differentiated business outcome solutions on top of Cisco platforms. She ensured customer success to increase renewal rates from life-cycle services.
Cheng has been instrumental in refreshing the Qumulo Partner Program to ensure partners find it easy to do business with the company. She also has streamlined program processes to scale Qumulo’s channel business.
Chet simplified t h e i nve s t ment portfolio for Cisco’s distributors while focusing on partner and distribution profitability in the redesign. She also built out a new architecture team to support distributors in the U.S., Canada and Latin America.
NEC Display Solutions of America
HP Inc.
Synnex
Sr. Director
Because of her unique role at a public sector distributor, Chiao sees the business from both the vendor and partner perspective. This enables her team to strategize with vendor partners and resellers to provide the best solution in support of government customers’ missions and initiatives.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_121-241.indd 1
6/5/20 3:30 PM
ADVERTISEMENT
VMware Women Share Insight, Influence That Drive Partner Success VMware recognizes 17 outstanding women whose insight and influence drive partner success. VMware is committed to an inclusive culture and proud of our women leaders who inspire positive progress to our partner community. We commend their thought leadership, innovative vision for channel growth and dedication to excellence launching Partner Connect. Three of these leaders were also named to the Power 100, representing the most powerful women leaders across IT channel organizations. Congratulations! POWER 100
POWER 100
Jenni Flinders
Anna Dorcey
Amanda Banker
Kate Canestrari
Kendra DeCoste
Joan Fazio
Tara Fine
Coleen Greco
Kiran Kaloti
Stephanie Ladner
Patti Lewis
Amber McGough
Sonal Patel
Kathleen Tandy
Cheryl Vlacilek
Lisa Wight
Sasha Wright-Neville
POWER 100
Global Channel Chief
Director, North America Partner Marketing
Sr. Director, Worldwide Partner Organization, Compliance
VP, Americas Marketing
Sr. Manager, Global Partner Marketing
Head of Worldwide Distribution
Sr. Manager, Partner Experience, Worldwide Partner Organization
Sr. Manager, Worldwide Partner Programs
Sr. Director, Partner, Alliance Marketing
Sr. Director, Americas Systems Integrators, Systems Outsourcer
Director, Partner Demand Generation Programs
Director, Cloud Provider Sales MSP
Director, Partner Go To Market
Sr. Director, Partner Role Excellence, Operating Model
Canada Channel Chief
Sr. Director, Partner Marketing
Sr. Manager, Worldwide Partner Incentives, Investments
LearnIncrease more about Connect at: Expand Your Portfolio. YourPartner Profitability. Exceed Your www.vmware.com/go/partner-connect Customers’ Expectations. Learn more at star2star.com.
CRN_June2020_WOTC_VMWare.indd 1
6/8/20 4:39 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Leslie Chiorazzi
VP, Global Partners, Alliances
Managing Partner
President, CEO
Over the past y e a r, C h i n drove 2.4X growth of all partner bookings, representing 50 percent of UiPath’s 2019 business. She also delivered enhancements to drive predictability, profitability and velocity for partners.
Lindsey Christensen
Margaret Chum
Account Manager
Sr. Channel Program Manager
Lenovo
Chiorazzi in 2019 gained a health-care client that doubled the size of CMIT Solutions of Murray Hill’s business. Her relationship and skill set allowed the company to provide unique business solutions for this very large practice.
TanChes Global Management
U n d e r Choudhur y ’s direction, Ta n C h e s i n 2019 grew year-on-year channel business by over 55 percent. Her mission is to continue the growth trajectory as well as growing her teams. The building of the company’s own technology center is slated for completion this year.
Christensen’s work on field alignment has developed into a program that brings channel and field sellers together. She has championed the efforts to expand how Lenovo leverages the program’s format for category penetration and new line of business acquisition.
Samantha Ciaccia
Lisa Citron
Allison Clarke
Melany Clayton
Corey Cohen
Sr. Marketing Project Mgr.
VP, Worldwide Channel Sales
Dir., Global Channel Programs
Dir., Global IT Operations
VP, Marketing
Ciaccia’s primary role is to own the development and management of complex global marketing initiatives and projects. She has managed, enhanced and promoted the Datto Global Partner Program for which Datto accepted over 20 industry awards in 2019.
One of Citron’s key channel accomplishments was aligning partner rebates with F5 business goals. This required partnering with many internal and external stakeholders in North America and is now the foundation for F5’s global structure.
Clarke leads the global Sophos Partner Program and associated offerings, including the MSP and Cloud Security Provider programs. She ensures Sophos’ next-generation solutions and services are available to partners, protecting against advanced attacks.
With a focus on delivering an exceptional client experience, it is critical that client-facing and internal tools operate efficiently. Clayton leads a team that supports Insight’s Cloud + Data Center Transformation solution area and the global quality assurance team.
In 2019, Cohen was named as the first female executive at TBI when she was promoted from director of marketing to vice president of marketing. She also heads up the strategy for TBI’s expansion into Europe, which is currently in full swing, having recently filled the first U.K.-based role.
Ciera Cole
Heather Collins
Joanne Collins Smee
Abbey Renee Colville
Stacy Conrad
Dir., Cloud, Ecosystem Partners, Americas Partner Organization
EVP, Chief Commercial, SMB, Channels Officer
VP, Operations
Director, Channel Sales, Southeast
UiPath
Datto
COO
The 20 MSP Group
CMIT Solutions of Murray Hill
F5 Networks
Sophos
Insight Enterprises
Vision Computer Solutions
Thales
Chum is working to build a new partner program for the company. She is doing this by consulting different stakeholders and partners about how to improve and meet their expectations.
TBI
Cisco Systems
Xerox
Cole started two new departments at The 20 MSP Group—vendor relationship and recruiting, and employee engagement. She also developed accountability groups for members to better engage and push each other.
IDC estimates that by 2021 30 percent of customer purchasing will be driven through the ecosystem. Collins’ team works with ecosystem partners to solve joint customer problems, while growing revenue for both Cisco and the ecosystem partner.
Collins Smee joined Xerox i n 2 0 1 8 to spearhead the development of Xerox’s software and services strategy. She has built a strategy and implemented new innovations that are enabling partners to expand and diversify their business.
Colville launched the SharePoint Development branch of Vision Computer Solutions. This new addition to Vision Computer Solutions is expected to bring in at least $250,000 of development revenue in 2020.
Conrad developed a new geography for TPx Communications’ channel program. She has been involved in hiring, partner recruitment, training, promotions and all other aspects of driving revenue for the company.
Cheryl Cook
Louise Cooke
Donna Cooney
Ashley Cooper
Lori Cornmesser
SVP, Global Partner, Embedded, Edge Solutions Marketing
VP, Channel
Director, Partner Sales, Cisco Canada
Partner Programs Manager
Auvik Networks
VP, Worldwide Channel Sales, Alliances
Cooney has worked with national and strategic par tners to help them perform and transform their business to capture new areas of growth. Through transformation investments, partners have introduced managed services and expanded their solutions.
Drawing on more than a decade of experience working with and supporting MSPs, Cooper played a strategic role in the launch and adoption of Auvik TrafficInsights, ensuring the partner experience was top of mind throughout the planning and implementation phases.
Dell Technologies
Cook helped develop program incentives to drive the “Simple. Predictable. Profitable.” mission. She collaborated with partner leaders to make it easier (and more lucrative) for partners to do business with the company.
28
Tanaz Choudhury
Cheryln Chin
BigID
Cooke joined BigID with a vision on how to expedite company growth. The installation of a partner portal, deal registration guidelines and detailed pricing plans worldwide have been instrumental in the successful design, launch and expansion of the VAR partner program.
Cisco Systems
TPx Communications
Infoblox
Cornmesser and her team have been focused on building credibility and predictability in the partner business. She also helped grow Infoblox partnerhunted bookings by 25 percent in 2019 and led the initiative to hold the first Americas/EMEA Partner Advisory board.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_121-241.indd 2
6/5/20 3:31 PM
ADVERTISEMENT
The Best Way To Lead Is By Example
Working Together, We Are Making The Impossible, Possible People make partnerships powerful and businesses purpose-driven. Our biggest differentiator is human, and together as a team, we are working from anywhere and everywhere to help humans like you succeed, smile and Imagine What’s Next. This year’s Ingram Micro WOTC honorees represent leaders from all areas of the business, including sales, marketing, operations, finance and more. The complete Ingram Micro list includes: POWER 100
Kimberly Alexander Jennifer Anaya Sr. Vendor Business Manager
Kelly Carter
Senior Vice President, Vice President of Marketing, Global Finance, Technology Solutions Canada CFO
Florencia Gannio Senior Marketing Manager
Alexandra Harding
Lanay Cerilli
Executive Director Partner Planning (Purchasing) U.S. Technology Solutions
Julie Czubinski
Sr. Sales Manager, Partners Licensing Group
Melanie DelValle Sr. Manager, Financial Solutions
Therese Ferullo
Executive Director, Sales
Sabine Howest
Stacy Khreis
Alyssa Lahham
Sue Lim-Brunings
Cheryl Rang
Jessica Rosen
Kelly Sander
Lynne Thornton
Director, Vendor Vice President, Management, Business Global Partner and Consumer Solutions Engagement
Director of Global Global Marketing Business Development Director
Director, Marketing Operations
POWER 100
Holly Niedzielski
Director, Event Marketing and Partner Communities
Susan O'Sullivan
Vice President, Sales
Director, Advanced Solutions
Sr. Vendor Business Manager
Senior SMB Business Development Executive
Executive Director, Sales
Thank you andPortfolio. cheers toIncrease this year’s Women of the Exceed ChannelYour and Power 100 honorees! Expand Your Your Profitability. Imagine what’s next at https://bit.ly/IM2020WOTC Customers’ Expectations. Learn more at star2star.com.
CRN_June2020_WOTC_IngramMicro.indd 1
6/7/20 1:49 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Christine Corso
Pam Cory
Global Channel Operations, Programs Leader
VP, Global Marketing
Corso continued to build the global channel infrastructure, which included processes, programs and governance. She built, grew and enabled North America channel partners to increase sales and expand the business.
Globalization and par tner success are primary focuses for BitTitan. Cory helped establish programs with global and regional distribution partners, as well as channel partners in BitTitan’s target countries around the world.
Martha Cox Channel Manager East
Mary Coucher
Christine Cox
VP, Worldwide Systems Channel Sales
SUSE
Costa helped Latin America achieve double-digit growth in bookings. This was the result of the positioning of the new cloud portfolio and the launch of the Arcserve Appliance 9000 Series, which is now available in a “made in Brazil” version for Brazilian partners.
Coucher grew worldwide systems channel sales in an extremely competitive environment, promoted new executive staff into key channel positions, and expanded IBM’s partner ecosystem in strategic areas in line with the overall systems expansion mission.
Cox’s connection with the community is to get away from the notion of being “channel-friendly” and to establish the mantra that the “channel is the business.” Switching the public sector business from a direct model to a fully channel-engaged model was important.
JuliAn Coy
Kirsten Craft
Jennifer Craine
Carolyn Crandall
Principal, West Region Technology Consulting Leader
Head, Business Development, Marketing
Prolifics
Operations Director, West Partner Sales Organization
Cisco Systems
Chief Deception Officer, Chief Marketing Officer
Cox focused on a partner in New England that had only sold $20,000 in 2018. As she is located in Boston, Cox worked with the partner directly, meeting with sales managers to determine the most effective way to work with their teams. Sales increased to $490,000 in 2019.
RSM acquired Explore Consulting 18 months ago. The integration role Coy played with this M&A this last year has dramatically accelerated RSM’s success footprint in the Oracle + NetSuite channel.
Craft created a new focus on driving channel revenue for Prolifics, leveraging her executive relationships with key channel partners and her own peers to make bold plans, then drove the follow-through. She also served in multiple channel advisory roles.
Attivo Networks
Cisco is on a multiyear journey to move from a n e t wo r kequipment company toward cloud computing and softwaresubscription revenue. Last year, Craine and her team were the bridge between the segments and the channel community.
A t t i v o Networks positions its solutions as forcemultipliers to existing security products. Crandall was instrumental in enabling the vendor’s channel community with the tools and resources needed to drive significant growth.
Larissa Crandall
Natalie Crawford
Krischel Crawley
Peggy Crespin
Lisa Critchlow
Data Center Lead, CDW
VP, Sales, West
Director, Worldwide Partner Marketing Programs
Sensormatic Solutions
LogMeIn
Sr. Director, Channel Sales, Americas
BitTitan
RSM US
VP, Partner Sales, Latin America
Arcserve
IBM
RVP, Public Sector
Dell Technologies
Nasuni
Sr. Manager, National Solution Provider Channels, U.S., Canada
Poly
Commvault
Crandall’s team overachieved channel-initiated business, growing from single digits to 35-plus percent. Crandall created programs and training for Gigamon and partners. She also worked with the ecosystem to develop go-tomarket solutions to accelerate revenue for partners.
Crawford has influenced Tech Refresh campaign development and implementation; created a hyperconverged growth campaign strategy for CDW; and established cohesiveness between the dedicated CDW channel team as well as regional partners.
Crawley works closely with Nasuni’s partners to help customers solve their enterprise file storage challenges and accelerate cloud and digital transformation. She has a passion for innovation and bridging the gap between business challenges and customer needs.
Crespin developed the “Top 5 Channel Priorities” playbook as a guideline for executing a partner growth strategy. They include revenue growth, pipeline generation, sales and channel alignment, channel capability and partner development.
Critchlow s p e a r headed and executed on Commvault’s Partner Demand Center, a scalable, multi-touch channel marketing automation platform to seamlessly deliver, track and manage demand generation campaigns to the worldwide partner ecosystem.
Tracie Crites
Shanade Cufe
Brooke Cunningham
Kelly Curnow
Julie Czubinski
Vice President
Sr. Analyst, Global Channel Communications
Area VP, Global Partner Programs, Marketing, Ops.
Director, Partner Development, Experience
F5 Networks
Sr. Sales Manager, Partners Licensing Group
Ingram Micro
Cufe focused on the migration of two partner communication channels onto new, more robust and interactive platforms. Handling these cross-functional projects simultaneously was a challenge as the goal was to improve the overall user experience on both systems.
Cunningham provided incentives, resulting in 76 percent of new customers being contributed by partners. She also analyzed partner profitability to maximize partners’ Splunk ROI.
C u r n o w developed relationships with the worldwide channel team, sales and crossfunctional stakeholders. She also assisted in the launch of the partner version of a new learning management system.
Recognizing the increasing importance renewals have on business continuity and overall customer experience, as well as the revenue stream of channel partners, Czubinski led Ingram Micro’s delivery of the RenewVue platform.
Gigamon
CorKat Data Solutions
Crites is the creator and implementer for the channel program at CorKat, including all new vendor relationships, cloud sales and channel direction. She has built solutions around the direct problems MSP partners face when migrating to the cloud.
30
Daniela Costa
RSA Security
Splunk
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_121-241.indd 3
6/5/20 3:32 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Rushina Dalal
Rola Dagher
Camilla Dahlen
President, CEO, Cisco Canada
Global VP, Software Solution Partners
Technical Delivery Manager, Modern Infrastructure vCORE Technology Partners
Dagher leveraged trusted partner relationships she has built over her career to deepen ties between Cisco Canada and top partners across a network of 1,700 Canadian partners. That trust has helped speed up alignment, enhance cooperation and achieve customer results.
Dahlen led her team and partner ecosystem through a t ransformation period as SAP combined the business across the Software Solution programs and embarked on a shared vision for next-generation partnering, created to simplify the partner and customer experience.
Krista Damico Manager, Strategic Alliances
Cisco Systems
LogicMonitor
Carey Daley
Brandee Daly
Sr. Field Marketing Manager
Founder, CEO
Dalal ’s role entails leading a team of 16 delivery engineers at vCORE. She has a strong background in project management—building and maintaining customer relationships and vendor relations.
Daley helped in the execution of more than 30 joint field marketing activities with key channel partners. These marketing activities are now resulting in measurable incremental revenue for the business.
Daly led the way in ensuri n g f e d e ra l adoption of the cloud was secure. She developed an overarching cloud security strategy for federal organizations and rolled out innovative tools, ensuring objectives and milestones were met.
Maggie Daniels
Kate Danks
Cathy Daum
Angharad Davies
Partner Account Manager
Sr. Channel Marketing Manager
SVP, Global Partner Org., Go-ToMarket and Scale Partners
Director, Channel Marketing EMEA
Daum championed the transition of SAP ’s traditional channel partners from on-premises to the cloud, ensuring that partner margins are safeguarded in their cloud sales and implementation projects.
Davies has driven Commvault’s global channel initiatives into the EMEA ecosystem, increasing visibility for the company’s channel-first strategy. She has focused on building strategic alliance relationships in key markets.
SAP
AHEAD
Mimecast
Keysight Technologies
SAP
C2S Consulting Group
Commvault
Damico built the global strategy and program guidelines for the entire LogicMonitor Partner Network, which includes how the company goes to market and generates revenue with the biggest technology companies in the world.
Daniels is responsible for managing over 55 channel par tner relationships, including all of AHEAD’s Level 2 partners and some of its Level 1. Prior to being promoted to partner account manager, she spearheaded partner marketing initiatives.
Danks worked closely with the channel team to realign marketing investments and support to partners who have demonstrated commitment to Mimecast. She has been educating partners about how they can develop a more integrated marketing approach.
Tera Davis
Deidre Deacon
Claire Dean
Kendra DeCoste
Lisa Del Real
GM, ViewSonic Canada
Sr. Director, Solutions Marketing
Director, Partner Demand Generation Programs
VP, Global Channel Programs, Operations
Del Real created the Preferred Partner Program and the Platinum Partner Program. The Preferred Partner Program rewards partners who are RingCentral evangelists; the Platinum Partner Program rewards the performance of top global partners.
Managing Director
Critical Start
ViewSonic
Davis led MSSP CriticalStart’s strategic decision to move its managed detection and response services’ go-to-market strategy to a channel-only model. She also brought on a new vice president of channels and alliances and signed agreements with Ingram Micro and Synnex.
As demand accelerates for collaboration solutions, ViewSonic has expanded its presence in the AV channel in Canada through strategic new partnerships and the launch of an AV Solutions program. This helps ViewSonic drive higher margins and foster closer relationships.
Dean engages S y m a n t e c ’s partner communit y and started new ways of sharing product and sales information with them. She trained internal teams on the channel and developed a channel track at sales kickoff.
DeCoste transfo r m e d t h e channel strategy to develop and deliver different sets of marketing programs and tools by segment and launched a successful global channel marketing survey. She achieved 1.5 million throughpartner reach via solution campaigns.
Keri Delaloye
Melanie DelValle
Maureen DeNardo
Eileen DeRoma
Kerry Desberg
Sr. Director, Channel Marketing
Sr. Manager, Financial Solutions
Channel Account Manager, Data Center Group
National Partner Account Manager
Impartner
DeNardo helped partners ramp up on Lenovo’s products by investing in equipment for them to demonstrate Lenovo’s capabilities. She also increased partner certifications and invested in marketing activities to help partners find new opportunities.
With a 100 percent channel-focused sales model, it is DeRoma’s responsibility to connect Mimecast’s channel sales reps with Mimecast sales reps. She is training teams, building relationships and growing businesses together.
Netsurion
Delaloye focused on creating programs and processes to enable a quickly growing list of partners. She implemented a channel marketing strategy and provided oversight across demand and lead generation for events, web media, collateral and communication.
Ingram Micro
DelValle worked closely with her team to bring to market a financial solution that would help channel partners grow their business and offer financing solutions to their end-user clients.
Broadcom
Lenovo
VMware
Mimecast
RingCentral
CMO
Desberg built strong vendor-partner connections, and Impartner’s partners feel more that they are a part of the company and continue to build upon the relationship they have with the Impartner team.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_121-241.indd 4
31
6/5/20 3:32 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Nikkia Despertt
Jessie Devine
Director, Readiness, Adoption, Channel Services
Community Engagement Manager
Sr. Director, Marketing, Asia-Pacific Japan
Connie Dimitroff
Grace Ding
Director, Americas Partner Transformation
Education Marketing Manager
Dell Technologies
QuoteWerks
Sophos
Cisco Systems
Laserfiche
Despertt strove for program simplification, enabling partners to focus on their customer relationships. She ensures that products and services competencies are available for timely adoption by partners.
Devine is responsible for all event marketing initiatives for QuoteWerks. In her role, she manages all aspects of partner-facing efforts, including spearheading the annual QuoteWerks User Summit.
Dewhurst provided 7,800 fully qualified sales leads to partners in APJ, with a close rate of 28 percent. She also spearheaded a company-leading digital marketing program that delivered greater than 11X in influenced pipeline.
Dimitroff created the first Americas Transformation team and created the Americas Partner strategy and go-to-market plans for three Cisco transformation areas: managed services, ecosystem partnerships and DevOps.
Resulting from marketing campaigns targeting the education sector, Ding generated 5,500 leads for the channel. She also solidified Laserfiche’s partnership with Ellucian, which will expand opportunities for Laserfiche’s solution providers in education.
Linda Ding
Stephanie Dismore
Mai Doan
Olivia Donnell
Anna Dorcey
Director, Strategic Marketing
SVP, Managing Director, North America
Sr. Director, Worldwide Partner Marketing Automation Anywhere
EMEA Channel Director
StorageCraft
VMware
Laserfiche
HP Inc.
VP, Americas Marketing
Ding has focused on evangelizing Laserfiche in financial services, education, government and manufacturing. She supports solution providers by developing partnerships that result in industry-specific Laserfiche solutions and the growth of channel expertise.
The HP Americas Channels team saw growth in every HP category last year, spanning personal systems, print, supplies and services. Dismore drove strong year-over-year partner growth, while setting the foundation for partner success.
Doan recently joined Autom a t i o n Anywhere, a robotics process automation company. Her mission is to recruit, enable and advance the partner ecosystem with marketing programs to scale their practices.
By focusing on giving partners exceptional service through strong, open and collaborative partnerships in 2019, Donnell grew the European channel in all major markets. Teamwork is her secret to success.
Transforming the way partners engage and market with VMware has been Dorcey’s priority. Her team has implemented operational improvements to more accurately measure marketing investments and worked with key partners to build strategic marketing plans.
Leah Dorenfeld
Linda Dotts
Betsy Doughty
Lyndsay Dowd
Debbie D’Souza
CloudGenix
Chief Partner Strategy Officer
Blue Prism
VP, Corporate Marketing
Business Unit Executive, AI Applications
Sr. Global Program Lead, Connect Partner Program
Dorenfeld helped propel channel-led business to over 300 percent year-on-year growth. Her efforts also helped increase channel-led deal registrations by over 200 percent. She was part of the team to launch CloudGenix’s carrier-neutral global managed SD-WAN offering with Wipro.
Dotts and her team built Blue Prism’s Digital Exchange, an intelligent automation “app store” and community. DX provides users with an a la carte menu of intelligent automation solutions, securing 2,850 registered companies since launch in November 2019.
Doughty guided her team through expanding S p e c t r a’s distribution strategy, adding distributors in Latin America, North America and Europe. She also launched Spectra’s first software-only solution to the channel, with a targeted colaunch with 12 partners.
Dowd grew the channel from 20 partners to more than 50 in the past year. She helped secure investment for value-added distributors to build solutions to support partners and ignited a cultural shift within the brand to make partners a part of nearly every deal.
Not only did Cloudera and Hortonworks merge,but Cloudera also launched a new category—the enterprise data cloud. Expanding into uncharted market territory, D’Souza spearheaded revamping the partner program, providing new benefits and including all partners.
Alma Du Preez
Jeanne Duca
Tiffany Dunn
Karin Dushaw
Julie Dzubay
VP, Global Sales
VP, Brand, Experience
Sr. Dir., Strategic Partnerships
Federal Channel Program Mgr.
Director, Marketing
32
Nicki Dewhurst
Spectra Logic
IBM
Cloudera
Director, Sales Operations
Insight Enterprises
BCN
LogMeIn
Poly
AppSmart
Du Preez makes it a top priority to engage with the channel at all levels. This includes scheduling quarterly workshops and account planning and strategy sessions aimed at solidifying mutual strategic goals in a way that is beneficial for Insight, clients and partners.
Duca continued to drive the focus on the BCN experience as it relates to the BCN team, sales partners and customers. Ongoing initiatives to monitor NPS ratings for all three audiences have helped to drive increased satisfaction in the channel.
Channel enablement— internally and externally— has been a huge focus for Dunn. She has helped push key initiatives including the cultivation of a collaborative winning team, internal partner alignment, and building strategic value with key partnerships.
Dushaw has zeroed in on targeting key strategic partners and strengthening relationships with them. This includes creating and managing business plans, setting pipeline and revenue targets, and fostering engagement opportunities with the federal team.
Dzubay formed an advisor y team of 25 active technology advisors in the new AppSmart program to gather continuous feedback on integration efforts and the rollout of the Technology MarketPlace. The feedback was used to provide direction for the project.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_121-241.indd 5
6/5/20 3:33 PM
ADVERTISEMENT
Fernandez Helps Scale Computing Reach New Heights Q. What skills are needed to succeed as a woman in the channel and how have you used those skills at Scale Computing?
A. Recent research I read about in the Harvard Business Review resonated strongly
with me. This research suggests that courage, risk-taking, resilience and managing ambiguity are key to female executive success. While I believe I have all of these traits, I have often relied on my ability to confidently manage through ambiguity at Scale Computing. We needed to tackle many ambitious projects and I had full responsibility to determine what needed to happen. This was both empowering and humbling. These projects included relaunching our brand, growing our channel and Alliance Partner ecosystem and, most recently, continuing to grow our business and support our partners through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Q. What was the impetus behind the rebranding of Scale Computing? How do you directly tie that to partners?
”
This award is both self-gratifying and a reminder that sharing your success with others can be both positive and powerful.
”
Marlena Fernandez
Vice President, Marketing
A. As demand for IT infrastructure has grown and evolved, so has Scale Computing.
We have expanded globally, moved into new markets, and helped to drive success for new partners and customers. We have ambitious growth goals. Those goals must be supported by an updated and modern brand, one that better represents who we are today — a leader in edge computing, virtualization and hyperconverged solutions. That growth can’t be achieved without the shared success of our partner community — their success was a large driver in this project and we’ve been very pleased with the response we’ve gotten from the channel! Our partners have told us that the new Scale Computing branding has helped them better position themselves as working with the most relevant technology providers, and our updated website and collateral give them the content they need to support their marketing programs and buyer journeys.
Q. How does it feel to be part of the Power 100 list?
A. I am honored to be included in a list of such successful and inspiring executives.
I am one of the many women who are not good at self-promotion, and being recognized with this award is both self-gratifying and a reminder that sharing your success with others can be both positive and powerful.
Learn more about becoming a Scale Computing partner at Your Expand Your Portfolio. Increase Your Profitability. Exceed www.scalecomputing.com/become-a-partner Customers’ Expectations. Learn more at star2star.com.
ScaleComputing_2020_WOTC.indd 1
6/8/20 10:49 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Michelle Eatherton
Emily Eddy
Tanya Edmonds
Ashley Edwards
Jeannine Edwards
Global Partner Investments, Incentives Leader
Partner Business Development Specialist
Regional Diversity, Inclusion Lead
Sr. Federal Channel Manager
Sr. Director, Channel Marketing
In addition to continuing to own the global partner budget, Eatherton took on responsibility for owning the AWS multibillion-dollar channel (reseller and distribution) business. She and her team exceeded revenue targets for the channel.
As a playercoach on the enterprise networking te a m , Ed d y both manages the business for Cisco’s largest partner (bookings are up 40 percent year over year) and leads a team of specialists responsible for driving strategy at the top 14 U.S. partners.
Edmonds developed an Early Career Pro gra m to ensure diversity engagement. She also built partnerships to provide professional development for women in the organization and built a talent pipeline of diverse candidates.
As the first federal Nvidia channel manager, Edwards is creating thought leadership, certified training, federal sales plays and joint solutions for partners and distributors to utilize. With these assets, she was able to close one of the largest GRID orders for the company.
StorageCraft brought the channel partner community two new solutions in 2019. Edwards collaborated with leaders and departments to ensure the creation of a strong channel message around those solutions.
Susan Elder
Jamille Ellingson
Sammi Ellman
Caitlin Ellsworth
Karine Elsen
Sr. Director, Marketing
Channel Account Manager
Zix | AppRiver
Director, Strategic Alliances
IPM
Regional Sales Manager, New Business
Cisco Systems
Elder worked with Jenne’s Tier 1 vendors to develop and implement growth-oriented marketing programs. These programs have driven adoption and sales in the channel of their product lines through Jenne’s value-added resellers, agents, integrators and service providers.
2019 was replete with change: pricing changes, new partner programs, and the Zix acquisition of AppRiver. Ellingson established relationships with partners and guided them through the many changes while focusing on growing the business.
Key to IPM’s channel success over the past year has been establishing itself as a reseller that not only provides value, but is loyal. Ellman implemented internal strategies that map to those of key vendors and specialized in ensuring alignment with partners across New York City.
Ellsworth was promoted to her new role in October 2019. She has had the opportunity to manage a team of sales professionals, help them achieve their annual sales targets, as well as exceed the fourth-quarter 2019 new partner quota by almost 150 percent.
Elsen drove d e m a n d generation campaigns with key strategic partners. She also activated new routes to market and launched the Cisco Designed portfolio through those routes as well as distribution and two-tier resellers.
Tiffany Embry
Maryam Emdadi Smith
Paula Enache
Nicole Faletra
Lindsay Faria
Worldwide Digital Partner Program Manager
Channel Marketing Manager
Director, Content, Partner Marketing
Amazon Web Services
Jenne
Director, Sales
Tech Data
VP, Sales
Carahsoft Technology
NTT
Bitdefender
Datto
Pax8
StorageCraft
Director, Partner Marketing
Barracuda MSP
Embry leads over 125 of Te c h D at a’s inside sales professionals, handling some of the most strategic accounts. She also is focused on developing Tech Data’s customer acquisition strategies to drive an increase in new customers and deeper relationships with existing partners.
In 2020, Emdadi Smith’s team grew the Dell Technologies channel business by over 46 percent. They were responsible for onboarding and enabling over 143 new partners into the Dell federal channel program.
Enache played a key role on the implementation and launch of the Partner Marketing Portal. With this tool, Bitdefender partners are just one click away from all the campaigns created as marketing-in-a-box by the Bitdefender channel marketing teams.
Faletra oversees the c re at i o n o f integrated marketing programs that focus on strategic IT channel events and sponsorships. She works directly with new and prospective MSPs to communicate the Pax8 story and share its value-add with the IT channel community.
Faria’s teams produced more content, resources and campaigns that ultimately enabled partners to more successfully run (and grow) their managed services businesses. They also extended growth marketing activities and partner engagement programs.
Katy Farney
Joan Fazio
Gabriela Ferado
Jennifer Ferguson
Marlena Fernandez
Director, Channel Sales North America
Director, Partner Go To Market
Manager, Channel Sales
Director, Strategic Partner Marketing
Scale Computing
It has been a year of building the North America channel for Farney, who has taken a hands-on approach and worked with internal sales and marketing teams and directly with partners to devise meaningful programs.
Fa z i o b u i l t out centralized launch processes for the par tner go-to-market team to allow for simplified execution. She drove the strategy and executed crossfunctionally to enable partners to achieve bookings across key VMware solutions.
As part of the Cloud Service Provider team, Ferado’s main responsibilities were extending channel efforts to Latin America and helping teams understand the CSPs as another route to market. She also supported lead development activities.
F e r g u s o n ’s focus has been on cultivating partner marketing relationships with BlueVoyant’s strategic partners to enable joint go-to-market. This was realized through creating and executing joint activities and developing marketing and sales enablement tools.
Fernandez helped simplify and enhance channel engagement and enablement. That resulted in continued momentum as Scale Computing expanded international relationships and doubled its North American channel partnerships.
Viavi Solutions
34
Cisco Systems
Nvidia
VMware
McAfee
BlueVoyant
VP, Marketing
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_121-241.indd 6
6/8/20 5:08 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Maria A. Fernandez-Quera
Mariana Ferola
Crystal Ferreira
Therese Ferullo
Margaret Fetting
Executive Director, Sales
Sr. Channel Marketing Mgr., Information Display, Solar
VP, Global Channels
Citrix Systems
Latin America Brand, Partner Marketing Director
Xerox
Ribbon Communications
Ingram Micro
To support Citrix’s go-tomarket strategy, FernandezQuera launched new partner programs and promotions. Working with her team, she drove the incentive modeling process and defined the eligibility reporting framework.
Ferola established a bond with Xerox partners to generate better engagement. This was done through beginning a new conversation with them and launching a number of new tools and marketing programs.
Ferreira helped improve Ribbon’s global channel strategy by redefining the partner profile and journey to better support partner needs. She also restructured the organization to ensure comprehensive, collaborative support for all partners across the ecosystem.
Ferullo prioritized learning and listening, and encouraged her team to look beyond what they can do as a business unit to what Ingram Micro can do collectively for channel partners. She and the team began to go deep on the resources they can bring to customers to enable growth.
Fe t t i n g launched a partner program that increased channel revenue 20 percent with participating partners, and grew membership 25 percent or more. She also increased MDF spend by increasing communications with resellers.
Lucia Filanti
Addie Finch
Tara Fine
Charlene Fischer
Tina Fisher
Head of Industry Partner Marketing
Canada Channel Chief
VP, U.S. Channel Sales
Amazon Web Services
Director, Channel Sales, North, South America
Tufin Technologies
Executive Director, Vendor Management
Filanti established a new working model with global mixed-portfolio partners and helped them grow partner-led bookings via aligned investments and integrated demand generation.
Finch reenergized Tufin’s channel program by establishing a framework that turns traditional channel relationship-building into measurable results. Her goal is to build a funnel of incremental opportunities that wouldn’t exist without the channel.
Fine led efforts in Canada to help partners drive differentiated customer success and digital transformation. She also spearheaded the Canadian rollout of a new program to recognize partners for the value they bring to customers, which launched in February 2020.
Fischer built an organization from the ground up with a mission to grow revenue through solution providers. As part of building that organization, she made a commitment to hiring and mentoring the next generation of female sales leaders for Xerox.
Fisher’s accomplishments include onboarding and building new vendor relationships across a range of segments. Her responsibilities include manufacturer and category management, aligning manufacturer programs and strategies, and driving profitable growth.
Alyssa Fitzpatrick
Shelly Fitzpatrick
Kathleen Flaherty
Megan Flanagan
Willa Flemate
Channel Sales Manager
Sr. Director, Channel Services
Dir., Field, Partner Marketing
VP, Sales
Dir., Worldwide Partner Ops.
GM, Partner Co-Sell
VMware
Xerox
LG Electronics
D&H Distributing
Microsoft
Kaspersky Lab
Dell Technologies
Fitzpatrick designed, instrumented and delivered a comprehensive co-selling motion with the Microsoft ecosystem, driving $4.8 billion in partner-contracted revenue in the past year.
Fitzpatrick developed strong partnerships and expanded the channel’s knowledge of Kaspersky’s solutions via sales trainings and knowledge transfer. She also increased partner revenue by 25 percent, showing partners how to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.
F l a h e r t y ’s team delivered a sophisticated program tracker as the “one source of truth” for everything services for Dell Technologies partners, including tracking delivery performance metrics and competencies.
Flanagan cont r i b u te d to Arctic Wolf ’s transition to a 100 percent channel go-to-market strategy. She invested in building out the channel marketing function, which tripled in size over the past year, and designed tools to deepen engagement.
Flemate helped expand service offerings and partnered with numerous solution providers in new markets. Targeted growth areas in 2019 were gaming, security, AI and embedded solutions. The company saw continued growth in its overall business and partner community as a result.
Danielle Fletcher
Jenni Flinders
Sandra Flinders
Beth Foley
Micaela Foley
National Manager, Sales Operations
Global Channel Chief
Sr. Director, Recurring Value Programs
Director, Partner Marketing
Head of Global Channel Marketing, Americas Field Marketing
Fletcher created several programs that challenged Xerox’s monobranded channel partners to change their conversations with customers. The goal is to help them work smarter and sell more.
Flinders has helped global partners pivot toward VMware’s strategic priorities, letting partners engage with VMware based on their business model through a complete redesign of the program into Partner Connect.
Flinders focused on mapping programs to a life-cyclefirst approach, helping partners transform their business from “customer-focused”to “customercommitted.” She has also evolved the services partner program.
Foley teamed up with sales to “light up the channel.” They dissected the channel process and evaluated how it’s working today versus the ideal future state. This helped identify gaps and develop an improved process and workflow with regional directors.
Xerox
VMware
Cisco Systems
Arctic Wolf
Medigate
Synnex
CloudHealth by VMware
Foley has increased channel partner marketing engagement and more than tripled the amount of co-marketing activity generated by CloudHealth by VMware’s channel partners.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_242-362.indd 1
35
6/8/20 5:10 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Stephanie Ford
Director, Partner Programs Strategy, Planning
Cisco Systems
VP, Enterprise Sales, Southeastern U.S., Caribbean
Mitel
Director, Public Sector Partner Sales
Splunk
Alert Logic
Avaya
Ford leads a team that supports the creation and execution plans for evolving Cisco channel programs, including project management, regional governance, business planning, program documentation, partner implementation and enablement.
Since Ford started in this position eight y e a r s a g o, there’s been a remarkable shift as customers look for options in cloud and mobile. Everyone’s path is not the same. Her key focus is working with partners to address their specific needs and the needs of customers.
Forsythe established a team culture of transparency, accountability and professional and personal development. She also developed a go-to-market framework for the team with measurable metrics to drive growth for the partner community as well as Splunk.
Fox is building a partner on-boarding process that will result in faster activation. She also is leading the marketing team in a strategic, programmatic approach to demand generation with focus partners.
To b u i l d successful partnerships, Frederick focuses on customer business challenges. Her goal is to simplify engagement, helping partners’ business transformation to recurring revenue models with cloud and subscription services at the core.
Gail Fredrickson
Shiri Friedman
Emilee Frisbie
APC by Schneider Electric
Sr. Director, Channel, Field Marketing OutSystems
Regional Partner Account Manager
Tanja Froehlingsdorf
Kerri Fry
Director, Strategic Execution, Channel Marketing
Fredrickson embarked on a fact-finding mission to understand emerging e-commerce channel dynamics. She secured funding to launch an improvement project that will benefit and protect partners from margin erosion.
U n d e r F r i e d m a n ’s direction, channel marke t i n g w a s uniquely responsible for a 79 percent increase in deal registrations and a 64 percent increase in co-funded marketing activities.
Alaine Fulton Managing Partner
Safe Haven Solutions
Alyssa Fox
Lisa Frederick
Sr. Director, Partner Marketing
Sr. Director, Channel Sales, DMRs
COO
Sr. Dir., Global Channel Marketing
IGNW
Frisbie created campaigns and programs to expand Juniper’s visibility and generate net-new customers and pipeline for the partner community. She is focused on building a stronger co-brand (Juniper and partner) in key vertical markets.
Froehlingsdorf is working to generate pipeline through and with Rubrik partners and update the partner infrastructure to improve ease of business and deliver better margins for a successful channel program.
Fry works to maintain a customer-centric approach with OEM partners as well as end clients. One of her top priorities this past year was creating a streamlined process for managing and interacting with channels efficiently.
Kelli Furrer
Hilary Gadda
Jonna Gage
Jennifer Gallego
VP, Federal Channel, Alliances
Director, National Channel Development
Sr. Director, GTM, Cloud, Data Center Transformation
EVP, Channel Sales, West
Rubrik
Avant Communications
Furrer transitioned the federal team to a focused distribution model, allowing partners to solve government challenges with consistent purchasing and better access to Dell Technologies’ endto-end technology. The model provides an important channel.
A s d i re c t o r o f n at i o n a l channel development, Gadda’s responsibility at TPx Communications is to bring new programs, trainings and processes to drive growth in revenue in addition to partner participation.
Insight Enterprises
G a g e d rove value and market growth in Insight ’s Cloud, Data Center Transformation division by continuing to evolve its goto-market strategy, programs, services and teams. Those efforts helped secure client wins and expanded partner agreements.
Gallego spearheaded Avant’s growth globally and made several technological enhancements within the Avant ecosystem. This created true business advisory services that added value for Avant’s trusted advisers and those they serve.
Patricia Gallup
Angelina Gambina
Akila Ganapathy
Florencia Gannio
Tia Garaas
Founder, Chair, Chief Administrative Officer
Global Channel Sales Lead, Emerging Technologies
Sr. Dir., Worldwide Channel Services Strategy
Sr. Marketing Manager
Channel Program Communications Manager
Gallup’s efforts over the past year centered on laying the groundwork for Connection’s continued success by modernizing the workforce, strengthening partnerships and reinforcing a culture of innovation.
Gambina underscored how important it is to listen to the needs of partners and value their input. Key to being “joint with partners” is to create programs that continue to strengthen their value-add to the end customer.
Ganapathy has embarked on a mission to bring greater visibility to Palo Alto Networks’ channel services business. She also is driving a project to scale support services through its authorized support centers.
Gannio played an instrumental role in Ingram Micro’s H2H (Human to Human) Business as a new distribution model emerged, increasing the Digital IQ at Agency Ingram Micro. She also built a specific team to engage with digital capabilities.
Connection
Dell Technologies
Juniper Networks
TPx Communications
Fulton has always been a firm believer in the channel and has brought attention to its value through marketing and video. As managing partner at Safe Haven Solutions, she continues to elevate her relationships with industry channel leaders.
36
Mae Forsythe
Cindra Ford
Commvault
Palo Alto Networks
Ingram Micro
Thales
With Thales’ acquisition of Gemalto last year, Garaas was challenged to work in duplicate systems and keep legacy Gemalto and Thales partners informed and engaged about program news as the companies merged.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_242-362.indd 2
6/8/20 5:11 PM
ADVERTISEMENT
RSA Builds Resiliency In Disruptive Times Q. How can RSA solutions help channel partners and their customers reduce the impact of business interruption?
A. In the last few months, RSA has experienced increased demand as our customers
look to us and our partners to help rapidly scale and secure large remote workforces and enable business resiliency. Together with our partners, we offer best-in-class, business-driven security solutions to help customers mitigate the risks associated with business disruptions.
Q. What feedback did you get from RSA partners on how RSA solutions helped customers maintain business continuity and minimize business interruption during the coronavirus pandemic?
A. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from our partners. RSA worked
tirelessly alongside our partners – including nights and weekends – to fulfill customer orders as quickly as possible. Our partners remain strong advocates for their customers, and we have been receptive and agile in turning these asks into reality. One solution that immediately helped both our partners and customers is the Business Continuity Option with RSA SecurID Access. It allows businesses to quickly expand the number of users without increasing their multi-factor authentication budget to accommodate for the rapid increase of users working remotely.
Q. How will RSA help customers continue to move forward in the second half of this year?
A. As trusted experts in our industry, RSA takes its role in helping partners and
customers adapt to their new normal extremely seriously. RSA is committed to ensuring that our customers and partners succeed and continue to innovate, solving for their industry’s biggest problems. Our team has quickly rolled out a number of resources to help partners identify and solve their customers’ evolving business needs. Our recent “Be the Trusted Expert” webinar series – which provided advice for partner-to-customer conversations about how to succeed in the new normal – had record attendance. We will continue to provide guidance and support to both our partners and customers as the business climate changes and unfolds.
Michelle Pas
Director of Channel Marketing & Global Programs
”
RSA has allowed me to develop as a leader and showcase RSA as a positive influence for women leaders.
”
Shanade Cufe
”
Senior Analyst, Global Channel Communications At RSA, ‘Winning Together’ is more than just a pillar of our code of conduct; it’s a mindset that every team member truly embodies and lives.
”
Expand Your Portfolio. Increase Your Profitability. Exceed Your Visit rsa.com/en-us/channel-partner for more information. Customers’ Expectations. Learn more at star2star.com.
2020_WOTC_Advertorial_RSA.indd 1
6/8/20 4:36 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Alejandra Garcia
Holly Garcia
Country Director
VP, North America
Sophos
Aten Technology
Macall Gardner Service Manager
Datto
Margaret Gardner
Kimber Garrett
Global Partner Marketing, Communications, Solution Partners, Partner Programs
Director, Channels, Western Region
DXC Technology
Garcia has built a strong managed partner ecosystem in Mexico with a focus on providing value to the channel ecosystem through training and enablement. Her goal is to help partners become cybersecurity consultants so they can better protect customers.
Under Garcia’s l e a d e r s h i p, Aten remained committed to its 100 percent channel strategy. She built an investment plan to hire Pro AV presales engineers to support channel partners’ enablement and growth and implemented a lead program for partners.
Gardner worked crossfunc tionally to synthesize partner feedback into actionable improvements in Datto’s products, improving wait times by 60 percent. She also helped to improve the company’s global delivery strategy.
Gardner was the creative direc tor for D X C ’s n e w Partner Experience initiative that will create a single interactive interface to tell the DXC partner story. It will be used at all DXC customerfacing centers.
C o r e l i g h t ’s channel organization is comprised of a mission-driven team with a competitive desire to achieve goals. Garrett has helped make many positive contributions, resulting in net-new business, pipeline growth and a winning channel program.
Cherie Gartner
Christine Gassman
Maureen Gaumer
Sheena Gaynes
Carolee Gearhart
VP, Global Head of Partners, Third-Party Advisors
Director, Business Development, Strategy
Datto
Sr. Director, Global Partner Ecosystem, Program Marketing
Dell Technologies
Sr. Director, Global Channel Sales
X1
Google Cloud
Gar tner established a new partner framework that included a strategic program office, partner-led co-innovation office and enablement 360 initiatives. She mobilized the teams aligned to the “One DXC strategy” to drive effectiveness and cohesion.
Gassman is an advocate f o r D a t t o’s managed service provider community. She ensures that Datto’s MSP partner base is wellrepresented among the company’s executive team members, who are driving innovation and growth.
G a u m e r ’s biggest accomplishment was leading her North America team to have a maniacal focus on strategic objectives. These objectives included delivering pipeline and driving operational excellence in MDF management.
Gaynes focused on partner on-boarding, enhanced the deal registration program and redefined partner tiers. She is collaborating with X1’s marketing team to update the company’s Partner Program Guide.
Gearhart advocated to get partners fully integrated into Google Cloud Sales Kickoff for the first time, driving tight alignment with direct sales and marketing leadership to fully embed partnersintoGoogleCloud’sgo-tomarket motions.
Diane Genova
Andrada Georgescu
Jaimie Giarrusso
Janet Giesen
Renee Gillaspia
Global Partner Program Development Mgr. Bitdefender
Director, Global Marketing, EcoXpert Partner Program
VP, Operations, Programs
Channel Account Manager
DXC Technology
Partner Executive, Global Systems Integrators
Nvidia
Schneider Electric
Metallic, A Commvault Venture
VP, Worldwide Channel Sales, Global SMB Sales
LogicMonitor
Genova focused on building joint solutions for each of the global systems integrators in the portfolio and a go-to-market strategy around them. She also established an artificial intelligence offering with these partners, incorporating Nvidia technology and their services.
Over the past year, one of G e o rg e s c u’s to p a cco m plishments was that she made it easy for partners to do business with Bitdefender. She also focused on creating a new MSP program for the company.
Giarrusso leads the global marketing strategy for the EcoXpert Partner Program, responsible for increasing global brand awareness and social footprint. EcoXpert partners are integral to business growth.
G i e s e n designed and launched a 100 percent channel-based sales program for Metallic, Commvault’s new data protection SaaS venture. She designed the distribution model; developed partner messaging; and recruited and on-boarded distributors and partners.
Gillaspia onboarded four large solution providers to the LogicMonitor Partner Network. To accelerate momentum, she drove leads to partners, which resulted in mutual trust and a multimilliondollar pipeline in a short time.
Amanda Giroux
Melissa Glick
Mandy Glidewell
Tiffany Goddard
Gail Goebel
Director, Alliances
CEO
Director, Marketing
Director
National Channel Sales Director
ProcessUnity
G i r o u x launched the ProcessUnity Partner Program this year. She also on-boarded more than 25 new partners to the program. Over 20 percent are in EMEA, a new channel territory for ProcessUnity that has already yielded strong results.
38
Corelight
Think Network Technologies
Adapture Technology Group
Glick’s focus has been more on working “on” the company instead of “for” the company. She built a training platform for the sales team that resulted in 34 percent revenue growth over the previous year.
G l i d e w e l l ’s team worked with sales operations to develop process improvements to communications and the CRM system. These changes have made tracking marketing activity and campaigns much more streamlined and measurable.
Carahsoft Technology
Goddard led negotiations and was a key contributor to sales and marketing planning for the 10 companies added to the CEGIS team. She worked to develop all sales programs including call coaching, research programs and overall call campaign strategy.
Zebra Technologies
Goebel took a leadership role on various tiger teams to take on new initiatives. One key highlight is the double-digit growth in health care, which was driven, in part, by the strategies implemented by these teams.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_242-362.indd 3
6/8/20 5:11 PM
ADVERTISEMENT
How To
Succeed
by Seeing the Whole Story
NetApp Knows What It Means To Partner For The Long Haul Q. Within half a year of taking the helm as NetApp’s Channel Chief, you’re leading through unprecedented times. Tell us what you’re doing. A. The biggest issue facing partners and their customers — everyone — right now
is obviously COVID-19. We have a responsibility to be a good partner. That means taking all the necessary steps to keep our partners’ businesses healthy during crisis mode and laying a foundation for a sustainable longer-term model. We’ve put programs in place to support partners, including extended credit terms to help with cash flow and minimize business disruption. We’ve extended the eligibility for achievement in partner growth programs and certification expiries. We’re providing relief to partners who lost investments on NetApp-funded onsite events. We recognize that business won’t be the same and we’re actively helping partners adapt to new sales engagement models, what we are calling “social selling” — when they can’t be face-to-face with customers.
Q. End customers need support from their providers, both from a technology standpoint and a financial standpoint. How is NetApp helping there?
A. The satisfaction of end customers is every bit as important to us as it is to our part-
ners. Together with our partners, we’re helping customers navigate uncharted waters. We’re getting products to them, helping them support increased virtual workloads and fully optimizing their investments in NetApp products, including the built-in tools that support data security, remote access and virtual desktop infrastructure. Business continuity is essential during disruptive times. Partners who enable it will build customer loyalty. NetApp partners can fortify customer relationships with our business continuity plan that focuses on three key areas. First, preparedness through proactive protection and optimization of an organization’s hybrid cloud infrastructure using NetApp® Cloud Insights and NetApp Active IQ. Next, scalable infrastructure that provides secure, remote access with Azure NetApp Files and Cloud Volumes, NetApp® HCI and FlexPod. Last, availability of data and applications across clouds and between on-premise storage and cloud infrastructure with NetApp® ONTAP®.
Q. What’s new in the area of programs, incentives and other go-to-market support mechanisms?
Jim Elder,
”
Channel Chief, NetApp Americas
Business continuity is essential during disruptive times. Partners who enable it will build customer loyalty. NetApp partners can fortify customer relationships with our business continuity plan that focuses on three key areas.
”
A. Simplification and ease of doing business are important to partners. We’re always trying to reduce friction through streamlined quoting, simplified configurations and pricing. We’re also looking to help our partners increase profitability. Our new Active IQ Digital Advisor helps proactively manage the health of a system and helps partners add on their services. Exciting changes are coming to the Unified Partner Program this summer. We’re simplifying, expanding, investing in and differentiating our program and look forward to sharing details soon.
NetApp is ready to enable business continuity and progress. Learn how at thedatafabriccenter.com.
NetApp_CRN_June2020_HowTo.indd 1
6/7/20 1:57 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Heather Gonzalez VP, Marketing, Strategic Alliances
Sarah Goodchild Dir., Worldwide Partner Sales
Sr. Channel Marketing Mgr.
Aqua Security
Gonzalez Cagle focused on revamping the communications strategy and partner outreach. This included planning thought leadership initiatives, developing partner programming, and increasing Vonage’s social strategy with the channel.
Maya Gordon Channel Marketing Manager
Technologent
Gonzalez put a lot of emphasis on what she calls her 4 Cs: communication, collaboration, community and celebration. She enhanced corporate and vendor communications, resulting in deeper collaboration and a stronger partner community.
Sommer Goodknecht
Stacey Goodman Director, U.S. Distribution
Manager, Channel Marketing
Lenovo
Goodchild created the Aqualink Partner Program and supporting infrastructure that in 2019 drove 46 percent of the company’s total business through the channel. She also manages the global team supporting Aqua’s reseller and consulting partners.
Goodknecht spent more time out in the field with partners to hear their feedback and learn how to continue strengthening the program. This was primarily done through Eaton’s Partner Summit, regional road shows and other channel events.
As a critical part of Lenovo’s channel strategy, Goodman’s focus was on creating more synergy between distribution partners and the inside channel sales organization. Her goal was to find new ways to leverage distribution and create better engagement between the two groups.
Sara Gormally
Lisa Graham
Kelly Gramajo
Erika Grande
VAR Field Sales Manager
Director, Global Partner Communications
Sr. Global Channel Marketing Manager
Sr. Business Manager
G r a h a m’s team was instrumental in helping prepare partners for the introduction of new Xerox products, software, services and programs with information and value propositions tailored just to them. She also introduced quarterly Partner Playbooks.
Gramajo led the charge in implementing a global channel launch framework to accelerate and standardize companywide product launches with a channel-first imperative. She also developed kits that empower content teams to deliver channel-ready materials.
Grande is responsible for driving execution of critical sales initiatives while generating opportunities for new customer acquisition and profitable growth. She’s keenly focused on elevating the experience of customers, partners and employees within the channel ecosystem.
Victoria Grey
Vonage
Eaton
AlgoSec
D&H Distributing
Gordon raised the company’s awareness of the importance of co-marketing activities in engaging channel partners, becoming channel-friendly and fully committed to supporting partners in their efforts to generate success and provide value to customers.
Gormally has been focused on developi n g D & H ’s K-12 business, including compelling solutions that enhance learning environments. D&H programs are based on feedback from partners who are entrenched in the company’s K-12 Advisory Board.
Tina Gravel
Coleen Greco
Natalie Gregory
Lauren Grenier
Director, North America Partner Marketing
VP, Sales
Marketing Director
Granite
Aparavi
Appgate was formed in January 2020. Gravel is now launching the Appgate Partner Network and reformulating and rolling up contracts, programs and systems from four brands/ products/solutions: Appgate SDP, Total Fraud Protection, Immunity and Brainspace.
Greco worked closely with channel par tners to optimize and prioritize their demand generation plans to drive leads further and ultimately deliver more pipeline to sales. The goal isn’t necessarily more activities or more leads, it’s higher-quality leads.
Gregory advanced C a r a h s o f t ’s channel business by creating trusted partnerships with resellers and systems integrators. She also strives to allow partners to expand their line card by making introductions to complementary software manufacturers.
Grenier helped G r a n i t e’s channel organization grow from $223 million to $265 million through marketing strategies, including social media engagement with prospective agents, sales enablement with co-branded materials for new partners and data analytics for validation.
Grey promoted Aparavi’s partner program at events and via digital marketing to prospective partners, signing up many in the process. She also set up co-marketing campaigns, and helped to design and implement co-branded marketing activities to drive new opportunities for partners.
Cristina Greysman
Jennifer Griesinger
Sarah Griffin
Karen Griffith
Jackie Groark
Partner Strategist, U.S. Public Sector
AT&T
Director, GTM Programs, Global Alliances Dell Technologies
Director, Global Partner Marketing
Director, Security/CISO
Amazon Web Services
Director, Technology, Partner Solutions
Hitachi Vantara
Greysman built a new partner community of consulting and technology partners that demonstrates the capacity, capability and commitment to develop AWS-based “superpowers,” offerings and goto-market strategies.
Griesinger led the creation of the technology road map and strategy for the Alliance Portal and drove the delivery of the refreshed Partner Exchange Portal. Both efforts will increase self-service for AT&T’s solution providers.
Griffin worked with peers to begin building the foundation for a simplified partner program. She sees partners diversifying the ways they interface with customers and wants to make it easier to partner with Dell Technologies.
Griffith increased agility, maximized profitability and improved partner self-service. She also introduced new training and certifications, financial incentives and inside sales support for Hitachi Vantara partners.
Groark has worked to ex pa n d t h e Veristor security practice to embrace the innovative security solutions of over 80 vendor partners. Together with Veristor partners, she has built the professional services offerings that provide the security foundations customers require.
SVP, Global Channels, Alliances
Appgate
40
Marcela Gonzalez Cagle
VMware
Xerox
Carahsoft Technology
Mimecast
Honeywell
VP, Channel Marketing
Veristor
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_242-362.indd 4
6/8/20 5:12 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Joan Groleau
Sara Grofcsik
Cindy Grogan
Dir., Sales, QSR/C-Store Team
VP, Global Alliances, Channels
Akamai
Enterprise company
Dropbox
Grofcsik fostered relationships to help give her organization an increase in overall sales revenue in the U.S. and globally. Through these relationships, she showcased how Samsung can continue to be a trusted partner.
G rogan has implemented strategic initiatives enabling par tners to sell and deliver services directly to their customers. She helps ensure that more than 75 percent of Flexera’s business is influenced through partners.
New to Akamai, two of Groleau’s early initiatives are a DigitalFirst toolkit developed for partners that includes key enablement videos and on-demand curriculums as well as dynamic Campaigns-in-a-Box that can be used stand-alone or in the field with Akamai.
Organizations want flexibility in how they obtain and support their edge infrastructure. Grothjan has led efforts to give partners the ability to do just that, by helping to define the partner go-to-market strategy for Network as a Service.
Dropbox is a relative newcomer to the channel. Guthmann has helped drive greater visibility internally for the role that solution providers play in driving growth for the company and the opportunity this route-tomarket represents.
Adriana Gutierrez
Rachele Gyorffy
Tracy Hali
Alyssa Hall
Morgan Hall
Latin America Channel Director
Director, Channel Partnerships, West
Sr. Dir., Order Management
VP, Marketing, Business Development
Distribution, Events Marketing Manager
Hall is responsible for all marketing efforts for Aten, which includes working with sales and product management to ensure promotions and marketing efforts are being delivered and received appropriately.
Samsung Electronics America
Infor
Flexera
Sr. Director, Global Channel Marketing
Intelisys, a ScanSource
Donna Grothjan
Diane Guthmann
VP, Worldwide Channels
Director, Global Channel Marketing
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard
company
Gutierrez leads a team that supports partners to become cloud sellers, developing tools and events to help them see their own business in a different way. The team has built a results-driven ecosystem by supporting business planning to ensure alignment.
Cloudflare
CDI
Gyorffy built out the go-to market strategy for two of C l o u d f l a re’s strategic global partners. She managed a team to scale these partners with a focus on best practices, enablement and partner-sourced revenue.
Hali worked on several key projects to enhance the channel partner experience, specifically regarding the order management team. Projects have ranged from evaluating existing processes and writing new ones to ensuring accurate records.
H a l l ’s m i s sion to help increase CDI’s partner relationships has proven a successful and gamechanging strategy. As the face of CDI’s channel relationships, Hall works directly with each partner to determine the topics, campaign and events that will support them.
Sabrina Hall
Aten Technology
Director, Worldwide Channel Business Development
Tanya Hall
Terri Hall
Stephanie Hallford
Samara Halterman
Director, Marketing, Partner Programs Decisive Technologies
VP, Global Strategic Alliances
Red Hat
GM, Business Client Platforms; VP, Client Computing Group
Intel
Groupware Technology
Hall led a crossfunctional team to launch the Lexmark Industry Advantage program and spearheaded the charge for a renewed Lexmark channel value proposition. She also developed an EMEA channel/enterprise collaboration program.
Hall created a custom IT inbound trade show for local c l i e nt s a n d technology partners. She also created a training platform with partners for sales and technical teams to gain knowledge and peer-to-peer support.
Hall focused on partner ecosystem synergy planning for IBM’s Red Hat acquisition, which closed in July 2019. The goal of this joint Red Hat/IBM team was to build a plan to ensure the continued growth and success of Red Hat’s 5,000-plus partners in a postacquisition world.
Hallford leads the team responsible for helping partners monetize solutions for commercial customers. She has worked to create a platform partners can use to build new revenue streams.
Halterman expanded on sales and par tner engagements and increased net-new logos for new customers by 20 percent, which also set a new high for Groupware of total net-new logos. She also increased pipeline by 30 percent.
Teri Hamann
Sabine Hammer
Megan Hanley
Eileen Hansen
Connie Hanson
SVP, Global Head of Partner Experience
Lenovo Global Technology Germany GmbH
Sr. Director, Business Operations, Chief of Staff, Sales Academy CenturyLink
National Account Manager
SAP
Director, Channel, Data Center Group, DACH
Channel Operations Programs Manager
H a m a n n implemented a common partner operating model and a harmonized partner journey map by partner personas. She also launched a partner intimacy strategy to holistically capture feedback and create a 360-degree view of partners.
Hammer gave Lenovo Data Center a face in the channel by launching the Elevate Program to increase partner breadth with dedicated local activities. This resulted in hundreds of new partners in the region.
Hanley created a number of key initiatives around CenturyLink’s top strategic partners and connected partnerships to data. She also focused on at-risk accounts and turned them into positive and profitable partnerships.
Lexmark
APC by Schneider Electric
E- commerce and software were strategic focuses for APC by Schneider Electric’s channel organization in the past year. By executing on these initiatives in the National Solution Provider channel, Hansen has helped move those goals forward.
VP, Marketing
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Hanson has helped drive innovation in the Partner Ready for Networking program, including new certifications for key solution areas, new training opportunities and expanded benefits for Medallion partners.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_242-362.indd 5
41
6/8/20 5:12 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Alexandra Harding
Director, Cloud Partner Marketing
Dell Technologies
Dir., Vendor Management, Business, Consumer Solutions
Ingram Micro
Global Chief, Worldwide Partner Programs, Strategy
Hanson’s goal with the formation of her new team was how to make it easier for partners to recognize their value and opportunities through the creation of partnercentric plans with a clearly articulated opportunity.
Harding built and continues to lead a team of innovators who work together to help increase relevance in the industry and drive success for vendors and mutual customers.
Holly Hartman Niedzielski
Sara Harold
Alexis Hart
Sr. Channel Marketing Manager
Director, Sales, Strategic Accounts
Harding is the chief executive leader of Partner Advantage, Google Cloud’s partner program. She engineered worldwide program design, incentives, partner relationship management infrastructure, partner portals, support, and a global partner management model.
Harold worked with Mimecast North America channel leadership to develop, implement and manage channel incentives to increase yield for partners and Mimecast. She also worked with partner account manager counterparts to strategically invest in partner initiatives.
Hart focused on the channel management team and market strategy. Through development programs in both sales and leadership, she strengthened the channel and positioned the company to serve an ever-growing national client portfolio.
Laurie Harvey
Shauna Hassett
Bronwyn Hastings
Janette Hausler
Director, Channel Marketing
VP, Marketing
SVP, Worldwide Channel Sales, Ecosystems
Google Cloud
Director, Event Marketing, Partner Communities
Jabra
Carousel Industries
Hartman Niedzielski expanded the influence and reach of the SMB Alliance and Trust X Alliance communities. She is investing more in resources and programs to help community members with go-to-market strategies.
Har vey was instrumental in building an Alliance practice within North America. Working closely with sales peers, she helped develop new go-to-market processes that were key to the region achieving double-digit partner revenue growth.
Alison Haynes
Ingram Micro
SVP, Marketing
IntelePeer
42
Nina Harding
Tina Hanson
Mimecast
Schneider Electric
VP, Americas Marketing, Global Partner Marketing
Citrix Systems
UiPath
Hassett evolved C a r o u s e l ’s “Always On” virtual technology forum, bringing together thousands of technologists through the “Always On” webinar series, podcast series and “pizza cast” series, a combination of live and virtual events.
Hastings is responsible for setting and executing on the strategy, direction and priorities for the entire Citrix global ecosystem of partners. She helps partners profitably grow as Citrix transitions joint customers through their cloud journeys.
Hausler created a partnerfirst mindset by educating UiPath on how partner capabilities support company goals, driving partner recruitment and demand generation, and sharing partner marketing results broadly.
Chew Peng Healey
LouLou Healey
Jennifer Healy
Jennifer Heard
Dir., Field, Channel Marketing, APJC, Middle East, Africa, Turkey
Sr. Dir., Head of Americas Field, Channel, Alliances Marketing
Director, Channel, Field Marketing
Turbonomic
Extreme Networks
Commvault
IntelePeer has seen over 40 percent growth in its channel and strong interest in digital transformation initiatives. Haynes focused on enabling partners to move into solution-selling. She leads the team responsible for partner messaging, training, tools and campaigns.
Healey enabled continuous engagement with internal and external stakeholders, driving streamlined communication and transparency across the channel network.
In the short time Healey has been with Co m mva u l t, she has improved how the company engages partners in the field from a partner marketing perspective. She also introduced a “partner-first” approach to field marketing activities.
Healy has been closely i nvo l ve d i n Ricoh’s channel transformation in recent years, and in 2019 took a leadership role in the planning, organizing and execution of ConvergX, the Ricoh Family Group’s Partner Leadership Forum.
Leading Turb o n o m i c ’s cloud strategy, Heard garnered support from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft along with their ecosystems. As a result, in less than six months, Turbonomic became a key ISV for both cloud providers, showcasing and aligning with new strategies.
Kristine Hedlund
Laura Hees
Marleen Hendrikx
Rhonda Henley
Lisa Heritage McLin
Manager, Agent Channel
Cox Business
Partner
RedLegg
EMEA Distribution Leader
Sr. Dir., Global Partner Org.
Cisco Systems
Rackspace
The goal for Cox Business’ channel is to continue to assist in the recruitment of partners and train them on Cox Cloud and managed services. Hedlund started this initiative by adding Master Agent Managers.
Hees created R e d L e g g ’s channel partner program, defining requirements and documenting processes and procedures. Key accomplishments have been onboarding a select group of VARs and keeping the focus on training.
Hendrikx has led EMEA distribution initiatives, driving alignment, increased profitability and a better-qualified distribution community. Key to this has been the distribution sales team, the strategic distribution framework and business plan tools.
Since joining the Global Partner Organization team, Henley’s initial focus has been to drive simplicity and increased accountability in the organizational structure. She has also worked to define a success metric for each of Cisco’s strategic partners.
Heritage McLin helped gamify R a c k s p a c e’s partner portal to incentivize partners to enjoy training and learn new products to sell, which increased their business and the Rackspace partnership. She also launched a new partner ecosystem strategy for partners to expand sales.
Nutanix
Ricoh USA
SVP, Cloud Alliances
VP, Alliances, Channel Chief
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_242-362.indd 6
6/8/20 5:13 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Elise Hernandez
Cindy Herndon
CEO
Ideal System Solutions
VP, Global Channel Strategy, Programs, Operations
Hernandez ’s list of priorities includes strengthening and building channel relationships for Ideal System Solutions, which focuses on government, education, health care and enterprise clients. She has also been honored for innovation by the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce.
Michelle Herring President
Mary Hester
Sharan Hildebrand
CEO
VP, Strategic Alliances, North America
Riverbed
CMIT Solutions of St. Charles/Chesterfield
LAN Systems
Herndon redesigned Riverbed’s partner investment strategy with an eye toward holistic business development, creating a new Business Investment Fund. Her aim was to help partners fund their training, resources and marketing efforts to grow their Riverbed practices.
Herring’s focus over the past year has been to provide a mix of growth and improved efficiency. She built upon the company’s prior marketing plan and implemented several processes, workflows and reports to improve efficiency throughout the organization.
Hester focused on profitability by implementing operational improvements that returned labor hours, enabling LAN Systems to support more managed service clients with current staff. She also grew recurring revenue over 40 percent in 2019.
The spirit of “doing good while doing well” drives much of Hildebrand’s channel activity and focus as she works to deliver creative and unique experiences to channel partners and customers that differentiate Hitachi Solutions in the market and elevate its brand.
Christine Hilts
Kelly Hiscoe
Diana Hite
Kristina Hodge
Kristyn Hogan
Director, Sales Enablement
Global Channel Operations Mgr.
Regional Area Director
Star2Star Communications
Sr. Partner Marketing Mgr.
Eset
Dir., Meraki Channel, Distribution
This past year, Hilts designed programs to reduce rampup time of new sales leaders. She also enhanced the overall acumen of tenured account executives to increase the effectiveness of their sales techniques with respect to all Insight Intelligent Technology Solutions.
Since the Carbon Black acquisition by VMware, Hiscoe has been at the forefront of channel integration efforts and continues to lead multiple channel integration workstreams to ensure a smooth transition into VMware programs and systems.
Hite developed stronger alliances to help Star2Star partners evolve and grow their businesses in a cloud-centric world. As a result she gained a deepened understanding of the market as a whole and ensured technology solutions adapted to meet partners’ unique needs.
Hodge worked to create meaningful educational content to help VARs and MSPs tackle marketing challenges. Her webinar series “Understanding the Buyer’s Journey” provided partners with the business acumen necessary to market to end users effectively, considering the vastly complicated B2B buying process.
Hogan championed Meraki’s inclusion in the Cisco Managed Services Program—with over 200 partners enrolled—and also created a broad-based partner enablement roadshow that touched over 2,000 partners. In addition, she established talent development best practices, all of which contributed to Americas revenue growth.
Aretha Hooks
Carrie Hopkins
Kristi Houssiere
Robyn Howes
Sabine Howest
Sr. Channel Manager
Keysight Technologies
Sr. Director, National Channel
FireEye
President
Certified Nets
Ingram Micro
Hooks managed a team that launched specialized marketing programs to drive growth opportunities for both the distributor and its partners. Her objective is to support D&H’s 2020 focus areas such as cloud, K-12, Esports, ProAV/collaboration and infrastructure.
Hopkins believes success comes from right-sizing the channel through targeted recruitment, allowing for high-touch program management with strong internal relationships. She was a key contributor to the global team that developed a new discount structure for active partners.
Houssiere has directed her team in creating incentives that partners can layer together to increase their profitability with FireEye, along with new enablement and marketing offerings that help educate partners and drive market demand.
Howes has b e e n h e avily focused on improving Certified Nets’ internal security stack as well as the security offerings it provides to clients. In addition to technical changes, she has driven the company’s evolution as a provider of user education and business policy writing services.
Howest calls the worldwide introduction of Ingram Micro Centers of Excellence “a rewarding undertaking.” The distributors’ four new centers allow it to build out, operate and deliver pre- and post-sale services as a unified, international team.
Chessie Huber
Brenda Hudson
Barb Huelskamp
Heather Hulse
Stephanie Hunter
Strategic Business Development Manager
VP, Sales, Sales Enablement, Learning, Development
Sr. Leader, ISV Partner Development
Director, National Sales
Dir., ProAV, IT Distribution
Hulse is credited with implementing unique programs to drive revenue and overseeing the worldwide deployment for ViewSonic Interactive Flat Panels. She has worked to strengthen partnerships and made ViewSonic a highly sought-after brand to do business with.
Hunter is a key channel evangelist within Harman, working to establish strategic programs and processes where none existed before. She collaborated across multiple teams to create a cohesive go-to-market strategy, leading to growth with several of its distributors.
Insight Enterprises
Sr. Director, Marketing
D&H Distributing
VMware Carbon Black
Star2Star Communications
Insight Enterprises
Amazon Web Services
Huber expanded her channel expertise over the last year, working with resellers, agents, white-label and wholesale partners from a variety of industries and backgrounds. She has fostered better relationships with partners and her team to create better opportunities within the channel.
Hudson created a go-to-market strategy, sales motion and e n a b l e m e nt tools to ignite Insight’s inside sales team, resulting in both sequential and year-over-year growth and budget achievement.
Huelskamp led a team responsible for growing strategic ISVs’ revenue and increasing new pipeline creation, stemming from building prescriptive joint go-to-market plans and increasing partner competencies and demand generation.
ViewSonic
Hitachi Solutions
Cisco Systems
VP, Global Partner Engagement
Harman Professional Solutions: A Samsung Company
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_363-482.indd 1
43
6/8/20 5:14 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Piper Hyman
Director, Strategy, Execution
Sr. Manager, Channel Operations
Director, Worldwide VAR, Distribution Programs
Hunter Har t drives strategic initiatives focused on acquisition integration and go-to-market effectiveness. Since the acquisition of Continuum by ConnectWise, she has helped combine the strongest aspects of each company to ensure the best experience possible for partners.
H y m a n completed significant projects, including the launch of a new partner program. She also supported the rollout of new refinements to training and enablement, an automated approval process for deal registration and new partner support mechanisms.
Denise Iverson VP, Marketing
ConnectWise
Kelly Ireland
Irena Islam
CEO
Global OEM Partner Lead
Irby had a hand in building governance processes related t o Ve e a m’s program, simplifying and updating its routes to enablement and developing new competencies and specializations to enhance its program. The company also updated all partner-facing messaging on its website.
I r e l a n d focused CB Technologies on staying the course to build engineered solutions around Industrial IoT, OT-IT convergence, edge compute and artificial intelligence/big data with an emphasis on high-performance computing and data analytics.
With a channelfirst mentality, Islam deployed strategies around product enhancements, global partner enablement and operational efficiencies. This, paired with Islam’s relentless efforts to earn trust, led to annual revenue growth of 130 percent in 2019 with one of its largest OEMs.
Lauren Jackson
Maria Jacobson
Kimberly Jaecksch
Sandy Janes
Sr. Manager, Enablement
Sr. Director, Global Partner Programs, Enablement
Public Sector Distribution Account Manager
Sr. Director, Worldwide Partner Programs, Operations
Jaecksch ensures distribution works with all teams within FireEye Public Sector, which allows it to prioritize initiatives and activities that help the sales team build pipeline and close opportunities. This led to increased revenue, increased leads and more success in marketing activities.
In the last year, Janes received an enthusiastic response to her professional services program, built on the success of her incentives with the launch of the “Triple Play” stackable spiff and led Partner Summits in two regions.
Forescout Technologies
Veeam
CB Technologies
Cloudflare
Ramp
Vonage
Iverson’s influence spans beyond marke ting into every element of Ramp’s business. She is called on for her ability to solve Ramp’s biggest challenges. Last year, she served as interim vice president of sales, expanded its partner program and helped design the next generation of solutions.
Jackson has initiated dramatic improvements to Vonage’s channel partner experience within the post-sales organization by establishing and leading a dedicated channel enablement team to focus on partner engagement and cross-functional communication enhancements.
Fortinet
Fortinet’s new Engage Partner Program introduced specializations that enable partners to differentiate themselves and quickly respond to market demand. Jacobson’s team developed the campaigns to support the adoption and promotion of the new specializations.
FireEye
Rebecca Javens
Tricia Jennett
Danielle Jennings
Haley Jensen
Ashley Jentz
Director, Global Pathways Marketing
Sr. Manager, Partner Marketing, Enablement
Inside Channel Account Manager
Associate Manager, Partner Success
VP, Americas Channels
AppDynamics
Infoblox
NetApp
Citrix Systems
Zix | AppRiver
Datto
Javens built the Western U.S. channel practice, developing strategic partners in key markets. She also leads AppDynamics’ emerging markets practice for the Americas, where she is building a Latin American team and launching a distribution pilot in Mexico.
N e t A p p entered the fiscal year with a partner-led s t rate g y to expand its channel business. Jennett’s contribution was launching a demand-generation program for passing leads to channel partners to drive incremental commercial business at scale.
Jennings created a worldwide, integrated channel acceleration program to drive partner-sourced pipeline and bookings and delivered partner enablement for Citrix channel platforms and programs to maximize usage, effectiveness and ROI.
In the past year, Jensen helped Zix | AppRiver grow by bringing on new partners and adding new revenue streams for existing partners. She also worked to develop a deeper understanding of partners’ business problems.
Over the past year, Jentz has welcomed, onboarded and built partnerships with hundreds of Datto’s partners. Her goal is to provide all resources necessary to make partners successful by consulting and enabling them to establish and execute goals.
Cassie Jeppson
Cindi Johnson
Jules Johnston
Director, Global Partner Programs
VP, Americas Partner Sales
Michelle Johnston Holthaus
Kelly Jones
Director, North America Channel Programs
Equinix
Finding solutions to problems and enhancing operational efficiencies are two areas in which Jeppson excels. She has introduced tools and processes to better automate tasks and assisted in the creation of a level-up strategy for both team members and partner programs.
Johnson designed, built and deployed the new Tanium Partner Advantage Program, working closely with a cross-organization team to deliver a program that measures and rewards partners based on their commitment to Tanium and their joint success in totality.
In the Americas region, Johnston radically increased partner-connected bookings. She did that with a group of partners who leaned in strategically, by aligning them with Equinix’s field sellers. In the process, she has helped make the pivot so that Equinix is now “#PartnerFirst.”
Lenovo
44
Erika Irby
Nicole Hunter Hart
Tanium
President, COO
EVP, GM, Sales, Marketing, Communications Group
NetGain Information Systems
Johnston Holthaus aligned resources for a complete transformation of Intel’s partner program, which provides a community for partners to collaborate, innovate and promote their solutions.
Jones not only is the owner of a growing MSP and cloud solution provider but is also the U.S. president of Ingram Micro’s Trust X Alliance. She is an active leader in the community serving on boards and donating her time as a speaker and presenter.
Intel
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_363-482.indd 2
6/8/20 5:16 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Amy Justis
Jennifer Judy
Belinda Jurisic
Sr. Director, Global Partner Experience
President
Poly
Sr. Director, Channels, Asia-Pacific Japan
Veeam
CMIT Solutions of Charleston
Judy recently joined Poly, bringing with her the experience and insight she gained at Ruckus Networks designing and launching an exclusive partner/ distributor advisory community platform that enabled conversations to be shared all year long.
Ve e a m h a s experienced over 30 percent growth year over year in the Asia-Pacific Japan region, where Jurisic worked to create a standard, measured approach to what the role of the channel team is and what success looks like.
Judy Kaldenberg Marketing Director
Nexsan, A StorCentric
Michelle Kadlacek
Stephanie Kaelin
VP, Enterprise Partner Program
Cisco Business Unit Director, Europe
Justis holds regular review meetings with all clients to map their technology strategy to their growth plans. She is focused on helping customers strengthen their cybersecurity awareness and deploy preventive solutions.
Kadlacek spent an extensive amount of time gathering feedback from partners to improve their experience. She launched a Concierge Partner Support team for master agents and enhanced the sub-agent support model with a dedicated channel support inbound voice response system.
Kaelin worked closely with Cisco and Tech Data’s teams to execute a hyper-scale growth plan. She also provided feedback to Cisco, resulting in positive change in its distribution methods, strategy and programs. As a result, Tech Data reached record-high sales in Europe over the last fiscal year.
Kiran Kaloti
Puja Kandel
Amanda Karkula
Felise Katz
Sr. Manager, Global Partner Marketing
Principal Owner
Sr. Channel Sales Manager, West, Canada
PKA Technologies
Spectrum Enterprise
Tech Data
CEO
Kaldenberg doubled the involvement of Nexsan channel partners in MDF events, leading to increases in demand and lead generation across their regions, increasing sales. She also worked closely and strategically with marketing directors at Nexsan distributors to drive deeper engagement.
VMware
Kaloti redes i g n e d VMware’s Partner Demand Center home page and improved the partner experience on the platform by creating a Quick Start Campaign Guide that allows partners to easily view all the campaigns available to them to drive demand.
CMIT Solutions of West Omaha
Paessler AG
Karkula initiated Paessler’s first North American channel point of contact with an alliance partner. She also certified Paessler’s first two large-scale partners for the rollout of its largest subscription license, PRTG PLUS.
Katz develops talent and mentors new and legacy PKA employees, especially women. At the same time, many of PKA’s partnerships have had triple-digit growth with it this year. The solution provider has also raised the bar on its Medallion status achievements with new and legacy vendors.
Simmi Kaur
Marcy Kawadler
Josie Keck
Amber Kegley
Allie Kelaher
Tricentis
Global Channel Manager
Nuance Communications
Channel Account Manager
Director, Sales Operations, Vendor Management
CloudHealth by VMware
In the spirit of streamlining processes and ensuring that partners are self-sufficient, Kaur introduced a partner co-marketing guide, MDF request tools and various demand generation guides—all while continuing to invest time in dedicated planning with Tricentis’ most strategic partners.
Kawadler strives to be a catalyst for bringing her team to a new level of expansion and growth. Nuance aims to educate and set best practices around engaging partners for mutual value and growth as it tackles the conversational AI, voice biometrics and natural language understanding markets.
Keck prides herself on having established relationships with new partners without losing momentum, even as AppRiver was acquired last year by Zix. She earned partners’ trust while helping them grow their revenue, some by more than 500 percent.
Kegley established TRG’s vendor programs and brought visibility—both internally and externally—to the company’s channel strategy. In 2019, her efforts contributed to and supported nearly 30 percent year-over-year growth in hardware sales.
Kelaher participated in several key initiatives, including evolving the company’s method of global MSP support, developing standardized resources to be used across the channel organization and refining its enablement best practices.
Dangvy Keller
Kathy Kenneally
Janice Kennedy
Judy Kent
Anne Kenyon
VP, Americas Alliance, Distribution Sales
Sr. Director
Dell Technologies
Director, Channel Sales West U.S., Canada
Director, Global Channel Programs, Communications
Sr. Director, Global Partner Marketing
Keller worked to establish a new distribution strategy and program. In addition, the company invested in driving more automation, improving systems and operations to ensure flawless execution. Keller’s team played an integral role in driving these changes.
Kenneally assembled a new global team of account executives responsible for tracking partner performance and driving renewals revenue. Her team focuses on strategic partners across multiple regions. They are also responsible for driving strategic sales initiatives.
Verodin grew its strategic partner organization by 200 percent and diversified with new channel partners last year. Kennedy was responsible for on-boarding and enabling specific partners that aligned to Verodin’s field sales target accounts and selling motions.
Kent drives new business revenue through the channel as she leads global partner incentive programs. She educates thousands of partners via a pre-sales technical enablement global webinar series she developed to train on key solutions.
Kenyon’s greatest channel accomplishment is generating 10X Precisely’s investment in pipeline and 5X its investment in ROI. She is on the leadership team for recruiting, enablement, program structure, sales and marketing.
Company
Director, Partner Marketing
Veeam
After working in IT for 10-plus years, Kandel was passionate about starting her own IT business. She became the first to launch a CMIT Solutions franchise in Nebraska and has spent the ensuing years growing her client list in areas such as health care, accounting, legal, engineering and financial services.
Zix | AppRiver
Verodin, part of FireEye
TRG
McAfee
Global Channel Manager
Precisely
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_363-482.indd 3
45
6/8/20 8:51 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Tanya Kerr
Barbara Kessler
B2B Marketing Manager
Global APN Program Leader
Kaspersky Lab
Stacy Khreis
Muna Khurshid
Director, Global Business Development
VP, Intelligent Infrastructure
Under Kestin Schildkraut’s leadership, IBM achieved tripledigit growth in both Business Partner opportunities identified and Business Partner win revenue by engaging and collaborating with VADs, Red Hat, Cloud and IBM Champions as strategic groups.
Khreis played a key role in the development of two programs designed to help channel partners grow their security business. The programs helped partners earn new business, accelerate the sales cycle and provide layered security solutions.
Khurshid executed NTT’s Intelligent Infrastructure strategy focused on hybrid cloud, SD-WAN and enterprise networking. She helped align NTT teams to transform clients’ businesses by building software-defined programmable networks and data centers.
Jennifer (Yun Jung) Kim
Elizabeth (Liz) King
Global Program Dir., Blockchain Ecosystem Marketing Leader
IBM
Ingram Micro
NTT
Kerr built awareness within the channel that Kaspersky is more than just an endpoint solution company. She educated partners on its portfolio, differentiated it from its competitors and showed them how to sell more profitable solutions.
Kessler has grown AWS’ MSP partner community by approximately 30 percent year over year. She also built and launched a strategy to refresh the foundational APN Program, delivering increased partner value and positive customer outcomes.
Shauna Kief
Carol Kieffer
Lisa Kilpatrick
Manager, Worldwide Channel Alliance Operations
Manager, Project Management Office
Commvault
vCORE Technology Partners
Head of Inside Sales, North America
Kaspersky Lab
Sensormatic Solutions by
Kief established a businessto-business initiative to ensure channel partners receive credit for orders submitted through alliance partners, thus aiding in the success of Commvault’s Partner Advantage Program.
Kieffer took on the role of managing and leading the Project Management Organization at vCORE, setting her sights on standardizing processes and procedures, and enabling project managers to become more laser-focused on customer satisfaction.
Kilpatrick maintains and grows her channel relationships with her ability to understand and follow through on what is needed for successful outcomes. Her partners trust her to make decisions and interact fully with their customer bases.
Over the last year Kim has run countr y channel sales and operations for Korea and Japan, delivering year-over-year growth. She is proud to have personally led and developed a diverse internal team.
King embarked on a global “listening tour” to understand how Quantum performs as a valued partner and leverages the channel to solve customers’ most pressing challenges. As a result, she has increased channel investments to strengthen its value to partners.
Erin King
Kimberly King
Lana King
Kathleen Kinka
Rosina Kling
VP, Strategic Partners, Alliances
Sr. Director, Global Channel Strategy, Programs
VP, Marketing
Comport Consulting
President, CEO
Over the past year, King built relationships and brand awareness with Lifeboat’s emerging vendor partners. She also streamlined operational processes and helped to build bridges between her sales team, vendor partners and customers.
King played a key role in i n t ro d u c i n g new training and certifications, financial incentives and inside sales support for Hitachi Vantara partners. The company increased marketing campaign content on its Partner Marketing Hub.
King developed new tools to enable partners to better manage their customers and Mitel business, program dashboard enhancements to support managing partner program performance and joint marketing funds, and streamlined communication processes to drive partner awareness.
Kinka is helping to drive the transformation of the company’s brand as Comport shifts toward cloud, managed services and pay-asyou-go consumption of IT. This includes sales enablement, new generations of messaging and supporting materials and campaigns with analytics.
Kling is directing a company transition to become a principal cybersecurity solutions provider to the federal government. This includes staffing enhancement, a new technology lab and expanding warehouse capabilities.
Jessica Knieff
Pari Knights
Lori Koch
Wendy Koh
Bozena Kostelic
Channel Marketing Specialist
Director, Channel Marketing
Director, Digital Marketing
VP, Channel, Alliances, Asia-Pac
Director, Premier Accounts
Lifeboat Distribution
46
Amazon Web Services
Deborah Kestin Schildkraut
Hitachi Vantara
Mitel
Korea Channel Leader, GM
Chief Revenue Officer
Quantum
Johnson Controls
Panamerica Computers
Director, Sales
IntelePeer
Flexential
Comport Consulting
NetApp
Insight Enterprises
IntelePeer has seen a significant increase in partner registration, engagement, and attendance at regional and online trainings. In addition to supporting the implementation of learning modules and a new resource portal, Knieff was the first to leverage IntelePeer’s CPaaS platform to further engage partners via SMS.
In addition to launching Flexential’s partner newsletter and a webinar series, Knights has provided key marketing support to partners and the company’s partner managers. Providing more marketing and enablement support allows the team to focus on sales and driving revenue.
As the leader of demand generation for Comport, Koch has worked to expand relationships with the company’s key partners. Its marketing pipeline has grown 36 percent over the past year alone because of a new marketing program that fused digital and traditional demand generation.
Koh built a trusting n e t wo r k o f co nta c ts to establish strong executive mind share for the company. She’s proud to help make NetApp easy to do business with. She strategizes on present and future growth and growing the channel business year over year.
Kostelic’s role has been to align Insight’s go to market, partner strategy and planning, resulting in integrated campaigns, key resources and sales enablement for business growth. This allows clients more resources and investment for long-term strategy and growth.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_363-482.indd 4
6/9/20 9:45 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Amy Kowalchyk
Susan Kozak
Western Region Channel Director
President
Kowalchyk has focused on building a lucrative channel program for Mimecast partners and backend processes to better align with go-to-market strategy as a channel-centric organization. She grew the channel business 400 percent year over year.
Kozak ’s top priority is maintaining 1 8 - ye a r - o l d MNJ Technologies’ culture, which is centered on family. She prides herself on having a close working relationship with all of her employees. The key, she says, is “to maintain the family culture no matter how big we grow.”
Elizabeth Kubycheck Chief Marketing, Administrative Officer
Mimecast
ATSG
Teresa Koziatek
Kendra Krause
Patty Krieger
SVP, Global Channels, Sales Operations
Netrix IT
Koziatek delivered partner e n a b l e m e nt content and programs to equip global systems integrators to promote the value propositions and competitive positioning for Cloudera Data Platform in their interactions with customers.
Krause oversaw the go-to-market strategy and expansion of new innovative managed service offerings and training initiatives developed to fuel and streamline growth opportunities for partners. It’s her personal goal to maintain Sophos’ “Channel Best” status.
Through her relationships with vendor partners, Krieger developed a clear path for both current clients and prospects to move their IT spend from a Capex model to an Opex strategy. From financing partners to cloud service providers, she assembled a rock-solid implementation plan.
Kate Kuehn
Karen Kukoda
Helena Kuly
Kiley Kunkler
SVP, Alliances
Sr. Director, Cyber Risk Partners
VP, Vendor Originations
FireEye
Director, Technology, Industry, Partner Programs
Attivo Networks
MNJ Technologies
vArmour
Global Alliance Dir., Business Development Executive
Cloudera
Sophos
CEO
Wells Fargo
Kubycheck has been driving demand and oppor tunit y i n t o AT S G through a focus on the entire life cycle of support. Taking a new approach, she improved programs, offerings and functionality with the aim of giving clients, partners and prospects the best possible outcomes.
Kuehn’s personal goal was to have a formal launch of the partner ecosystem and the first three partners announced within the first three months of the year. She happily overachieved this goal and executed on four partner announcements.
The global cyber-risk partnerships that Kukoda forged, including insurance and legal organizations, have provided a better way for FireEye’s sales team to engage and help customers. The partners are now recommending its products and FireEye Mandiant services to customers.
One of Kuly’s goals this past year has been to collaborate with Attivo’s channel sales team to deliver a global channel program that provides partners with worldclass content, marketing, tools and communications, even as the company’s partner community grew exponentially.
Kunkler cultivated a relationship with a unique software distributor to activate a new financing program for resellers. This enabled them to purchase software lines that haven’t been traditionally supported with a finance tool, creating new growth opportunities.
Vicki Kwiatkowski
Stephanie Ladner
Alyssa Lahham
Kristi Lakich
Erica Lambert
Global Marketing Director
RVP, Channel Sales
SVP, Global Channel, Alliances, Embedded, Edge Services Sales
Head of Global Channels
Loqate GBG
Sr. Manager, Worldwide Partner Programs
VMware
Ingram Micro
Mitel
Dell Technologies
Kwiatkowski worked to continue to build benefits for Loqate partners. The company developed use cases to help partners in their selling efforts, participated in partners’ user conferences and showcased integrations and use cases.
In 2019, Ladner led the strategy and design for VMware Partner Connect, VMware’s first major program redesign since 2009, which provides partners with a single, consistent program experience, offering them the power of flexibility and choice.
Over the last year, Lahham transformed demand generation for CloudBlue, leading to 5X pipeline growth year over year and activating marketing enablement for CloudBlue channel customers.
L a k i c h expanded Mitel’s channel team in the West, onboarding and supporting new and existing UCaaS partners. In 2019, Mitel’s entire UCaaS channel team had 380 unique, new partners sell MiCloud Connect for the first time ever.
Lambert sees her greatest accomplishment as building an organization that is focused on delivering value in a collaborative approach with the partner community. Services are critical to accelerating the time to value of technology.
Kerri Lampard
Ladina Lane
MeiLee Langley
Sandra Larrabee
Betsy Larson
APJC Partner Dir., Architecture, Engineering, Services
Sr. Marketing Specialist
Director, Channel Marketing
Sr. Partner, Field Marketing Manager
SVP, Sales NEC Display Solutions of America
Lane augm e n t e d par tner engagement by developing marketing programs, resources, and learning opportunities. She established a program framework that delivers joint marketing, MDF and self-service tools.
Langley built the channel and field marketing departments at Nextiva, hiring a team to support the recruitment, enablement, and demand-generation efforts of its partners. In January, she launched CoNEXtion, Nextiva’s Partner Demand Suite, with over 12 powerful tools for partners.
Larrabee set best practices for field marketing processes, found creative ways to showcase WekaIO to the world, cultivated and nurtured new partnerships and introduced potential new partners to the company’s ecosystem.
L a r s o n expanded the c o m p a n y ’s channel sales team, moving to increase coverage to provide better channel engagement and enablement and also increased its solution specialist teams, which support the channel with more solution and technical expertise.
Cisco Systems
Driving an aligned approach to customers from Cisco and its partners, Lampard’s team has built a framework for a partner specialist model from resourcing through enablement to investing in practices. This helps support Cisco partners with complex technology transitions.
Panasonic System Solutions Company of North America
Nextiva
WekaIO
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_363-482.indd 5
47
6/8/20 8:53 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Jennifer Latsis
Renée Lawrence
Americas Program Office Leader
Director, Sales, Marketing, Cloud Services
Director, Worldwide Intel Practice
Gwenn Lazar
Nanette Lazina
Sr. Director, Global Partner Programs
SAP America
VP, Midmarket Channels
Juniper Networks
Burwood Group
Lifeboat Distribution
Latsis led the refinement of the 2020 Juniper Par tner Advantage program that streamlined partner requirements while increasing overall profitability and simplifying the partner experience. She also led the Juniper Partner Advisory Council, attended by 130 partners.
Lawrence is responsible for marketing, sales and technical account management for Burwood Group’s managed services business. She has worked to expand its channel and service delivery relationships with partners and to develop processes for a better customer experience.
Layton tracks profit and loss statistics in a continuing effort to increase revenue, in addition to her role as Lifeboat’s dedicated Intel Software Sales Specialist. The company celebrated a successful 15-year partnership with Intel in 2019.
Lazar formed a global alliances team, designing the organizational structure and recruiting the talent. She also enabled SAP to be a Skillsoft alliance partner and scoped requirements and advised as a key stakeholder for deal registration functionality via Salesforce.com.
Lazina is on the lookout for new ways to support partners as SAP’s solution portfolio expands, providing more targeted enablement, fostering partner-to-partner relationships and shifting the investment of MDF and business development funds toward digital marketing.
Hao Le
Sheri Leach
Terez Leach
Dawn Leavitt
Amanda Lee
Director, Worldwide Partner Communications
Sr. Distribution Account Manager
Director, Channel Engagement
VP, Business Operations
VP, Marketing, Communications
Skillsoft
vCORE Technology Partners
Cytracom
Le focused on aligning Citrix’s content strategy to key pillars critical to its channel business and created social campaigns to amplify that content. She also grew the Citrix Partner Advocates program and executed on a successful audience acquisition campaign for Partner Summit.
McAfee
Leach played a ke y ro l e working with Ingram Micro to deliver a business intelligence program that helped achieve net-new logos. She also was key to developing automation within Ingram Micro when McAfee implemented an enhanced configuration and price quote process.
Leach focused on driving MSPs to engage with Cytracom through events, as well as digital campaigns. She also initiated a partner referral program and launched seven new products, along with a new company website.
Claudia Lee
Jeanette Lee
Michele Lee
Natascha Lee
Sr. Director, Solutions Engineering, Technical Marketing
Director, Global Partner Program
Director, Global Partner Marketing
Citrix Systems
Sr. Director, Partner Marketing
Nutanix
CommScope
Last year saw continued investments in people by vCORE for clients in key areas like cloud computing, DevOps enablement and managed cloud services. Providing financial resources and recruiting/on-boarding support for those investments was a challenge met by the team.
Pax8
A 10-plus-year veteran of the I T c h a n n e l, Le e s p e n d s more than 60 percent of her time on the road meeting with and listening to partners. She helped drive the overall message about Pax8’s value as the company’s partner base grew to over 9,000 solution providers.
Jeannette Lee Heung
Tata Communications
Tibco
Regional Manager, Canadian Channel Sales
Palo Alto Networks
Lee has built a co m p l e te channel marketing engine that Nutanix partners can easily plug in to, providing visibility and spotlighting business impact. She also introduced new programs to enable channel teams to scale engagement with their partners.
Lee’s key channel-oriented accomplishments are a r o u n d thought leadership and education, as well as producing specific tools for the channel to compete for business and differentiate themselves.
Over the last y e a r, L e e relaunched the Global Partner Program to address changing business needs. Learning to adapt to the fast-paced business environments and to align to the business goals were her biggest accomplishments.
Tibco brought on a number of new partners, saw solid revenue results and launched partner demand generation campaigns, but Lee’s biggest success came as a change agent and evangelist for partners throughout the organization.
Lee Heung brought creativity to her role in her effort to drive more channel engagement, resulting in increased pipeline and sales. As a result of new partner enablement methods she has championed, the company has built a unique program.
Lindsey Legacki
Alison LeonardMorgan
Michelle Lerner
Cecilia Lessard
Justine Lewis
Manager, Channel Sales
Sr. Director, Channel Sales Distribution, MSP
VP, Worldwide Regional, Channel Marketing
Manager, Partner Marketing Programs
Veeam
Legacki focused her 2019 marketing initiatives on helping partners build a business with Veeam rather than just sell its solutions. She took the lead on rolling out the new resources, programs, incentives and tools Veeam put in place to help partners achieve greater profitability.
48
Fiona Layton
Channel Alliances Manager
NetApp
Leonard-Morgan worked to develop key VAR relationships in the Mid-Atlantic region to help grow the channel and develop new markets. In 2020 the company will go to market with a small set of strategic partners with a new partner program that provides simplicity and profitability.
Lerner managed NetApp’s channel team, which executed on account plans for its top 15 area focus partners. She also focused on personnel management, client relationships and sales management. Additionally, she ensured NetApp sellers and their leaders understood the company’s value.
Zscaler
Kaspersky Lab
Sophos
Lessard was instrumental in the realignment of Kaspersky’s channel focus, working closely with all levels of channel partners and internal stakeholders. Her depth of experience in the channel proved to be a valuable asset in change management initiatives.
Lewis helps partners educate their customers on the latest cybersecurity threats, protect data in the cloud and develop new business through effective marketing campaigns. With her team she recruited and activated new partners, including MSPs, into the Sophos ecosystem.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_363-482.indd 6
6/8/20 8:53 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Sue Lim-Brunings
Patti Lewis
Anna Liljeqvist
Sr. Director, Americas Systems Integrators, Systems Outsourcers
Team Manager, Northern Europe Channel
Director, Marketing Operations
Liljeqvist is now heading up the first regional team for Atlassian in EMEA. She upscaled the company’s existing channel and extended it with new enterprise solution providers to meet customer needs.
Lim-Brunings contributed to several key projects includi n g I n g ra m Micro’s workflow automation processes and the successful integration of work between the accounting, marketing and strategic sourcing teams to benefit channel partners.
Dynabook Americas
Cisco Systems
Lewis rationalized the portfolio, brought in new skills and updated the management system. She also developed a new segment organization and promoted three leaders to broaden reach and find ways to invest in developing partners.
Linsky is laser-focused on three key areas: strategy, go-to-market, and demand generation and execution. Her plan calls for aggressive midmarket enablement, a focused product portfolio, and the ability to tell Dynabook’s story.
Liu and her team are responsible for simplifying the partner experience through digitization and automation. She is leading the effort to create a Partner Experience Platform that provides a gateway to the resources channel teams need to be successful.
Elissa Livingston
Kate Lochrie
Sara Lofgren
Donna Lowe
Becky Lozada
SVP, Growth, Strategy
Sr. Manager, Worldwide Partner Programs
Director, Global Channel Sales Engineering
Networking Channel Dir., West
Director, Cisco Services, Software
VMware
CloudCheckr
Atlassian
Ingram Micro
Wendy Sue Linsky
Stephanie Liu
U.S. Leader, Channel Sales, Strategy
Sr. Business Development Manager
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Citrix Systems
BlackBerry Cylance
Livingston l e d s e ve r a l initiatives that fundamentally changed CloudCheckr’s channel strategy. She built an alliances organization focused on alignment with complementary partners. She also created a sales strategy group to deploy business development programs for the channel.
Customer success and cloud services sales and adoption have been at the heart of Citrix’s channel program strategy over the past 12 months. Lochrie launched new rebates that contribute to partner profitability.
Lofgren worked closely with organizational leaders in field sales, sales engineering, channel sales and field marketing to align and monitor channel technical enablement standards and team goals with separate metrics for each organization.
With Lowe focusing on developing deeper connections with partners and expanding training and enablement programs, Medallion partners’ revenue increased by double digits.
Unlike traditional product business that focuses on order fulfillment, services and software contracts require continued upkeep and renewals. By adding resources to her teams, Lozada doubled this type of partner and tripled the number of subscriptions managed.
Julie Lubetkin
Daniella Lundsberg-Steele
Bonnie Luton
Amelia Lynch
Marji Lynn
VP, Business Alliances
TeraMach, A Pivot
Americas Partner Marketing Manager
Regional Director Star2Star Communications
VP, Marketing, Channels, Partnerships
VP, Marketing
Synnex
Avalara
American Digital
Company
Lubetkin led the marketing team that created partner enablement, programs and incentives that helped drive an increase in partner referral bookings by more than 30 percent year over year.
LundsbergSteele rolled out a new corporate website, branding and internal office branding. She also worked to integrate American Digital with its new distributor, Ingram Micro.
Since joining TeraMach in a newly created role, Luton has brought structure, process and governance to a program for the channel that didn’t previously exist. She has updated previous contracts and elevated the TeraMach brand within the vendor community.
Lynch worked with channel partners to create, develop, execute and measure highly innovative marketing campaigns; ensured and elevated regular communications to partners; and brought increased focus to the importance of marketing IT solutions.
Lynn, along with partners, led the way to greater engagement with end-user customers. This demonstrated Star2Star’s commitment to reliability and resulted in new business. She also brought several new partners into Star2Star and helped them become productive sellers.
Dr. Vivian Lyon
Melissa Lyons
Elizabeth Mabry
Denyse Mackey
Megan Mackh
Founder, Chief Information Officer
Regional Channel Manager
Key Account Executive
VP, U.S. Technology Support Services, Sales, Offerings
Global Head of Telco Partnerships
Dr. Lyon grew the business through strategic vendor partnerships. She has been directly responsible for developing, mentoring and encouraging cyber and technical talent, particularly, women and young girls, to join the cyber and STEM fields.
Since joining OutSystems, Lyons has been focused on helping partners better plan for the year ahead, taking a look at their overall goals and strategy and ensuring alignment across sales, marketing and enablement. She also has been recruiting new partners.
Mabr y’s key channelr e l a t e d accomplishments included filling the gaps within channel partners’ portfolios and guiding them through partner program changes, organizational changes and the ever-changing technology market.
M a c ke y ’s responsibilities expanded to include services offering development. With the channel representing a large route to market for IBM, listening and acting on feedback are key to success and position IBM and the Business Partner channel for growth.
Mackh led the effort to redesign and launch the Managed Service Provider Program offering, including qualification criteria, benefits and incentives, and operational support. Her telco partnerships team significantly expanded the partner ecosystem.
Plaza Dynamics
OutSystems
Arrow Electronics
Juniper Networks
IBM
Google Cloud
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_483-603.indd 1
49
6/8/20 8:54 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Karyn MacKie
Chris MacLaughlin
Head of Global Partner Programs
Chief Marketing Officer, Partner Ecosystem
VP, North America Channels, Ecosystem
Lisa Majdi Executive Director, Marketing
Sonal Malavia President
Cox Business
Cloud 9 Infosystems
MacKie evolved C o h e s i t y ’s channel program structure by introducing program levels. She also enhanced the MDF program by launching an online management tool and streamlined program guidelines.
IBM
Since moving into her role in November, MacLaughlin has focused on growing Business Partner momentum in IBM Cloud and AI technologies, drawing on her experience in brand building, distribution channels and field marketing.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Maher stepped into her current role in September, where she has focused on ways to improve partners’ experience co-selling with HPE through increased engagement, simplification and transparency.
Along with her cable counterparts, Majdi works to promote a “cable-first” position within the channel community. She has also pushed the transformation of RapidScale cloud solutions into the mainstream of the channel since taking responsibilities in 2019.
With nine years in the cloud business influencing the company’s growth and expansion, Malavia has achieved her goal of ensuring clients have a smooth and memorable experience in their digital transformation journey. She has achieved multiple Gold competencies for Cloud 9.
Leigh MaliziaCarlson
Erin Malone
Michelle Marchand
Laura Markovich
Sarah Marsh
Director, Channels, Americas
Illusive Networks
Sales Director
Sr. Channel Sales Manager
VP, North America Channel Sales
Carahsoft Technology
Managing Partner, Business Group
With a grassroots effor t to get in front of identified key partners, Malizia-Carlson built a go-tomarket plan that aligned with ExtraHop and partner goals. This resulted in 378 percent year-over-year initiated pipeline growth with one key focus partner.
Malone and her team elevated the roles of Sophos’ Partner Advisory Council members. The team also helped to redesign Sophos’ incentive program for partners—leading to increased partner participation—and contributed to certification efforts.
M a r c h a n d ’s team has focused on a small number of elite partners in the Americas. She has enhanced opportunity registration and partner incentive programs to achieve 40 percent channel-initiated revenue goals.
Markovich worked to minimize the impact of S a l e s f o rc e’s acquisition of Tableau on resellers to keep business running smoothly. Tableau rolled out a new whiteboard process, and she became certified to train and certify channel partners as they adopt the new messaging.
Marsh led channel sales, operations, strategy and business development for wireless partner channels and helped spearhead an indirect distribution strategy as the company came together as Verizon Business Group in 2019.
Annie Marshall
Helena Marsikova
Susan Martens
Elizabeth Martin
Stacey Marx
Partner Marketing Manager
VP, Ecosystem Sales, North America Systems
Sr. Director, Global Partner Ecosystem, SME Marketing
SVP, Partner Solutions, Commercial DTV, Wholesale
Cohesity
ExtraHop Networks
Director
50
Leslie Maher
Sophos
Verizon
Carahsoft Technology
Actian
SAP
AT&T
Marshall worked with the contracts team to expand C a r a h s o f t ’s presence in key markets. In addition to contract expansion, communication to the channel has been top of mind for Marshall in the past year.
Marsikova revamped partner pages o n Ac t i a n’s public website, launched a new Actian Partner Program and rolled out a new Actian Partner Portal. The portal provides partners with full access to all sales, marketing and technical resources, deal registration and more.
Martens last year took a hard look at how to drive more synergies with IBM’s sales force and its partners and found this to be a key area for improvement. Driving more effective engagement in the field results in partner and client satisfaction with IBM.
Martin is responsible for the global SMB inbound digital marketing strategy to build brand. Partners need this type of “air coverage” to grow their net-new business and to have a seat at the table during the solution research.
Under Marx’s direction, AT&T ramped up its cybersecurity program through the new AT&T Cybersecurity business division. She aligned resources to better support the needs of solution providers and expanded the ACC Business product portfolio.
Rakhee Massey
Lorraine Maurice
Amanda Maxwell
Shannon Mayer
Kathy Mazza
EMEA Channel Marketing Manager
Sr. Director, Global Indirect Channel Marketing
Channel Programs Manager
VP, Channel Development
The ASCII Group
8x8
Maxwell worked with partners one on one to improve go-to-market strategy and increase the Zix | AppRiver mindshare, leading to new business. She also contributed to building out new channel programs and launching a new partner portal.
Mayer negotiated a number of long-term m e m b e r benefits with channel vendors that saved ASCII members thousands of dollars. Her relationships with these vendors provided opportunity for MSP members to make higher profits on their recurring revenue services.
Mazza is always looking for ways to help partners by empowering them in their conversations with customers and prospects. As the 8x8 team has focused the past one and a half years on launching its channel program, she has been a driving force in the company’s growth.
Arcserve
SAP
Massey overhauled the way Arcserve engages with par tners to figure out ways to help them achieve their goals. By keeping their needs in mind, the company has seen significant growth, and partners have leveraged Arcserve more to reach their business objectives.
Maurice enhanced SAP’s digital skills transfer programs, continuing to deliver partner pipeline and revenue growth through digital marketing strategies, demand creation programs and advanced skills training programs for over 3,000 SAP customers across the globe.
IBM
Zix | AppRiver
Director, Strategic Masters
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_483-603.indd 2
6/8/20 8:55 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Sonya Mazzaferro
Rebekah McAdams
Dawn McCale
Director, Channel Sales, Canadian Partner Organization
Director, Field Marketing, Americas
VP, Sales
Groupware Technology
ServiceNow
ESET
Mazzaferro has led partners through transformation of practices and sales teams, acquisitions and mergers, evolving market trends, competitive pressures and new consumption models—while delivering double-digit growth across the route.
McAdams initially focused on creating key par tner e n a b l e m e nt and engagement channel programs in the Americas. After the acquisition of Aerohive, she pivoted to help successfully integrate channel marketing programs into Extreme.
McCale led her team to g ro w b u s i ness through expansion into existing accounts and the penetration of new accounts. She continues to grow Groupware’s business in AI and professional services. Her team crushed their sales goals in 2019 and started 2020 with strong momentum.
McClafferty is responsible for managing a strategic distribution business via a two-tier model. This model leverages the skills and qualities of a partner ecosystem to support government agencies and programs in delivering efficiency and productivity.
McCluskey increased the usage of the ESET Marketing Center, which lets partners create co-branded ESET materials and campaigns. The Marketing Center realized a 63-plus percent increase in logins and a 184-plus percent increase in contacts uploaded.
Lisa McCormackMoon
Michelle McCrea
Jennifer McCready
Katie McCroskey
Jessica McCurry
Manager, Partner Operations, U.S.
Global Channel Chief
Director, Knowledge Management, Partner Training
Distribution Manager, Americas
As one of the key players in a major overhaul of the Engage Partner Program and the FortiRewards partner rewards program, McCormack-Moon architected, designed and implemented experiences that build more profitability into the Fortinet partner relationship.
As Cisco continues to grow as a software company, McCrea’s distribution team leads the direction on initiatives that drive enablement and adoption of Cisco solutions. She also has built programs and plans with Ingram Micro focused on MSPs and small business.
L a s t y e a r, McCready and her team operationalized a brandnew channel for Steelcase, a 105-year-old company, by setting up a global sales and marketing infrastructure.
McCroskey has over the past year enabled hundreds of par tners through E-learning, on-site custom training and thought leadership presentations. She meets with partners and their customers to educate on Privileged Access Management best practices.
Under McCurry’s direction, K e y s i g h t ’s par tner mix is extremely healthy, with distribution participating in the education, training, marketing and demo aspects. The distribution business grew 50 percent year over year.
Kesha McDade
Madison McDaniel
Jessica McDowell
Partner Marketing Coordinator
VP, Business Development
Kristen (Shumate) McDowell
Christine McElduff
Global Enterprise Channel Communications Manager
Director, Americas Regional Channel Business
Cisco Systems
Director, Channel Marketing
Fortinet
Sales Director
AT&T
Extreme Networks
Cisco Systems
Wasabi Technologies
Steelcase
Synnex
Amanda McClafferty Partner Business Manager
Thycotic
CommScope
Hope McCluskey Director, Partner Marketing, Events
Keysight Technologies
Palo Alto Networks
McDade has improved p a r t n e r i n g, engagement and skillset transformation through facilitating regular knowledge share/networking events. She also increased the focus on prospecting and account targeting to boost distribution.
McDaniel has been actively working with the channel since the Wasabi Partner Network launched in April 2019. Since then, she has created process automation that on-boards new partners and developed Wasabi’s deal registration process.
McDowell led her team to deliver cutting-edge deliverables to the market, focusing specifically on enabling innovation. The team delivered conferences, tools, a technology modernization council, a community and a new business role within Synnex.
McDowell developed and executed valuable content and demos for three partner conferences across the world. She also managed key integration communications following CommScope’s acquisition of Ruckus.
McElduff created a strategy around partner business plan creation, execution and measure ment. This centered around three foundational pillars: alignment, enablement and demand generation.
Louise McEvoy
Crystal McFerran
Amber McGough
Chief Marketing Officer
Director, Cloud Provider Sales MSP
Laura McGregor Falko
Tania McIntosh
VP, U.S. Channel
Trend Micro
The 20
McEvoy’s channel team is focused on strategic partners who are investing in Trend Micro. That means Trend Micro will invest in those partners to move away from the “fulfillment” model and ensure the channel is a “value-add.”
McFerran played a key leadership role in helping achieve growth objectives for The 20. She developed strategies for member acquisition and engagement and furthered its reputation as a partner-centric MSP consortium.
VMware
Over the past year, McGough made significant strides in scaling VMware’s Cloud Provider Managed Services business. These efforts spanned the portfolio, platform and addressable customer use cases.
Head of Global Partner Marketing, Enablement, Program Office
Broadcom
McGregor Fa l ko w a s tasked with co-developing a worldwide partner strategy for the CA division. To that end, she redesigned the partner program for all routes to market with stronger value propositions.
Director, Worldwide Partner Programs
F5 Networks
McIntosh has been the lead in evolving F5’s partner program this past year. She has updated program requirements and benefits and added new specializations to the overall program.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_483-603.indd 3
51
6/8/20 8:58 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Carol Ann McKeown
Kim McLachlan
Director, Regional, Channel Marketing
SVP, Sales, Marketing
SVP, Operations
Leah McLean
Marisa McMillan
Director, Worldwide Channel, Alliance Partner Marketing
Channel Account Manager, Strategic Accounts
Broadvoice
WatchGuard Technologies
Armor
Zix | AppRiver
McKeown led the charge as Viavi transitioned its MDF program to a co-op model with accompanying ROI measurements. She led the partner training for social selling across all regions to increase partner social engagement.
Since joining B ro a d vo i c e , McLachlan has revamped the sales organization to not only grow the partner base, but deliver repeat sales and larger sales through the channel. She realigned channel manager territories, got sales engineers into deals earlier and generated leads for partners.
In an operations role, M c L a r e n ’s contribution over the past year has been ensuring that the channel always has access to the level of support (and processes) needed to be successful. Every interaction matters, and her goal is to optimize those.
M c Le a n’s relationships with ISVs, MSPs, MSSPs, VARs, systems integrators and cloud service providers enabled her to create customized strategies and joint marketing plans, inclusive of joint value propositions, messaging and partner programs.
McMillan helped onboard a new IT franchise partnership that consisted of more than 200 franchises. She also provided account management and operational support for Zix | AppRiver’s largest strategic partner in the compliance industry.
Amy McNew
Alyssa McNine
Natalie Mead
Tracey Mead
Shavonn Mealing
Sr. Channel Marketing Manager
Director, Operations
Avail Group
VP, Customer Success Strategy, Programs
Global Alliance Director
Micro Focus
Partnership, Channel Sales Manager, VAR
McNew was focused on enabling partners to sell the company’s growth technologies—Prisma and Cortex—and market to their customers. She also stepped in to fill an open role in the organization, which included executing key channelwide initiatives.
M c N i n e focused on developing relationships with security vendors, creating new revenue streams. With security threats on the rise, she developed enhanced-security technical road maps with customers to implement next-generation solutions.
Commvault last year moved from a “channel-friendly” company to a “channel/partner-driven” one. Keeping this focus on the channel and making sure her team was prioritizing partners and the channel were critical to success.
Mead stab i l i ze d t h e relationship and revenue with a key strategic alliance partner. This was accomplished through improving executive communication, goal alignment and building trust-based relationships as well as renegotiating.
Mealing’s goal over the past year was to develop Netsurion’s VAR program, focusing on recruitment and enablement of key strategic VAR partners across North America. She led her team in number of signed VAR partners.
Carmen Means
Lindsay Medeiros
Candace Mehalko
Denise Mendez
Jamie Mendez
Sr. Director, Alliances, Partners Central
Sr. Global Channel Manager
Sr. Director, Global Channel Programs, Strategy, Ops.
Sr. Manager, Americas Channel Operations
Associate Vice President
Means drove a solutionoriented approach to amplify and build Puppet’s brand in the market while proving Puppet’s strengths to current partners. She consistently takes into account partners’ goals to become trusted advisers in their accounts.
Medeiros created a platform for channel education, communications, demand generation and deal registration. She also developed a go-to-market plan that begins with BitSight’s value to the partners and includes a program that leverages global campaigns.
With an overarching goal of transforming the suppor t structure to drive growth, in 2019 Mehalko began a significant program makeover driving broader adoption of products with existing partners and creating new routes to market with new partners.
Mendez has been focused o n C i t r i x ’s cloud subscription journey. She has provided leadership, enablement and support to Citrix sales and partner account managers, as well as to partners and distribution.
M e n d e z launched the first HCL Software Partner Program with the introduction of HCL Software in July. The launch included delivering the program and recruiting partners. In the first six months, over 1,700 partners were on-boarded with nearly 1,000 generating revenue.
Tina Mentschik
Gina Merjanian
Sarah Meyer
Kathleen Meza
Michelle Mezger
Regional Sr. Channel Manager, Austria Dell Technologies
GM, U.S. Inside Sales
Intel
Director, Channel, VMware Sales, Go to Market Dell Technologies
Director, Partner Program Strategy Dell Technologies
Manager, Central Region Channel Sales
Merjanian moved into her role in July and has already reorganized the team to ensure most senior sellers are focused on supporting and driving business for key channel strategic accounts. She also has implemented a new process to ensure quick escalation of customer issues.
Meyer developed and executed the Dell Technologies Access for VMware plan globally. She launched the program in over 10 countries in 2019 (it is now available in 60-plus countries). She also built new partner program benefits for VMware through Dell.
Under Meza’s direction, the program team designed, built, branded and launched the Dell Technologies Partner Program, collaborating with partners throughout the process. The latest design really leaned into simplification to make it easier for partners to engage with the company.
Mezger leads a team of channel managers who delivered results, often exceeding expectations specific to imperatives such as channeldriven pipeline creation and new business bookings. She also was part of the team that launched the enhanced partner program.
Viavi Solutions
Palo Alto Networks
Puppet
Mentschik spent the last five years building a s m a l l te a m that has worked hard to earn the market’s trust, including a number of loyal partners that are now “big players.” Her team understands partners’ needs and helps enable and develop them.
52
Shari McLaren
BitSight
Commvault
Precisely
Citrix Systems
Netsurion
HCL Software
Palo Alto Networks
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_483-603.indd 4
6/8/20 8:58 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Jeanne Michele Miller
Lisa Miller
President
President, Wholesale, Indirect, Small, Medium Business
Miller has lofty goals for Ener Systems, working this year to double profitability and continue to grow its monthly recurring revenue. She’s also laser-focused on providing top-notch customer service and building stronger relationships with partners such as Microsoft.
Miller champ i o n e d CenturyLink’s new Channel Partner Agreement. She led the launch of the “Lead with CenturyLink” Indirect Market Coverage Program, offering significant growth opportunities for select partners in targeted markets.
Andrea Miner Director, Consulting Services, IoT, Analytics
Ener Systems
Tech Data
Maggie Miller
Peggy Miller
Global Partner Communications Manager
CEO
Robin Miller Director, Channel
PacStar
Internet of Things Security Services Association
Miller launched a social media advocacy program called “Elevate the Channel.” She trained partner account managers and channel executives on how to use the platform and stressed the value of staying connected with partners through social media.
Miller has been a significant contributor to PacStar’s success, providing strategic guidance as the company moved to become recognized within the Department of Defense for its quality products and customer service.
Miller joined I oTS S A i n December 2019 and hit t h e g ro u n d running, bringing in new vendors and content with the goal of building a more collaborative and educational security services association dedicated to the IT channel.
Stacie Mintken
Bhavna Mistry
Diane Mitchell
Laurie Mitchell
Director, Sales Support
Solutions Engineering Manager, EMEA Channel
NetApp
Director, Communications, Strategic Marketing Programs, Americas
Sr. Director, Partner Marketing
Wasabi Technologies
Mitchell developed a regional message platform to articulate the value of next-generation technologies and services in support of partners. This included end-user challenges and proof points to help sales teams and resellers drive awareness.
Mitchell launched the Wasabi Partner Network Program, allowing MSPs and VARs to sign up to resell the Wasabi hot cloud storage service. The program also provides on-boarding, training and marketing resources.
CenturyLink
CenturyLink
F5 Networks
Tech Data
Miner created workshops leveraging Tech Data’s Practice Builder methodology, helping partners deploy a single multivendor, repeatable IoT and analytics solution. This let them participate in the revenue opportunity without disrupting their existing businesses.
Mintken received an internal Foundation Award for leading a team to correct a billing system issue that was negatively impacting customers. She also created a project team to reshape proactive selling efforts into a sales motion, driving growth.
Mistry evolved the technical partner manager role to include a solution development focus. She also incorporated additional services to the Partner Solution Center to support NetApp internal presales and sales, in addition to services offered to partners.
May Mitchell
Maryam Mohammadi
Sukhmani Mohta
Olivea Mollak
Robin Montague
Head of Demand Generation, Enablement, Display Division
Channel Marketing Specialist
Zix | AppRiver
Sr. Director, National Partners
VP, Global Channel Sales, Field Marketing
BlackBerry Cylance
VP, Operations, Projects
IT Management Corp.
Samsung Electronics America
Veracode
Mitchell helped build a toptalent channel sales and field marketing organization focused on driving business with partners. She established a list of focus partners with clear goals measured with a weekly scoreboard.
Mohammadi worked with manufacturer partners to set up marketing programs that have had very good ROI. She also thought outside the box to launch promotional items and programs with manufacturer partners that have prospects interested.
Mohta developed a channel marketing strategy to cover all channel partners. She also enhanced resources and programs around partner communications and enablement programs.
Mollak is focused on building awareness in the channel and creating recruitment opportunities for Zix | AppRiver’s channel sales team to pursue. She and her team make sure the company is promoting its brand effectively.
M o n t a g u e ’s goal has been to launch an as-a-ser vice offering with Veracode’s largest security partner. In December, joint cross-functional planning and strategizing came to fruition with the unveiling of Software Assurance as a Service.
Haley Montgomery
Swati Moran
Josie Moreno
Sarah Morgan
Karen Moriarty
Director, Marketing
PartnerWorld Programs Leader
Channel Marketer
Manager, MSP Sales, Americas
IBM
Company
company
Product Manager, Networking, Software
Connection
Moran led the Business Partner learning strategy, obtaining investment to build learning journeys that lead to meaningful partner credentials and PartnerWorld competencies. In August 2019, she accepted the mission to modernize PartnerWorld Programs for the cloud era.
Moreno manages Drobo’s Partner Advantage Por tal website and helps the sales team create various margin, spiff and tiered incentive program campaigns for distributors and resellers. She also produces monthly Drobo newsletters.
Morgan was ke y to t h e development of the MSP Channel Program, including the launch of DNS Protection for MSPs. She also evolved the Webroot MSP Advisory Group to incorporate women business leaders and launched the Channel Alliance Partner Program.
Focusing on customer and partner satisfaction is one of Moriarty’s core values. She actively manages 40 investing channel partners and is responsible for all of Connection’s networking partners outside Cisco and Dell, with a heavy focus on Aruba and Poly.
Corsica Technologies
With Montg o m e r y ’s l e a d e r s h i p, lead generation has increased over 100 percent. The company did not have digital campaigns or ROI tracking in place until she joined Corsica in October 2019. Marketing has now generated 200-plus leads, many resulting in closed revenue.
Drobo, a StorCentric
Webroot, an OpenText
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_483-603.indd 5
53
6/8/20 8:59 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Lauren Morreale
Kristy Morris
Muffin Mott
Amy Mounts
Sr. Director, Global Channel Marketing
Western Digital
Head of Partner and Integrated Marketing
Pure Storage
VP, Sales, ERP Practice Director
Morris has evolved and refined marketing planning processes to ensure alignment of investments with sales and revenue share goals. She also optimized MDF programs to support new growth areas and opportunities aligned to the company’s strategic plan.
Mott empowered marketing business partners with better data while shifting the partner marketing strategy to support the company’s expanded solution portfolio. Delivering business insight drives business value outcomes for partners.
As High Touch transitions from a product-focused organization to a solution-focused organization, Mounts’ goal is to streamline technology solutions and consolidate services. She is now focusing on integrating knowledge between the sales and operations teams.
Joyce Mullen
Marya Munir
Wendy Munnell
Barbara Murphy
President, Global Channel, Embedded, Edge Solutions
Sr. Director, Global Marketing
Director, Marketing, Strategic Partnerships
VP, Licensing, Software Asset Management
Morreale worked crossfunc tionally with marketing, operations, sales, legal, finance, order management and logistics to execute her channel vision. She recruited, on-boarded and enabled new Spirent resellers, which generated net-new business.
Morreau has been the force behind Softw a re A s s e t Management and Licensing Services. Her leadership has led to the addition of many new customers in 2019 and recognition for Long View as a two-time Microsoft Canadian Country Partner of the Year.
Trisha Muldoon Partner Marketing Manager
Spirent Communications
Barracuda MSP
Long View Systems
High Touch Technologies
VP, Marketing
WekaIO
Dell Technologies
VIPRE
WrightCore
Muldoon worked directly with partners to help them plan and execute more than 40 of their own events, which generated new business for them. She also grew the online partner community platform by 100 percent by engaging more partners to participate and benefit from it.
Mullen highlights the importance of collaboration, continuous improvement and aligned goals across her team and partner ecosystem. She encourages a real sense of partnership and ensures everyone is working toward the same strategic vision.
This past ye a r M u n i r rebranded two acquired companies under one umbrella VIPRE brand. As part of this, she launched four MSP-ready security solutions, helping partners increase their security posture while positioning themselves as trusted advisers.
Through building channel alliances with d i s t r i b u to r s and manufacturers, Munnell has helped WrightCore achieve year-overyear growth. Her contributions have built a strong portfolio of providers and offerings that the company can wrap services around for profitability.
Murphy played a key role in strategic OEM, technology and reseller partnerships. She launched the WIN Partner Program and hired key personnel in channel roles. Murphy advocated for changing the sales process from direct to channel-enabled sales.
Genefa Murphy
Melissa Nacerino
Kelly Nagel
Christina Nairn
Stephanie Nalick
Chief Marketing Officer
Sr. Director, Worldwide Partner Marketing
President, GM, North America
Sr. Manager, Channel Marketing
Director, Channel Sales
Murphy had a significant impact on the overall health and per formance of the indirect sales channel, from personal engagement assisting top partners with their business planning and path to profitability to being the executive sponsor for the North America indirect sales route.
Micro Focus
Nacerino evolved the organization to focus both on core business—Strata—as well as growth technologies—Cortex and Prisma. From a channel marketing perspective, this has meant content, campaigns and enablement across the portfolio.
Nagel drove the team to create significant change in the North America market to enable channel partners to see growth beyond current market trends. Under her leadership, Jabra has developed programs and tools that resulted in higher growth rates than its main competitors.
Sophos
Nairn comanages Sophos’ Partner Advisory Council. She also is focused on driving all road shows, designing incentive programs for partners and assisting partners with generating ROI through marketing activities.
Nalick led the way to strong growth in soft ware revenue-share among national partners via enterprise license agreements and subscriptions. National partners significantly contributed to consumption expansion through the newly formed customer success/experience teams.
Emily Narkviroj
Kristen Nash
Paige Neary
Channel Service Account Manager
Nidhi Nayyar Tassone
Jasmine Nazzal
Sr. Channel Marketing, Programs Manager
Channel Marketing Manager, Americas
APC by Schneider Electric
Narkviroj works alongside the DMR/ NSP community to launch products and promotions that ultimately drive sales and increase market share within each reseller. This has resulted in Partner of the Year nominations in the channel, proving the success of collaboration.
Palo Alto Networks
F5 Networks
Jabra
Jabra
54
Sarah Morreau
Channel Sales Manager, North America
Poly
Nash launched a rebate program that incented Poly’s distributors to focus on under $10,000 renewals, which were sub-performing. She also taught channel partners how to sell services to be profitable.
Sr. Mgr., Commercial Marketing
Acer America
With the continued focus on growing Acer’s footprint in vertical markets like SMB and health care, Nayyar Tassone leads efforts to diversify the digital marketing strategy and reach these customer audience segments.
AlgoSec
Nazzal’s focus has been on enhancing the overall partner experience with AlgoSec. She has simplified the deal registration process, delivered more partner-centric content and developed incentive programs that reward and recognize partners’ hard work.
National Account Manager
Neary oversaw record-breaki n g g row t h within the federal and SMB segments at her account last year. SMB reseller growth is one of the company’s top initiatives. Strengthening and executing relationships and strategies that help drive this growth were key to her success.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_483-603.indd 6
6/8/20 8:59 PM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Emer Neville
Cheryl Nelan
Stacy Nethercoat
President
CMIT Solutions of Monroe
SVP, Cloud Solutions, Americas
Chief Operating, Transformation Officer
Nelan oversaw many projects with existing clients to enhance their IT infrastructure. She is proud of the fact that clients often thank her for explaining the complexities of IT in a way that makes sense to them and enables them to make smart business decisions.
With the tagline “Moving to Higher Value,” Nethercoat’s Cloud Solutions organization focused on new differentiators to support partners’ growth. This included solution aggregation, embedded cloud services and automation and vendor competency through training.
Neville spearheaded the design and launch of SAP’s Nex t-Generation Partnering initiative, a multiyear transformative movement created to accelerate the growth of SAP’s ecosystem. She also implemented a Transformation and Tools road map.
Over the past year, Nevin overcame original equipment manufacturer concerns to grow the business and reprioritized the core IBM business, doubling down on software and achieving a high attach rate with clients in hardware.
N e w l o n’s experience has helped Novacoast grow year over year, both in revenue and employee count. She helped shape early company policies and has been a critical member of the management team, providing logistical and strategic input on acquisitions and new business units.
Dawn Ng
Ashley Nguyen
Enit Nichani
Kimberly Nicola
Jennifer Noto
Marketing Director
Channel Marketing Manager
VP, Marketing, U.S. Global Events
Sr. Marketing Manager
IGEL
Logically
IGEL is a 100 percent channel-focused company, and in her role Nichani is responsible for elevating the IGEL message with solution providers and their customers through comprehensive marketing plans and programs and hosting key industry conferences.
Nicola collaborated with channel partners across North America in the planning, development/ creation and execution of more than 110 channel activities. These included campaigns, customized programs focused on building brand awareness, lead generation and driving revenue.
In her role as vice president of marketing, Noto last year generated nearly $2 million in marketing campaign opportunities, secured over $105,000 in partner funds, and generated 203 marketing campaign opportunities.
UiPath
Tech Data
EPOS
SAP
IGEL
Deborah Nevin
Janice Newlon
VP, Global Finance, North America Channels
Novacoast
IBM
Chief Operations Officer
VP, Marketing
Ng adopted a focus partner strategy, concentrating co-marketing efforts with key partners. She also created a self-serve support program for the rest of UiPath’s partners so that everyone had some type of marketing support.
Nguyen played an integral part in planning and implementing creative channel programs that supported the company’s ambition to grow a significant percentage year over year. Her leadership and guidance set in motion the kind of partnership EPOS needed from the channel and vice versa.
Stephanie Novak
Kelly Nuckolls
Laura Oberle
Patty O’Brian
Maureen O’Connell
Marketing Director, Northeast
Technologent
SVP, Sales, Partner, Customer Success Teams
Director, Commercial Sales
Director, Partner Sales
Novak drove enhancements within Qlik’s partner programs to help the channel support the company’s journey to a subscription model, including making it profitable to sell through new ROI, systems, processes and policies.
As a primary member of the team supporting Technologent’s IBM business partner relationship, Nuckolls guided the company to elite Platinum status by delivering high-value transformative solutions and achieving the utmost levels of customer satisfaction.
Oberle’s team worked with partners, master agencies and agents in the South to ensure they were armed to sell the company’s legacy and new products. She has also ensured a consistent relationship with partners and customers so the team knows when they need extra assistance.
Business Inkjet is a top initiative for Epson in its 2025 plan. Over the past year, O’Brian has been focused on recruiting Platinum copier dealers and has hired more than 25 people in support of that growth strategy.
O’Connell built strong relationships between partners and the Comcast Business regional executive teams in the Northeast. She increased channel awareness and bridged any gaps in understanding between direct teams and the partner community.
Jana O’Connor
Tina O’Dell
Hannah O’Donnell
Erin Oettle
Regan Ogner
Sr. Director, Americas Partner Marketing, Emerging Markets
Sr. Manager, Global Partner Marketing
Director, Sales
Collabrance
Sr. Program Manager, North America
F5 Networks
Director, Global Partner Marketing
Splunk
O ’ C o n n o r ’s key channelr e l a t e d accomplishments over the last year included developing programs, partner toolkits and campaigns that focused on helping Palo Alto Networks partners to sell across the portfolio.
O’Dell streamlined the partner marketing platform for a better channel experience. She incorporated multiple intelligence feeds into co-marketing campaign insertions and increased the focus on existing customer development and new customer acquisition.
O’Donnell is focused on promoting Collabrance’s high-quality MSP outsourcing services, relevant products and frictionless on-boarding. This is critical to driving a robust pipeline of well-defined and qualified service providers.
F5 has evolved its channel p ro g ra m to provide partners with the flexibility to sell F5 solutions in the way that best aligns with their business model. As part of the worldwide channel program team, Oettle has been a key contributor to this evolution.
Ogner is a driving force behind Splunk’s go-to-market efforts with all Technology Alliance Partners. Splunk has enhanced the Partner+ Technology Alliance Program to increase value for partners that build connectors, apps and add-ons to Splunk.
Sr. Director, Global Partner Programs Management, Ops.
Qlik
Palo Alto Networks
Juniper Networks
Star2Star Communications
Epson America
Comcast Business
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_604-724.indd 1
55
6/9/20 11:01 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Hwei Oh
Gretchen O’Hara
Chief Marketing Officer
VP, U.S. One Commercial Partner, Go to Market Strategy
Ubiq Security
Director, Global Business Transformation
Jean O’Neill
Sara Onyschuk
VP, Channel
Dir., Business Dev. Client Solutions, E-Commerce
Cyxtera
Microsoft
Insight Enterprises
Oh is working to enable and manage partners as a natural extension of the sales team. They will have all the appropriate marketing, selling and brandbuilding tools at their disposal to integrate Ubiq into a highly lucrative part of their business.
Building partner go-tomarkets with Microsoft has become the key differentiator to help accelerate partner growth. O’Hara created end-to-end sales and marketing alignment through key plays, co-sell motions, lead generation and incentives.
Growing the services business is a key component of Insight ’s business strategy. Ondrejka is focused on leveraging automation and providing a simple yet compelling experience for clients and services teammates, which is critical to achieving growth.
O’Neill ignited activity, relationships and revenue from the Southwest U.S. territory to the entire West Coast territory. She merged the multiple channel programs Cyxtera inherited through acquisition and then established a large West Coast channel stream.
Onyschuk values diversity, innovation and execution. This has resulted in delivering creative solutions to customers and partners, recognized by multiple channel accomplishments, such as Intel Client Partner of the Year and Intel Services Partner of the Year.
Jennifer Orr
Scottie Orr
Shannon Orr
Maribel Ortiz
Gina Osmun
VP, Master Agent Channel
VP, Enterprise Sales
C Spire Business
National Partner Manager
Avant Communications
EMEA Channel Director
Viavi Solutions
Director, Partner Programs Management
Orr added another layer of validity and awareness to the company’s master agent channel program. She has brought a focused strategy and new alignment, helping to ensure other departments understand and support master agents.
Orr’s top goals have been to build a sales team of talented and diverse individuals who will increase C Spire Business’ sales revenue, with a focus on top strategic manufacturing partners to make the company one of the premier partners in the Southeast.
Orr has one of the highest quotas and has consistently exceeded 100 percent to plan while championing Avant’s most complex partners. She advocates for Avant’s program at every level, from hands-on sales engagements to C-level strategy.
The major achievement for Ortiz over the past 12 months has been hitting double-digit growth in channel partner business in EMEA. She also drove business planning and execution with strategic partners in market segment growth areas.
Osmun’s goal for 2019 was to drive subscription business. She exceeded targets, driving over 40 percent of partner business via subscription and over 130 percent growth in the number of partners transacting subscription services.
Susan O’Sullivan
Jennifer Osuna
Mireille Paasen
Laura Padilla
Natalie Padula
Director, Field, Channel Marketing
Xerox
Head of Business Development, Channels Zoom Video Communications
VP, Sales
Morpheus Data
Global Lead, Partner Enablement
O’Sullivan continued efforts to get to “yes” faster for Ingram Micro partners, and once again grew SMB sales by high double digits. She also invested in the expansion of digital transformation services, as well as hybrid solutions to enable and encourage partners to move upmarket.
Morpheus Data grew over 300 percent last year, and Osuna is working to refine and support territories so they can crush quotas. She also manages monthly calls with partner marketing teams to align the efforts with the sales team and fill the top of the funnel.
In emerging markets, Paasen signed up 61 percent more partners into the Global Partner Program and activated 121 percent more partners on the Partner Portal. She also developed new Partner Marketing Guides supporting the partner journey with Xerox.
Padilla grew channel revenue 100-plus percent, while doubling the channel team and building a new channel programs function. She also revamped the channel to include different types of programs and communities, including master agents and federal partners.
BeyondTrust has moved to a channel-first organization. Padula’s direct focus is to build strong relationships with business partners, sharing opportunities to collaborate on and building strategy to grow the business together.
Maryann Pagano
Tracy Pallas
Tina Pangle
Emily Papermaster
Susan Parrish
CEO
VP, Worldwide Channels
Agari
VP, Operations
Insight Enterprises
Alliance Manager
LogicMonitor
Dynamic Quest
Pagano says her business is based on trust, and she has spent the past 20 years building up her reputation for staying true to her word. She has personally built every channel relationship at BlackHawk Data, which specializes in infrastructure, security, business intelligence and data analytics.
With Pallas leading the charge, Agari grew its partner base in the U.S. by 25 percent, and these new partners have accounted for more than 43 percent of the overall partner revenue yearto-date. She also launched a channel go-to-market strategy for EMEA.
Pangle implemented robotic process automation (RPA) t o i m p ro ve process efficiencies and enable back-office scalability. RPA is a form of business process automation technology based on software robots or AI workers carrying out rote tasks typically completed by an employee.
Papermaster built the global sales partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud to create and accelerate pipeline. As LogicMonitor transitions to a channel-first company, she is showing employees the value of working with these partners.
Pa r r i s h h a s developed and nurtured several channel relationships over the years. She has helped advance Dynamic Quest’s channel business over the past year by identifying and introducing excellent channel opportunities and bringing them to the table.
Mitel
VP, Sales
Ingram Micro
BlackHawk Data
56
Tania Ondrejka
Softchoice
Qlik
BeyondTrust
VP, Client Engagement
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_604-724.indd 2
6/9/20 11:02 AM
CRN Newsletters Keep You Up To Date Breaking News Alerts Industry Event Coverage Highly Acclaimed Lists
Subscribe Today! CRN.com/Newsletters
©2020 The Channel Company, LLC. CRN and The Channel Company logo are registered trademarks of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved.
of 2020 Women the Channel
Michelle Pas
Sr. Manager, Global Strategic Alliance Marketing
Director, Channel Marketing, Global Programs
Global Channel Marketing Manager
Par tington built the first global, multifaceted channel campaign focused on the “Journey to Teams.” Through channel enablement, a targeted digital campaign and global webinars, Jabra saw the channel embrace this journey.
Pa s h e l p e d add modern touches to RSA’s partner communications, including delivering content via video and social media. She also kept partners informed of modifications to the vendor’s global partner program that make it easier to do business with RSA.
Pasko launched partner enablement programs that allow Avast to address key challenges raised by partners, including a lack of expertise in marketing, the need to drive operational efficiency, and the move to an MSP model with predictable, recurring revenue.
Patel focused on incentives that accelerated sales motions and cycles for partners and amplification of partners’ capabilities in specialized verticals. She also developed and delivered enablement that opened net-new revenue streams for them to capitalize on.
V M w a r e focuses on delivering superior value throughout the customer journey with a vibrant and committed partner ecosystem. Patel’s team leads the partner operating model, helping to increase field productivity and setting up partner roles for success.
Lacey Patnella
Susan PatrickBritton
Vicki Patten
Tanya Pearson
Bethann Pepoli
Global Partner Manager
Channel Account Manager
AVP, Public Sector Channel, Alliances, Business Development
Jabra
National Sales Manager
ViewSonic
RSA Security
Avast
Bhavna Patel
Sonal Patel
Director, Alliance, Programs
Sr. Director, Partner Role Excellence, Operating Model
NetApp
VMware
VP, Sales
Rackspace
LogMeIn
Patnella was instrumental in working with product managers to develop channel-specific pricing and bundles of ViewSonic’s most popular education products. She drove channel communication to make resellers aware of the easy to purchase/easy to sell bundles.
Patrick-Britton leveraged industry relationships with core manufacturer and distribution partners to bring brand awareness and visibility for KTS and its IT partners. Her strength in business development and sales has grown KTS’ channel presence.
Patten continues to grow R a c k s p a c e’s channel program locally and across the globe. She is an advocate for her team and her partners within Rackspace, and is the voice of the partner to leadership. Her key partners both saw double-digit growth with Rackspace in 2019.
Pe a r s o n ’s external partner focus areas include e n ro l l m e n t, enablement, engagement and expansion. It is critical that LogMeIn identifies partners who add value to the company’s offerings while keeping its core competencies.
Pepoli brought together three business development and partner-focused teams into one organization. This meant restructuring the strategy and metrics while establishing alignment around pipeline growth, software adoption and customer success.
Diane Pereira
Mara Pereira
Lindsay Perry
Jo Peterson
Linda Peterson
Director, Peripherals Business Unit
President, CEO
VP, Cloud, Security
Clarify360
Arrow Electronics
Pe r e i r a launched the largest online event ever produced by SAP, live-streamed across five different platforms. The traditional media/analyst event was flipped around to be an awareness and pipeline event—with SAP partner innovations in the spotlight.
Pereira built a central product marketing and operational center of competence, while scaling up dedicated sales expertise. This approach enabled the team to position Tech Data as the leading and fastest-growing peripherals distributor across 17 countries in Europe.
This past year Perr y took a “behindthe-scenes” leadership role to develop and implement strategies that will enhance the Apps Admin ecosystem. Her priority was to focus on customer satisfaction by providing a more efficient and effective marketing strategy.
Clarify360 believes IoT represents a significant revenue opportunity in the tech space moving forward. Peterson has spent time and energy to craft a portfolio of solutions and best-of-breed providers to service clients that are beginning to utilize the technology.
Peterson has been laserfocused on driving growth w i t h Ar row Electronics’ partners. She also has been dedicated to finding new methods to enable the channel and new routes to market through alliance solution plays.
April Petty
Gena Phelps
Anke Philipp
Robyn Philips
VP, Field Sales
Synnex
Director, AMS Partner, Regional Marketing
Director, Embedded Solutions Business Unit, Europe, Partner Ecosystem IBM Deutschland
Channel Account Manager
Sherlaender “Lani” Philips
D ue to the transformation going on in the channel, Petty will continue to expand Synnex’s breadth and depth with partners. She also will continue to better understand partners’ strategies so that she can help them grow their business.
Phelps leads field and partner marketing strategy across the Americas and has fostered close alignment with partners. Her team built demand generation programs and aligned with the partner sales organization to build joint marketing plans with partners.
Philipp is zeroed in on driving incremental growth consistently across the different IBM customer segments. She also is continuing her mission to simplify the company’s business processes.
Philips’ accomplishments include client retention and territory yearover-year growth of 20 percent. She did this by visiting partners, asking them questions on what the company was doing right or wrong and seeking a better understanding of their clients’ needs.
Head of Content Strategy, Global Partner, SME Marketing
SAP
58
Tetiana Pasko
Susan Partington
Knot Technology Solutions
Tech Data
UiPath
Apps Admin Company
Zix | AppRiver
Splunk
Business Manager
VP, U.S. Channel Sales, One Commercial Partner
Microsoft
Philips has consistently been an advocate for Microsoft’s customers and partners, transforming and strengthening the bond between the field and partners to drive a deeper understanding of the value of Microsoft’s services.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_604-724.indd 3
6/9/20 11:03 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Lorna Pierno
Penny Philpot
Leslie Pickering
VP, Worldwide ISV Business Leader
Sr. Director, One Commercial Partner
Director, Channel Marketing, Communications
ExtraHop Networks
Philpot set up consistency and a tight working relationship between Microsoft corporate and regional teams/business. She also established the company’s current ISV strategy and its implementation worldwide.
Pickering created Commercial Industry and Public Sector Technical Centers of Excellence for U.S. partners. In addition, she launched a partner capability and skills assessment framework and executed over 300 technical development plans with ISV and services partners.
In her first six months at Ex treme, P i e r n o designed the “Build Your Business with Extreme” program to promote the Partner Marketing and Campaign Center. It has enabled the sales organization to champion the center and its offerings to partners.
Pimentel has worked diligently to build trust and grow reseller and technology ecosystem partnerships. In 2019, she grew the relationships between regional sales managers and partners that resulted in increasing partner engagement from 10 percent to 90 percent.
Deena Piquion
Renee Pizarro
Deana Pizzo
Alexis Pomierski
VP, GM, Latin America Operations
Director, North America Channel Development, Sales
CEO
Executive Director
Microsoft
Microsoft
Extreme Networks
Kathleen Pimentel Channel Sales Manager
Maria Pinto Dir., Field Marketing, EMEA
WatchGuard Technologies
Pinto has helped build strong relationships with key partners throughout EMEA and helped dramatically expand WatchGuard Technologies’ partner ecosystem in the MSP, MSSP and security-aware VAR space.
Jamie Porter Director, Marketing
Pizarro and her team built a portfolio of offerings focused on re-engaging dormant partners, accelerating partner development and recruiting new partners. These efforts increased the HPE partner population over 25 percent year over year.
I.T. Solutions of South Florida
John Alexander Consulting
MNJ Technologies
Piquion joined Xerox in December 2019 and has already made it a priority to listen to the channels in Latin America and understand how to better support them. She is focused on helping channels be able to articulate the digital transformation journey.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Pomierski advanced the c o m p a n y ’s depth and breadth into clients’ infrastructure optimization. It retains a cloud engineer with security credentials to assess capacity and workflow at the application layer to create a customized multi-cloud landing zone.
Throughout 2019, Porter wa s ke e n l y focused on executing a strategic company rebrand for MNJ, in addition to working diligently to continue to evolve and strengthen its brand image through events, campaigns, public relations, videos, social media and a new website.
Ayesha Prakash
Olivia Pramas
Tamara Prazak
Cherryl Presley
Christy Prosapio
Director, Channel Marketing, Demand Generation
Director, Channel Strategy, Marketing
CEO
Director, International Marketing
Xerox
Chief Revenue Officer
Terbium Labs
Pizzo developed two new channel-centric offerings. Dark Web Watch is a security solution that combines dark web monitoring tools with cybersecurity education. Total Cloud leverages the power of the Microsoft 365 platform to improve clients’ business efficiency and security.
Black Pearl Mail
Zix | AppRiver
AppGate
Prakash spearheaded 150 percent year-over-year growth of the company’s award-winning SPARK Partner Alliance program. She also hired, mentored and grew an accomplished team of channel professionals.
Pramas’ channel marketing team doubled, resources that were put to good use to make improvements in to-partner and through-partner efforts. She also realigned the team, with one function focusing on increasing channel revenue and one on the channel program.
Prazak develops and implements marketing and sales enablement strategies—including a partner engagement road map—for channel partner programs at AppGate, the secure access company that was spun out of Cyxtera on Jan. 1, 2020.
Presley came to Black Pearl Mail with extensive partner channel experience and has taken great care to educate the team in becoming channel-savvy. From infrastructure to strategy and everything in between, she ensures the company is laser-focused on channel success.
Prosapio and her team have continued to implement a new channel rewards program throughout EMEA and the Americas. She has also initiated website enhancements to give partners easier access to services, learning resources and technical/ design support.
Amy Protexter
Debbie Purfurst
Bana Qashu
Laikin Ragsdale
Akello Ragwar
SVP, North America Marketing
VP, Velocity Sales
Xerox
Sr. Dir., Channel Sales, East
Avant
Director, Channel Marketing
Sr. National Channel Manager
Since 2016 Insight has more than doubled in size from a hardware/software reseller into a full-service systems integrator. Leading a marketing team of over 200, Protexter has architected a strategic repositioning of Insight’s purpose.
Purfurst was able to leverage a restructure at Xerox to better serve the solution providers and distributors while maintaining a strong hold of national partners. She also leveraged field sellers to engage with key end users at partners for incremental revenue opportunities.
Qashu doubled the number of channel managers and inside channel managers. She also increased participation based on a proven cadence and key performance indicators that challenge today’s distribution/master agent model.
Ragsdale led the launch of the Sec tigo Web Security Platform, introducing a new solution bundle for partners to resell alongside core products. She also led the development of new partner enablement and customer marketing materials.
Being tasked to develop Spirion’s channel nationally, Ragwar quickly identified partners with a strong cybersecurity practice that complemented Spirion. She built meaningful connections and defined the go-to-market strategy, which continues to drive revenue.
Insight Enterprises
Sectigo
Tripp Lite
Spirion
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_604-724.indd 4
59
6/9/20 11:03 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Jamie Rahbany
Joanna Raitano
Director, Americas Marketing
VP, Cloud, Cognitive Software, Partner Ecosystem
SUSE
Marketing Manager, India
Tech Data
Ronda Ralph Channel Program Manager
Cheryl Rang Director, Advanced Solutions
Vonage
Ingram Micro
Recognizing the value of the channel to grow SUSE’s business, Rahbany added two roles to the North America marketing team dedicated to channel partners and alliances. This change has actively contributed to SUSE’s channel success.
Raitano drove a more consistent goto-market with sales and partner teams. She also found quick synergy with Red Hat, bringing Cloud Paks to market through partners to accelerate the journey to the cloud.
Raj identified potential channel partners and managed every aspect of channel marketing, maintaining relationships with vendors and channel partners. She also built sales pipelines for the channel with demand generation initiatives and integrated marketing campaigns.
Ralph has been a key contributor to Vonage’s PX 360— enhancing the partner experience. She also has been working to design and implement partner tools to help them run their businesses more effectively.
Rang had three goals: generate more profitable growth, embrace n e w ro u te s to market and increase operational efficiency. She developed a financial services program that enabled partners to have the cash flow needed to acquire new technologies and resources.
Jennifer Ream
Summer Recchi
Jennifer Reid
Marjanne Reijne
Debra Reiter
Worldwide Partner Development, Readiness Mgr.
Director, Partner Enablement, Channel Development
Director, Marketing, North America
Sr. Manager, Global Partner Programs Management
CEO, Chief Technology Advisor
Ream identified opportunities to help partners ramp to revenue quickly. This included implementing an on-demand new partner welcome kit that consists of a simple getting-started checklist and refreshing presales certifications.
Recchi established an innovative approach to ensuring partner success called “Tailored Enablement.” It provides customized training and coaching for strategic partners by understanding their needs then putting together unique enablement programs.
Reiter ’s company specializes in providing IT services, solutions and security for small businesses, preaching that prevention is 10 times less expensive than remediation. Cybersecurity awareness is growing and becoming more accessible to small businesses.
Linda Rendleman
F5 Networks
SVP, Endpoint Solutions, Americas
Tech Data
Rendleman leads the strategy, relationships and business operations of Tech Data’s endpoint solutions portfolio to ensure the growth of the distributor’s vendors, products and services. She is focused on helping channel partners capture more opportunities.
Chari Rhoades Director, Channel Operations, Distribution, Americas
McAfee
Rhoades led her team to focus on executing its plan to ensure new business growth via targeted campaigns, enablement activities and leveraging key distribution services. This resulted in a material contribution to bookings for the channel.
60
IBM
Nidhi Raj
One of Reid’s main goals was implementing a new partner p o r t a l. S h e worked with vendor and internal teams to manage the systems integrations and build out the assets needed. Now completed, the project is expected to have a huge impact on the channel business.
NetApp
Managing the life cycle of partners is part of Reijne’s responsibility. Over the past year, she automated the on-boarding process, reducing the effort and time it takes to complete on-boarding, which has had a positive impact on the overall partner experience.
CMIT Solutions of the Tri-Cities
LouAnne Reynolds
Susan Reynolds
Monique Rezaei
Paula Rhea
Director, Worldwide Partner Programs
Vice President
Director, Channel Sales, North America
Head of Product Marketing
Reynolds built a global partner marketing strategy and organization from the ground up. The strategy included an operating framework, systems, policies and processes. These programs enabled partners to effectively market products and services.
In the past year, success was measured both in terms of growth and division. Reynolds led the process of breaking an ecosystem group into three separate partner teams, spinning off two teams for successful divestitures that continued to grow partner sales quarter over quarter.
Rezaei played a n i nte g ra l par t in the overall success of Poly’s channel organization in 2019. She grew the business year over year through strategic, prescriptive growth initiatives that led to the overall joint success of Poly and its partners.
Rhea expanded N e t s u r i o n ’s channel focus to accelerate partner enrollment and revenue. She managed the largest product launch to the channel with managed endpoint detection and response that encompassed collateral, channel and partner training, sales enablement and more.
Bernadette (Bern) Richardson
Tammy Ridgley
Tara Ridley
Kristy Rieth
VP, Solutions Development, Product, Supply Chain Management Tessco Technologies
Managing Director, Partner Organization
Sr. Manager, Business Partner Communities, Channel Engagement
Ridgley has been key to Tessco becoming a more channel-focused company. This has been achieved through the alignment of the product management team, optimizing of the line card and redeployment of technical support resources to support reseller needs.
Ridley grew the channel business 17 percent across Australia and New Zealand in fiscal year 2019. Key to this growth was stepping back to strategically consider the channel ecosystem and think outside the box, creating opportunities to boost revenue.
SAP
NetApp
SVP, Marketing
PlanetOne
It’s Richardson’s mission to ensure that PlanetOne stays top of mind with providers and channel partners. The company has done this by staying true to its signature white-glove service levels and finding ways to further engage with partners.
Panda Security
IBM
Poly
Cisco Systems
Netsurion
Lenovo
Rieth led the team responsible for the successful launch and development of Lenovo’s five business partner communities. These include SMB, K-12, higher education, commercial and health care.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_604-724.indd 5
6/9/20 11:04 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Elke Ringler
Amy Rintamaki
Channel Director, Central Europe
Channel Chief
Sprint
Leveraging the broad market access of distributors and strongly engaging with Citrix’s strategic alliance partner, Microsoft, were key to Ringler expanding the route to market and extensively growing the “cloud-first” channel ecosystem in Central Europe.
Rintamaki invested heavily in systems, platforms and APIs to improve and simplify the partner experience across all critical stages of engagement. Her main focus was aligning around enabling partners to grow their business and delight their customers.
Kelly Robinson VP, Worldwide Storage Sales
Laura Ripans
Robin Ritenour
Brinda Robin
Global Head of Business Dev., Partners, Channels
People.ai
Program Manager, Edge, IoT Ecosystem Dell Technologies
Ripans is all about the “Win Win Win.” This ensures that everybody wins—customer, partner and Datadog. She was the first hire in Datadog’s Channel/Alliance/ Partner Program to start the motion, and the new Datadog Partner Network rolled out in early 2020.
Ritenour is working to p o s i t i o n partners as a growth engine instead of influencing factor. This helps to extend innovation throughout the company and ecosystem and leverage partners as an integrated route to market across the enterprise.
Robin updated the Edge and IoT Ecosystem program, giving technology and service providers the tools needed to focus on the advancement of commercial and industrial IoT solutions. She also included partners in regional IoT sales meetings and workshops.
Mari Rodish
Nurper Rodoplu
Staci Rodriguez
Lacey Rondon
IBM
CFO
Evotek
Channel Manager
Director, Channel Sales
Regional Partner Leader
Robinson led a team to re - establish a velocity business, combining digital capabilities to create pipeline along with a new model to allow non-IBM partners to easily join and sell IBM’s entry portfolio. Her team also signed a significant number of strategic embedded agreements.
Rodish’s primary role is to ensure Evotek’s financial health. Toward that end, she implemented a financial system, a CRM system and a tax system, all while building an operations team that can support each tool as well as the integrated system.
Rodoplu changed the distributor structure and increased the number of active partners 55 percent. She also restructured the partner ecosystem to increase their enablement and loyalty. As a result, she and her team increased the number of Gold partners 50 percent.
Rodriguez grew business 40 percent year over year by organizing monthly channel training and engagement events across the U.S. Through training and development, she led partners to the highest win rate and total revenue for Parkview, a proactive monitoring service.
Rondon has enabled partners to grow their business through cloud and managed services. She saw several partners in the Mountain region pivot and win some great new business in this space, which is helping to accelerate the value everyone brings in the channel.
Rachel Rose
Jessica Rosen
Rebecca Rosen
Nicole Roskill
Cathy Rowell
Sr. Vendor Business Manager
VP, Marketing
Exec. Dir., Worldwide Channel Chief, Data Center Group
SVP, Channel, Sales Effectiveness
With Rowell building a ro b u s t a n d scalable partner program, Nectar has seen 14 percent of revenue in the past year coming from some of these new channel partners. On-boarding, training, supporting and managing these new partners have been critical.
Citrix Systems
Global Head of Differentiation Programs
Director, Channels, Alliances
Datadog
Veeam
Park Place Technologies
Rackspace
Ingram Micro
Broadvoice
Rose focused on improving the par tner experience. She added new benefits to programs for partners, including additional MDF, service credits, and opportunities for partners to showcase their offerings directly to customers.
Rosen worked to create a work environment t h at wo u l d encourage greater collaboration within her team, across the organization, and with channel partners. This included continued education and enablement efforts, as well as documenting best practices.
In 2019, Rosen worked with marketing to develop demand generation programs for partners, with options for those with sophisticated marketing teams and those without. She also aligned business development and inside sales teams with the channel to help with recruiting.
Roskill has refreshed the Lenovo Partner Engage Program and re-assessed the partner engagement model, refocusing incentives to reward growth, reconfirming Lenovo’s “Channel First” commitment, and making it easier for partners to engage.
Anansha Roy Choudhury
Dawn Rundell
Patricia Rush
Marie Russell
Tracy Rutherford
Director, E-Commerce Channel Sales
President, Founder
RushToChannel
Sr. Director, Global Partner Marketing Programs
Global Channel Enablement Program Manager
Rundell aligned with e - commerce tools that provide actionable insight into opportunities to further improve the customer buying journey through channel partner sites. This has improved traffic, conversion and customer satisfaction.
Rush has 30-plus years of experience managing channels of distribution across diverse ecosystems. She has crossfunctional experience in businesses ranging from Fortune 50 to small and midsize organizations in IT, telco, security and services.
Amazon Web Services
North America Leader, Engagement, Partner Ecosystem
IBM
Roy Choudhury has focused on partner engagement. Her top accomplishments include building high-performing practices within the ecosystem, spanning brand communications, partner enablement and event experiences.
APC by Schneider Electric
Lenovo
Nectar Services
Juniper Networks
Poly
R u s s e l l launched a Partner Lead Management Program so Juniper and its partners can have greater visibility into MDF investment and pipeline generation. She also launched a new install base program that helps partners focus on newer customers.
Ruther ford increased registration and attendance at partner webinars by delivering relevant and consistent content. She continues to deliver an engaging partner experience with channel webinars, strategic events, advisory councils and more.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_604-724.indd 6
61
6/9/20 11:04 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Nancy Sabino
Bonni-Jo Salazar
CEO
Director, Global Partner Programs
SabinoCompTech
Global Head of Partner Marketing
Elastic
Kelly Sander
Edith Santos
Sr. SMB Business Development Executive
Director, Global Incident Response
Ingram Micro
NTT
Sabino sets the direction and vision for the company. Over the past year, she wanted to make sure she set a solid foundation for even higher growth than already accomplished. She initiated processes and systems improvements that would do just that.
Salazar leads the team that is responsible for evolving S p l u n k ’s Partner+ Program, which in the past year has included expanding support for multiple partner types, overhauling the Technology Alliance Partner Program and updating the reseller program.
Sanda provides business counsel and sets up infrastructure, t e c h n o l o g y, tools, processes and staffing to create the foundation for a worldclass partner marketing function. It is a function based on the desire to be the easiest and most effective program possible for Elastic’s partners.
Sander had two goals: grow SMB revenue p ro f i t a b l y, and share best practices globally. She achieved both through customization, collaboration and knowledge sharing. She also invested in crosstraining teams and introduced special financing programs.
Over the last year, one of Santos’ biggest feats was scaling her team. The team was able to become a global organization as opposed to just regional—opening capabilities and giving NTT the ability to provide cybersecurity for more clients.
Kristin Sargent
Tiffany Sargent
Shannon Sbar
Shirley Scarborough
Meredith Scheraldi
Sr. Partner Development Manager
Chief IoT Architect, U.S. Channel Scale, Partners
VP, Channels, North America
Director, Worldwide Channel Program
Sr. Marketing Manager
Sargent drove the secondhighest global contribution of partner revenue for all of AWS Worldwide Public Sector. She led the strategy to accelerate cloud adoption for AWS customers through channel partners via key competency programs.
Sargent leveraged her architec ture expertise to accelerate the channel adoption of new IoT technologies. She created a strategy to drive technology enablement by educating partners and fusing technology, business and go-to-market objectives.
Sbar oversaw efforts to marr y bestin-class offers and programs, developing a new storytelling perspective and mobilizing the team to high growth. She also ensured resource allocation to support e-commerce efforts in the National Solution Provider channel.
Based on partner feedback and Commvault’s partner-led goals, Scarborough architected the solution provider and distributor program to deliver a rich “incentive opportunity” plan by building on the health of partners’ engagement.
Scheraldi implemented strategic programs and events focused on Arrow’s suppliers and partners in the commercial and public sector space—all of which have contributed to overall partner growth for the company.
Sabine Schilg
Maryse Schlesinger
Diane Schmidt Dir., Partner Development
Judith Schreibmayer
Cynthia Schreiner
Director, Global Partner Ops.
Amazon Web Services
VP, SMB, Consumer Sales, EMEA
Intel
APC by Schneider Electric
Carbonite, an OpenText
Splunk
Episerver
Schilg started leading Carbonite’s EMEA channel organization in late 2018. Since then, she has grown the number of channel partners in the EMEA region. Her focus on partner enablement and support drives business growth for Carbonite and its partners.
Wi t h i n t h e p a s t y e a r, Schlesinger improved partner operations by making it simpler for Splunk’s partners to do business with the company. This included streamlining processes around AWS Marketplace and renewal and upgrade registration.
Schmidt leads the partner sales management team, managing key digital agency and systems integrator partnerships. She and her team last year executed a new Partner Success program, providing additional sales and marketing benefits to channel partners.
Susanne Schuetz
Gavriella Schuster
Director, Channel Marketing, EMEA
Corporate VP, One Commercial Partner
Schuetz leads a p o we r f u l EMEA channel marketing team and community. She is evolving Dell Technologies’ partner marketing experience through events, enablement, demand generation and communication, contributing significantly to pipeline.
Integrating partner co-sell into Microsoft’s enterprise sales motion and improving Microsoft marketplace engagement has been a big achievement for Schuster. She also spearheaded major investments in the digital partner experience.
S c h w a b designed an M&A program to quickly identify opportunities, conduct due diligence and close the sale. She also designed and repackaged CMIT’s managed services to incorporate cybersecurity solutions and has helped new MSPs start their business across the U.S. and Canada.
company
Dell Technologies
62
Splunk
Rebecca Sanda
Microsoft
Commvault
Arrow Electronics
Marketing Community Mgr.
VP, East Region, Europe
Liongard
Schreibmayer and her team achieved significant growth year over year by helping partners not only grow their traditional enterprise and endpoint business, but also transform toward a next-generation solutions business with a focus on cloud, analytics/IoT and security.
As a star tup, channel community engagement and aware ness was a huge goal for 2019. Schreiner helped to ensure that Liongard was at key events— with the right people and materials. Liongard saw significant growth in 2019.
Theresa Schwab
Patty Scire
Caroline Scott
Growth Strategist
Sr. Director, North America Strategy, Programs
Director, Channel Marketing, North America
CMIT Solutions
Tech Data
Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies
Scire focused on the enablement of internal teams and partners, ensuring a thorough understanding of benefits, requirements, tools and governance. She also drove awareness of line-of-business initiatives and incentives to partners.
Scott delivers high-value marketing program support, enabling high pipeline and ROI, both within partners’ current customer bases and new customer acquisition. A key accomplishment was giving smaller partners ready-to-use marketing materials.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_725-845.indd 1
6/9/20 11:06 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Kristina Scott
Leanne ScottWilliams
Julia Scully
Wendy Sefcik
Ariane Seiferth
Head of Global Client Services
Director, Strategic Accounts, Distribution
Partner Product Director
Director, Partner Sales Americas
Citrix Systems
Accordo Group
Thales
Scott-Williams created a new channel strategy for Cisco Managed Services, providing partners with new capabilities to help build their services business. Cisco’s channel-first approach has resulted in a program that is attractive to partners.
As Citrix continues to transform its business while also being best-in-class with Citrix Workspace, Scully has led her team to enable partners to transform as well. Aligning objectives and building key plays and sales kits allowed her to achieve her goal.
Sefcik is part of the team for two channel offerings. The first is go-tomarket activities for Accordo Cloud Optimizer. The second is managing channel relationships across distributors and solution assessment services for multinational cloud software providers.
After the acquisition of G e m a l to i n 2019, Seiferth had to integrate the channel teams. Her channel sales team was instrumental in guiding, supporting and navigating partners through the integration process.
Jana Sellers-Munford
Laura Seymour
Laura Shafer
Komal Shah
Irina Shamkova
Executive Director, B2B Technology
Sr. Dir., Worldwide Channel Marketing
Director, Channel Marketing
Director, Worldwide Partner Operations
SVP, Product Management
SellersMunford spotlighted vendors leading the charge in growing their channel sales in key technology segments, based on NPD research. Her main focus is supporting growth within the channel through distribution, resellers and solution providers.
Seymour launched the HPE D igital Marketing Learning Center, which included a suite of online digital marketing learning courses. HPE saw 30-plus percent growth in partner marketing-generated pipeline and closed revenue.
S h a f e r wa s instrumental in developing iland’s global channel strategy and was the driver in developing its global channel marketing strategy. She put in place keys to partner success— including partner marketing and enablement—as iland achieved revenue and channel milestones.
Shah brought two separate partner communities together under a single program. She revamped processes and partner policies and implemented Salesforce changes to serve as the backbone of Poly’s new portal.
S h a m k o v a ’s team ensures that Intermedia’s full por tfolio of cloud communications solutions is easy for partners to sell, deploy and support. She always has the channel in mind when it comes to the products the company develops and the features it delivers.
Joy Shanks
Erin Shaw Crowley
Michele Sheets Warburton
Carmen Shelton
Corinne Shepard
Director, Strategic Alliances
Director, Worldwide Channel Sales Enablement
Lead, Global Partner Marketing
Cloudflare
Scott has a dual focus: First, to contribute to C l o u d f l a re’s next level of growth by building a worldwide partner marketing team and a set of at-scale tools and programs. Second, to accelerate joint go-to-market with strategic alliances and channel partners.
The NPD Group
Sr. Director, Americas Channel Sales
Cisco Systems
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Sr. Marketing Manager, Events
iland
Poly
Sr. Program Mgr., Channel Dev.
Technologent
Intermedia
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Barracuda MSP
S h a n k s realigned the channel team to provide a better partner experience, tap into new volume pools and illuminate a career path for the sales team. She set clear expectations for her team and led a new analytics-based go-tomarket strategy.
One of Shaw C r o w l e y ’s biggest accomplishments was the planning and execution of the first Partner Advisory Council meeting. In January 2020, top partners illuminated the challenges and opportunities they are seeing in their business.
By listening to the voice of partners and reviewing analytics, Sheets Warburton helped create a new partner portal that delivers a persona-based experience to help partners address their unique business requirements.
Shelton helped advance the channel business through establishing strong relationships with top partners such as Microsoft and AWS. She works closely with them to understand their partner programs and the activities Technologent can participate in that will generate revenue.
Shepard has zeroed in on building sales-relevant e n a b l e m e nt materials and tools for partner sales teams in the form of Enablement Kits. She also launched reporting functionality for visibility and awareness to track all forms of training delivered.
Nicola Sheppard
Molly Sherwood
Sarah Shields
Jennifer Shoemaker
Shannon Sholtis
Dir., Global Partner, OEM Business Transformation Dell Technologies
Sr. Director, Marketing
VP, GM, Central, North Europe Channel Dell Technologies
Sr. Channel Account Mgr. Panasonic System Solutions Company of North America
Sr. Director, Marketing Communications, Creative D&H Distributing
Sherwood’s top accomplishments centered on aligning her team of product business managers and marketing specialists to grow partner revenue, increase the number of partners selling, drive end-user marketing demand generation and build out partner enablement practices.
Shields took a message to enterprise sellers, encouraging better channel collaboration with Dell Technologies’ largest customers. She has delivered depth and breadth to the enterprise business, landing some of the biggest deals ever though partners.
Shoemaker helped the team achieve its annual goal by reaching higher than 10 percent growth year over year. She was instrumental in the creation of an online training portal for reseller partners.
Sholtis’ department developed end-to-end launch communications and resources for partners, designed around timely growth opportunities and categories. She takes a full, 360-degree approach to marketing communications.
Sheppard partnered with the pricing strategy team for storage and servers to solve partners’ predictability challenges with programs like deal registration. She also built on successful campaigns like Partner Preferred.
Synnex
Juniper Networks
Palo Alto Networks
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_725-845.indd 2
63
6/9/20 11:06 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Jeanine Sicinski
Ginger Siedschlag
Partner Experience Manager
VP, Elastic Engineering
Vanessa Simmons
Erin Skoch Gorombey
Onica
Director, National Solution Integrators
Sicinski concentrated on building her expertise a ro u n d t h e channel ecosystem and developing the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania territory. She worked with partners to help them be successful selling within the cloud space.
Siedschlag developed Onica Teams, the fastestgrowing product in Onica’s history, designed to help midmarket customers adopt the cloud with a cloud-native approach. She also reimagined the Managed Cost Optimization product, Optimizer.
Sikes’ team experienced great success in the growth and development of national partners. The team finished as the top team for the first half of fiscal year 2020, achieving record revenue numbers for the partners in the group.
Simmons drove record-breaking channel-influenced services revenue. Pythian was recognized as Google Cloud’s Data Analytics Partner of the Year and plans to launch its first resell practice beginning with Google Cloud services and followed by Pythian Google Cloud Managed Services.
Helping with the realignment and refocus of an integrated channel sales approach, Skoch Gorombey gave the partner program a true community feel through a heavy focus on relationships and how the team can help partners excel.
Claudia Slane
Kimberly Snopik
Katherine Sobus
Catherine Solazzo
Kilynn Sommer
Director, Channels Americas
Director, Product Marketing
Sr. Director, Customer Experience Strategy ConvergeOne
VP, Partner Ecosystem Performance Marketing
Sr. Director, Channel Marketing, Events
RapidScale, a Cox Business
Obsidian Security
AT&T
Pure Storage
VP, Business Development
Pythian
IBM
Dir., Channel Management
LogMeIn
Mitel
Slane is building Obsidian’s channel program from scratch, one that unlocks profitability and predictability. As Obsidian’s channel lead, she provides the support required to empower channel partners to evangelize and sell Obsidian. She also communicates channel needs.
Snopik has managed marketing from contracting and product launch communication to refreshing all website content. She utilized interactive sessions to improve the presales and post-sales channel experience.
In working with a key vendor, Sobus developed an offer that is unique in contact centers. She coupled the vendor products with ConvergeOne services to create this differentiation. As a result of the commitment to the relationship, sales doubled this year over last.
Solazzo has pushed for simplification in a business that is very complex. She streamlined co-marketing processes and programs, integrated skills and learning environments to a centralized platform and launched new benefits for partners to drive demand in the market.
One of Somm e r ’s k e y accomplishments was developing Mitel’s “marketing marketplace,” providing the channel with vetted vendors, services and cost-effective programs. It’s a one-stop shop, giving them the opportunity to be agile marketers.
Sunny Song
Jas Sood
Linda Spence
Nancy Sperry
Kayla Spiess
VP, Sales, Commercial, SLED Segments
Global Partner Program Manager
VP, Channel Sales, Eastern Region
Head of North America Partner Marketing
Sr. Manager, Partner Programs, Operations
FireEye
64
Dena Sikes
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Xerox
Sage Intacct
Song manages partner programs and operations, which includes establishing tier elements, rebates, referrals and all back-end operations. She also launched a new partner program name, Affinity, to better align the branding with FireEye and the journey it’s on with partners.
Sood has ensured her business segment has a channel-first strategy. This strategy has resulted in more than 95 percent of sales for the business being driven with the partner community.
Spence enabled the adoption of software and applications within the channel through the launch of programs and promotions to motivate partners to focus on these key strategic areas. This will enable them to differentiate themselves and drive revenue growth.
S p e r r y wa s part of a leadership team that developed more programs and strategies to fuel the growth of the U.S. market as well as support international growth. The channel is an integral part of the Sage sales vision and the organization’s overall strategic plan.
Spiess has revamped how Google approaches partner marketing across North America. She leads work around the coverage model to support more partners and focuses on scale to ensure engagement with all partner types.
Cindy Spring
Vinita Srivalsan
Sonia St. Charles
Kristen Stallard
Brenda Stallings
Dir., Global ISG Channel Specialty Strategy, Programs Dell Technologies
Global Director, Partner Marketing
CEO
Davenport Group
Director, Product Management, Stellr
Matrix Integration
Spring accelerated the global channel-led tech refresh program for the partner community, leading to 400-plus percent growth with channel guides and tools. She also continued the channel seed unit program.
I n S e p te m ber Cloudera launched the first enterprise data cloud to help empower businesses to become truly data-driven from the edge to AI. Srivalsan built joint messaging and collateral to drive go-to-market campaigns with partners and generated $66 million in pipeline.
As the head of a Titanium Dell Technologies partner and member of Dell EMC’s Partner Advisory Board, St. Charles engaged with the vendor to improve channel strategies, which impacted all partners. Her relationship with Dell Technologies positions Davenport Group to advocate for its customers.
Cloudera
Synnex
Stallard has helped build worldwide vendor initiatives, proposals and new lines of business. She has also helped build strategic proposals that secured significant incremental investments for Synnex U.S., Latin America, Japan and Canada.
CEO
Stallings provides the leadership and expertise to solve complex IT problems. She also is president of Current Blend, a local coworking space to support startups, one of them being Blended Coders, where young women learn how to code and receive an introduction to robotics.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_725-845.indd 3
6/9/20 11:07 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Sandi Stambaugh
Stacy Staver
VP, Product Management
Alliance Director
Nicole Stavroff
Caralyn Stern
Michele Stern Managing Director
Security Scorecard
VP, Global Channel, Americas Marketing
Sophos
Sr. Director, Worldwide Channels
Synnex
Evotek
IBM
Stambaugh maintained a customer advisory council to ensure key goto-market activities. She also held an executive conference focused on market insight and solutionselling and expanded customer enablement programs to include professional sales training and industry certifications.
Staver cond u c t e d distribution interviews that significantly contributed to a practice realignment. Evotek achieved vast increases in profitability within multiple facets of the business lines due to these methodologies being implemented in a streamlined fashion.
Stavroff revamped the partner program to offer differentiated partner levels, rate cards, incentives, services and MDF. She signed new partners targeting different market segments and streamlined back-end processes to support the program.
Stern focused on initiatives that help partners build their business. This included enabling them to launch into uncharted territory across cloud, managed threat response and MSP and launching a new on-boarding hub on Sophos’ Partner Portal.
Stern accelerated the adoption of IBM Cognitive applications, cloud and other emerging technologies. She also delivered comprehensive sales enablement, technical education and marketing content to Arrow and its partners, building a strong foundation of skilled partners.
Allie Stevens
Kim Stevens
Michele Stone
Jacque Strand
Lisa Strydom
Strategic Alliances Marketing Manager
Channel Manager
Channel Director
Manager, Communications, Channel Marketing Adapture Technology Group
Manager, Channels, Africa
FujiFilm
AT&T
Stevens redefined the MDF p ro ce s s f o r partners. She also is responsible for the ROI on these funds, so she worked with top strategic partners on marketing strategy. They rebranded all digital and physical assets and created updated content for customer bases.
FujiFilm’s Data Management Solutions team is a distributor for software provided by StrongBox Data Solutions. Stevens was the first field-based sales executive to launch a channel strategy in North America for a unique data management solution.
Stone leads the AT&T channel manager team in the Northeast. The team supports the company’s solution providers in growing their business, providing extensive sales, technical and process expertise.
Through leveraging partner relationships and growing t h e t e a m ’s expertise on channel technology solutions, Strand managed campaigns that drove 55 percent of sales leads in 2019.
The Africa channel business for Veeam continues to grow, and Strydom and her team continue to overachieve with double-digit growth (30 percent year-overyear growth in 2019 in Africa), even in tough economic conditions throughout the continent.
Liz Stuart
Becca Stucky
Wendy Stusrud
Florence Sullivan
Meaghan Sullivan
Sr. Director, Demand Generation Marketing
Area VP, Americas Channel Sales
Worldwide Partner Campaign Strategist
Head of Global Partner Marketing, General Business
Stuart raised awareness with a key cloud partner about the cloud-native advocacy activities the marketing team was pursuing. Her efforts positioned the assets within the partner’s community and demonstrated Perficient’s thought leadership and capabilities.
Stucky’s channel goals have been focused on enabling partners with top-performing digital lead generation assets, providing localized web content in emerging regions, and finding ways to engage the channel in Thycotic’s latest initiatives for accountbased marketing.
Stusrud created a program called Leads Passed. The program teaches sales teams to develop leads and get them into the hands of valued partners. These opportunities help build stronger relationships in the field, where it matters most.
Sullivan joined NetApp at the beginning of the year with the goal of building a world-class partner marketing experience by delivering best-in-class tools and programs that will gain marketing mindshare with partners.
Sullivan’s team developed strategies to help transform the organization into a digital demand generation engine. This provided partners with the content and programs to turn businesses into intelligent enterprises, utilizing AI, IoT and predictive analytics.
Christy Sumner
Jodi Sutton
Kelly Sutton
Stephani Sutton
Alison Suzuki
Manager, Digital Strategy
Director, Channel Marketing
VP, Service Delivery
Peak UpTime
Director, Marketing
Lifeboat Distribution
Google Cloud
To s u p p o r t increased transactional growth, Sumner led the first robotic process automation project to repurpose redundant and low-value tasks. This has saved thousands of business hours, and she has developed a standard program that unites the business and IT teams.
Sutton built a channel MDF program that helped drive demand generation. She also designed strategic plans with key technical partners, resulting in greater quantity of leads and higher ROI as well as improved channel communications.
Sutton helped transform the organization from a physical regional office model into a distributed workforce, realigning vendor partner relationships to reflect the move to the cloud. She also initiated mindset change within the engineering team regarding their roles.
Sutton zeroed in on driving profitability for the company’s top six solutions areas. She empowered her vendor partner management team to put enablement activities first, helping to create a partnership that vendors want to engage with and resellers find value in.
Suzuki has been working to expand twotier distribution of Google Cloud products internationally to give the reseller community a consistent partner experience and bring the best of Google Cloud to market via a multi-product, solution-oriented approach.
BeyondTrust
Alliance Director, Emerging Solutions
Perficient
Arrow Electronics
Thycotic
BeyondTrust
Pure Storage
NetApp
Veeam
SAP
Head of Distribution,
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_725-845.indd 4
65
6/9/20 11:07 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Marni Swickle
VP, Worldwide Channel Sales
Director, Partnerships
Swanson moved Trustwave’s channel strategy from a mixture of resellers with direct contracts and distributors to a global twotier distribution model supported by a new partner program that incorporates incentives and enablement tools.
Swickle has been laying the groundwork to start a recurring revenue partner program for Chetu to complement its current strategic partner program. Her initiative recently was greenlit for creating a channel partner program to grow additional revenue share.
Takagi worked with teams across Citrix globally and Fujitsu to develop a unique joint offering that went beyond traditional channel sales. She implemented a number of unique activities, leading Citrix to recognize Fujitsu as Partner of the Year.
Tan launched the Process Excellence in a Day program, workshops that enable end users to visualize the potential benefits of using the Nintex platform. She has seen tremendous results, with partner-influenced revenue doubling.
Kathleen Tandy
Jessica Tanoury
Michelle Tatom
April Taylor
Sr. Director, Partner Marketing
Sr. Director, Product Management, Stellr
Global Account Director
VP, Manage
ConnectWise
APC by Schneider Electric
To help partners drive growth, Tandy overhauled the Par tner Demand Center, updating the online portal, simplifying and modernizing the campaign portfolio and expanding options for partners to co-brand and customize campaigns to highlight their differentiation.
Tanoury helped launch a dedicated IoT team at Synnex responsible for building and selling channelready solutions. She was an integral part of an IoT smart city project with the city of Houston while formalizing repeatable processes to replicate for other “smart” opportunities.
Tatom built an account management team to expand S k y K i c k ’s enterprise partner portfolio. She enabled partners to package their IP with Office 365, SkyKick Migration and Backup, and lead with a base bundle to lower acquisition costs and drive high-margin recurring revenue.
2019 was a big year of change for ConnectWise with the acquisition of Continuum. Taylor’s goal last year was to keep the team focused on what was most important, ensuring that everything being worked on continued to have a positive impact on partners.
O ne of the m a n y w ay s Te d e s t e d t improved the sales strategy to nearly 3,000 sellers at CDW was to implement a video messaging program where the team creates content and messaging over short videos for sellers to see.
Nancy Teixeira
Wendy Thacker
Julie Thomas
Tatiana Thomas
Amy Thompson
Director, Partner Strategy, Programs
Director, Product Management (CX)
Sr. Manager, Partner Engagement
Trustwave
VMware
VP, North America Partner Strategy, Sales
Sage Software
Chetu
Synnex
VP, Channel Marketing, North America
ScanSource
Sr. Director, GSI Sales, Worldwide Partner Sales
Citrix Systems
SkyKick
Eileen Tan
Jess Tan
Head of Marketing, Asia-Pacific
Managing Sr. Director, Global Strategic Channel Sales, Strategy, Programs
Nintex
Cloudera
The Cloudera Data Platform provides an open platform for enterprises to solve their specific data needs. Tan created an enhanced iteration of the Cloudera Connect Program, including a new cloud resell model, MDF program and technology certification.
Lovisa Tedestedt Sr. National Account Manager
Cisco Systems
ConnectWise
Fortinet
Teixeira led a channel team reorganization to achieve her vision of growth of Sage partners. Prior to taking her role, the Sage channel team was heavily invested in the top 20 partners, with minimal coverage below that line. To grow, it was imperative to adjust that strategy.
Thacker led the channel marketing team through a reorganization. The team is focused on driving demand for the North America VAR team, driving technologies, verticals, new product launches and demand generation campaigns across all product segments.
Thomas led the prioritization of an annual multibillion-dollar investment in partner incentives across product engineering, sales and marketing and partner go-tomarket teams. Innovation across partner programs resulted in improved business outcomes.
T h o m a s restructured ConnectWise’s product strategy to incorporate “design thinking” principles and immediate customer feedback to align the company’s platform technology with its market growth strategy.
Fortinet ushered in a new partner program, Engage, t h i s y e a r. Thompson played a key role in the program’s value proposition development and messaging framework. She also led the communications effort for the North America team.
Janice Thompson
Reyna Thompson
Stacy Thompson
Tina Thompson
Lynne Thornton
VP, Supplier Services
SVP, Product Management, North America
Sr. Director, Finance
Partner Account Manager
Mimecast
Ingram Micro
Thompson led the expansion of Synnex’s line card with key net working, security, unified communications and wireless LAN vendor partners. Synnex pulled these technologies into a program focused on delivering converged technology solutions to its channel.
T h o m p s o n’s leadership and execution of financial policies and controlling costs played a crucial role in Groupware’s revenue growth in 2019. She also leveraged her deep relationships with vendors in the structuring of the largest deal in Groupware history.
This past year, Mimecast focused on growing its ecosystem with API and integration partners. There was a lot to do for those relationships, including aligning sales teams and educating partners so they can provide a larger “solution sale,” which is the effort Thompson led.
Thornton is responsible for finding new and better ways to help channel partners grow their licensing and renewals business. In 2019, she focused on enhancing the RenewVue tool with more functionality, customization and automation.
ScanSource
Thompson has been laserfocused on ScanSource’s solution-based sales strategy, driving increased revenue with complementary supplier lines. This has resulted in double-digit growth with suppliers year over year.
66
Masako Takagi
Suzanne Swanson
Synnex
Groupware Technology
Executive Director, Sales
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_725-845.indd 5
6/9/20 11:08 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Kim Thorpe
Penny Thurnau
Sr. Partner Operations Business Manager
VP, Strategic Alliances
Thorpe enabled a national partner strategy as part of R a c k s p a c e’s Americas transformation to support the national presence of partners and resources. She also managed the rollout of new eligible compensation items for partners.
Thurnau made it a point last year to pursue new relationships and re-establish old ones with key partners in the channel space. She helped implement monthly webinars to train channel partners on Powernet’s products and services.
Natalie Tomlin Director, Channel Sales Cloud, Service Providers
Rackspace
McAfee
Lori Tisinai
Pauline Tng
Amy Tomlin
Head of Channels, Asia-Pacific
National Account Manager
Tisinai is a produc tivity accelerator who leverages software to save time and frustration for clients while proactively monitoring and maintaining Macs, PCs and networks. She also hosts events for other IT/MSP providers to help them expand their skills.
Laying the foundation for new routes to market is key to scaling Splunk. In Asia-Pacific, Tng balances “keeping the lights on” and resourcing to enhance partnerships with MSPs and global strategic alliances. This drove partner-sourced business and greater value-add.
In 2019, Tomlin helped to advance Eaton’s channel business by exceeding her growth targets. She is continually educating her partners on the importance and value of including power for a complete solution.
Nicky Tozer
Barbara Trevino
Kerry Trevino
Natalie Troia
EMEA VP
Global Partner Sales Enablement Manager
Distribution, National Accounts Marketing Manager
Worldwide Partner Communications Manager
Powernet
Oracle NetSuite
Technology Optimization Specialist
Computer Concepts USA
Rackspace
Splunk
Juniper Networks
Eaton
Commvault
Tomlin developed strong relationships with the top cloud service providers as they help customers on their journey to the cloud as a de facto security provider. She facilitated discussions for operational efficiencies so McAfee can transact with the providers in public and government cloud.
Tozer spearheaded the rollout of “SuiteLife” in EMEA, NetSuite’s largest investment in its partner ecosystem, which helped channel partners meet the growing demand for cloud ERP. She also led the way to 30 percent growth in the EMEA partner base.
Trevino led the integration of the Seismic platform into the par tner portal, built and managed the channel brand and media strategy and was the channel stakeholder for the Rackspace corporate rebrand.
Over the past 12 months, Trevino has been involved in an engaging and collaborative working relationship with U.S. distributors and national accounts to generate specialized technology and vertical market plans that cater to the needs of partners and customers.
Troia played a key role in establishing positive working relationships with strategic channel managers to support the full array of partner types for the partner portal. The goal is to optimize partners’ experience through communication channels and platforms.
Shawn Trotter
Tracy Trottier
Kara Trovato
Rachel Tuller
Donna Turgeon
Manager, Customer Marketing
Strategic National Partner Manager
Director, Global Channel Marketing
Vipre Security, a brand of
VP, North America Channel
Dell Technologies
VP, North America Sales, Support
SolarWinds MSP
Thycotic
Veeam
Trotter relentlessly focused on one mission: enabling Dell Technologies partners’ growth. She did this with an intense focus on training and coaching the team. She also centered her attention on teaching partners how they could best leverage the Dell Technologies Partner Program.
Trottier launched high-value engagement programs to help MSP customers grow and succeed. She also helped launch the SolarWinds Endpoint Detection and Response software to MSP customers.
With a heavy focus on federal channel alignment in 2019, Trovato grew federal channel pipeline by 4X. The investments she made with the partner community also afforded Thycotic numerous keynote opportunities at various federal conferences.
Tuller designed, developed and deployed Veeam’s first Marketing Concierge program to drive channel demand generation. She also launched and rebranded the partner portal and Marketing Center platforms to improve partner experience and engagement with Veeam.
Kimberly Twiggs
Shanna Utgard
Tina Valdez
Sara Valtin
José van Dijk
Assistant VP, Market Development
Success Manager
Defendify
Chief Operations Officer
Morpheus Data
VP, Channel
KnowBe4
VP, Partner Performance, Ops., Global Partner Org.
Tw i g g s l e d the DIRECTV hospitality and institutions team to deliver year-over-year growth despite rapidly evolving technology requirements. She increased lines of distribution and reinforced strategic customer relationships, setting up the channel for growth.
Utgard was intimately i nvo l ve d i n developing D e f e n d i f y ’s channel program from the ground up. Through this process, she on-boarded and coached hundreds of channel partners and helped grow monthly recurring channel revenue by over 400 percent.
Morpheus Data saw 400 percent growth in the channel in 2019. As the leader of the channel team, Valdez was the “first one in the water” to begin the channel build-out. She set the channel strategy, created and hired the team and kick-started organized partner enablement.
Valtin implem e n t e d separate unique roles within the channel depar tment for KnowBe4. She also increased revenue directly created by the partners by more than 50 percent and rolled out a new partner portal.
AT&T
J2 Global
Turgeon re engineered the channel organization, launching a plan for multiple routes to market to elevate her “land and expand” philosophy. This included VARs, MSPs, distribution, master agents/commission resellers and more.
Cisco Systems
Van Dijk created the Partner Performance a n d O p e ra tions organization to focus on improving the overall partner experience. The mission is to digitize, simplify, optimize, personalize and automate in every initiative touching partners.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_725-845.indd 6
67
6/9/20 11:08 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Katherine Van Gheem
Judy Vansell
National Channel Development Manager
Sr. Program Manager, Global Channel Sales
Illumio
Director, Global Partner Operations
Va n G h e e m launched the company’s first North American Par tner Summit and Channel Advisory Board. She brought in industry experts to teach strategy and relational skills to all channel partners, aligning all teams.
Over the last 12 months, Van Nest built out a new global partner strategy including an operational framework that includes enablement, communication (internal and external), marketing, operations and reporting.
Jen Vasin SVP, Human Resources
Maria Cristina Vasilescu
Georgia Vasilion VP, Public Sector
Sr. Mgr., Field, Channel Marketing, EMEA, Australia New Zealand
Technology Integration Group
Vansell and her team delivered partner portal gamification in 2019. Dashboards and key analytics enabled strategic transformation for the partner program. She also established membership naming convention and tiered benefits.
Vasilescu expanded Bitdefender’s channel crossregions. As the company opened a Bitdefender office in the Australia New Zealand region, one of her priorities was to make sure the right marketing presence was established.
Vasilion conducts negotiations and manages federal, state and local and education contracts. She has continued to grow the public sector business, which today accounts for over half of TIG’s total U.S. revenue.
Sonia Vasudeva
Christy Vega
Neha Verma
Alysia Vetter
Channel Marketing Manager
Director, Education Services
Director, Channel Marketing
Ironscales
The ASCII Group
In 2019, Insight made its largest acquisition to date, PCM. The acquisition significantly grew Insight’s global footprint in terms of geographic reach, revenue and employees. Vasin was instrumental in the integration of PCM’s nearly 4,000 people into the Insight organization.
Vasudeva focused on the expansion of Acer’s VAR programs through increased incentives as well as a further reach in the reseller community. She continued to expand upon both the Acer Elite and Alliance VAR Programs, as well as the launch of the Acer Select VAR Program.
Vega’s Education Services te a m p a r t nered with the channel organization to design and implement two programs for partners to earn free training in 2020. The team launched an on-demand learning subscription, providing partners flexibility in their training and certification needs.
Soon after star ting at Ironscales, Verma’s biggest goal was to improve how partners access resources and submit deal registrations. In two months, she launched a new portal for 80 global channel partners, increasing the quality and quantity of deal registrations.
In 2019, The ASCII Group celebrated its 35th anniversary, and Vetter was responsible for broadcasting this achievement. She shared ASCII’s story of elevating the MSP over the decades, and showcased ASCII staff and long-term members who have contributed to pushing the channel forward.
Natalia Vianden
Regina Vignone
Elisa Vila
Beth Villalpando
Susan Vincent
Director, Operations
Sophos
Wells Fargo
Director, North America Distribution, National Solution Provider Marketing
VP, Partner Enablement
Extreme Networks
Sr. Director, Sales, Channel East
Vianden focused on managing Extreme Networks’ partner program day to day and on Extreme’s acquisition of Aerohive. Her role was supporting, building and executing the goto-market channel strategy for integrating Aerohive.
Vignone led Sophos’ East Co a s t s a l e s effor ts and accelerated momentum in Sophos’ midmarket channel business. She helped partners build their cybersecurity sales portfolios and develop their reputations as trusted security advisers.
By building and maintaining strong relationships with customers, which are both technology vendors and channel vendors, Vila and her team are able to better serve them and create customized financial solutions that enable their business goals.
In collaboration with sales, Villalpando’s marketing team successfully created and executed marketing strategies that enabled strong growth in channel sales for Dell Technologies’ last fiscal year.
Vincent revamps all e n a b l e m e nt material. She aims to have her enablement team provide one-on-one on-boarding while providing a new three-day workshop format. Technology is key to selecting enablement tools to equip partners for success.
Kim Visconti
Vandana Vishwakarma
Leslie Vitrano Hubright
Claudia Vizcarra
Cheryl Vlacilek
CEO
Global Channel Programs and Digital Experience
Multi Country Sales Director
Sr. Director, Worldwide Partner Organization, Compliance
Rittal North America
Insight Enterprises
Director, Global Channel Programs
Director, Channel Sales, Southeast
Fortinet
The development of an effective partner go-tomarket “recipe” is at the top of Visconti’s accomplishments. She also deployed a strategy that emphasized strategic partners and leveraged Fortinet’s three-pillar approach: Engage, Educate and Execute.
68
Noemi Van Nest
Rackspace
Bitdefender
Acer America
ISRDAES
Vishwakarma developed a more organized budget process for ISRDAES that allowed each teammate to keep his or her own section organized on a weekly basis.
Citrix Systems
VP, Marketing
Sage Intacct
Dell Technologies
APC by Schneider Electric
APC by Schneider Elec tric continues to take aggressive steps in the market for micro data center solutions and software for edge computing. To support those efforts, Vitrano Hubright focused on growing demand generation and specific competencies.
Sophos
V i z c a r r a ’s team focuses on channel simplification, profitability and excellence. She spearheaded educational opportunities for partners in cloud adoption and drove innovation through AI and Security as a Service across ecosystems in Latin America.
VMware
Vlacilek architected and implemented a risk-based framework for vetting and on-boarding partners. She also developed and integrated channel policies addressing route-to-market agility and partner life-cycle management.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_846-903.indd 1
6/9/20 11:09 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Sehar Wahla
Karin Vogel
Marlen von Roth
Director, Global Partner Marketing, Communications
Sales Dir., Channel, Cloud Service Providers, EMEA, Asia-Pacific Japan
Manager, Partner Business Development
Jenn Walcott
Christina Walker
VP, Marketing
D&H Distributing
Global Director, Channel Sales, Programs
Von Roth was instrumental in establishing a partner ecosystem for SUSE’s Cloud Application Platform. Following that success, she is turning her hand to nurturing and growing the cloud and managed service partners in the SUSE Partner Program.
Wa h l a h a s directly impacted C a r a h s o f t ’s position as a leader in the cloud space with her responsibility over Carahsoft’s distribution strategy for AWS. She built a team that is focused on recruiting and enabling new cloud partners.
When D&H moved into its new headquarters, Walcott leveraged the redesign to augment marketing efforts and enhance partner experiences. This includes a new Multimedia Studio, Solutions Lab for on-site training and the Technology Training Theater.
Wa l ke r h a s been integral to g ro w i n g Blancco’s footprint in the channel. Today, channel revenue accounts for nearly 45 percent of the company’s enterprise business. She has also overseen the significant expansion of the channel staff.
Yvonne Walker Sr. Manager, Partner, Customer Experience
Kimberly Walkey
Cheryle Walline
Donna Walter
Michelle Wang
Director, U.S. Channel Sales Distribution
VP, Channels, Distribution
Manager, Inside Channel Account Team
Director, Marketing, North American Channel
Walker cre ated a new tier within the channel program that is specifically segmented toward partners of a distinguished grouping. The program is designed to provide those partners with the tools, education, product access and discounts needed to be successful in AI.
To d a y ’s fast-paced marketplace requires transformation and growth. Walkey is part of a team that recognizes when to be flexible and agile, when to adopt a new strategic direction and when a pivot is needed to accommodate change.
Walline continued the reorganization of the partner community by adding the right type of partner and removing those that were not in alignment with business practices. This made sure Jabra was being properly marketed and represented to an expanded customer base.
Over the past year, Walter has built an inside channel account management team focused on growing Mitel’s business by engaging with smaller Authorized and Silver partners, greatly strengthening those relationships.
Tr i p p L i te’s unassisted online sales have continued to grow at a faster pace due to the work Wang and her team put into optimizing the company’s online presence and brand across all channel partners.
Rebecca Warren
Amber Watson
Alison Webb
Polly Weiss
Michelle Welch
Stateless
Channel Marketing Manager, Australia New Zealand
Director, Channel Marketing
Vertiv
National Partner Manager
Citrix Systems
WatchGuard Technologies
Partner enablement is new to Stateless. In addition to building the program from the ground up, Warren has worked on the data center go-to-market strategy and the objectives of the partner program, including training and content development.
Watson created a marketing plan focused on new business and reinvigorated the partner program with tiered engagement. She manages Nutanix’s top 15 partners, while creating strategic marketing plans with distributors to manage the remaining partner ecosystem.
Webb implemented a best-in-class third e-commerce strategy to help facilitate low-touch, high-margin sales for partners. She also built a channel team by adding four partner marketing managers focused on driving growth with and through partners.
As the national partner manager of Citrix’s largest reseller partner, Weiss led a team of Citrix and partnerdedicated resources to achieve Americas Partner of the Year for 2019, driving significant new pipeline and transitioning a large customer base from on-premises to a subscription cloud model.
Welch spearheaded the expansion of t h e Watc h GuardOne partner program, designing and introducing specializations in network security, secure Wi-Fi and multifactor authentication. She has continued to focus heavily on partner enablement.
Wendy Welch
Maitjian Welke
Dalyn Wertz
Cheri Wesinger
Lindsey Westbrook
Sr. Director, U.S. Distribution, Partner Sales
President
Exec. Dir., Indirect Program Management, Marketing
North America Director, Channel Marketing
Sr. Director, Channel Marketing
Wertz oversees all partner programs, communications, e ve n t s a n d strategy for the channel program. She considers herself fortunate to be in a position to formally mentor, and informally guide, some of the indirect team as well as partners.
Wesinger developed an innovative quarterly partner showcase that provides partners a venue to share unique go-to-market campaigns with HPE. Partner participation continues to grow, which is a true testament to its value.
Westbrook is focused on identifying opportunities to better engage with partners and hyper-focusing investments on activities that will drive revenue growth to align with the company’s growth goals for 2020.
Ciena
Since joining Ciena, Vogel developed the par tner marketing and communication strategy, which included an integrated communications plan and editorial calendar. She also launched a partner blog program and instituted launch campaigns.
DDN
Director, Partner Enablement
Lenovo
With Path to Platinum as the cornerstone of Lenovo’s channel strategy, when Welch joined the company midyear she was able to apply an outside-in perspective as the company enhanced its channelfirst orientation.
SUSE
Tripp Lite
Nutanix
CMIT Solutions Silicon Valley
We l ke h a s expanded the c o m p a n y ’s channel and alliance program this past year by partnering with two new companies. She has opened up the door to new opportunities with new IoT and application security solutions.
Carahsoft Technology
Jabra
Comcast Business
Mitel
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Blancco Technology Group
Tripp Lite
SVP, Marketing, Channel
Fortinet
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_846-903.indd 2
69
6/9/20 11:10 AM
of 2020 Women the Channel
Christi Whipple
North America Alliances Partner Marketing Lead
Director, Partner Marketing
Wharff zeroed in on building and managing alliance partnerships to ensure the creation of creative marketing programs. These programs built pipeline, tracked ROI of Micro Focus’ MDF investments and drove partner sponsorships for market co-visibility.
Whipple’s focus last year was on optimization of resources. Given the large number of partners she and her team supports, they have to find ways to prioritize how they spend time and money while still making sure partners have what they need and are driving new business with Avalara.
White has been involved in driving the North America team channel engagement in conjunction with the channel sales director. As a result of her efforts, the North America channel business grew in fiscal year 2019.
Last year White supported the channel team and channel partner recruitment and on-boarding. Through the inbound leads program she set up, she was able to begin feeding partners early to ensure quick first wins. The program also helps build early trust and rapport.
With a primary focus on the education vertical and providing the classroom with tools to engage and enrich the student experience, Whitfield has led business development in sales and awareness of Sharp interactive whiteboards along with other strategic products.
Stefanie Whittington
Hayley Wienszczak
Victoria Wiesner
Lisa Wight
Heather Wilcox
VP, Brand Experience
Head of Global Alliance Partners, EMEA
Distribution Manager
Mimecast
Head of Worldwide Distribution
Director, Client Solutions Field Marketing, Channel
Micro Focus
QOS Networks
Avalara
Americas Relationship Director
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Red Hat
Nicole White
Cheryl Whitfield
Territory Manager, Inside Sales Channel
Distribution Account Manager
Sensormatic Solutions by
Johnson Controls
VMware
Sharp Electronics
Dell Technologies
During 2019, QOS made a pivot to drive a focus internally toward developing its channel program and those relationships. Whittington was a key decision-maker in the strategic path toward that goal as well as the individual who would come in to run those efforts.
Wienszczak led initiatives to connect the various channel routes around specific objectives including planning, internal communications and global interlocks. She also led the Global Alliance Partnerships for the EMEA region.
W i e s n e r ’s role in the development and business planning of distribution-led partners has ensured joint accountability. As a result, she was able to recruit, develop and evolve 35 partners that accounted for $700,000 in incremental revenue and 33 certifications.
Wi g h t i s a visionary when it comes to the channel and distributors. With the three Cs in mind— commitment, coverage and capability—she has worked toward unifying the approach around strategies with distributors and aligning tools and incentives with clear direction.
Wilcox developed the Club Precision program, which helps partners accelerate Precision workstation sales and helps Dell Technologies remain No. 1 in workstations in North America. The company is seeing strong year-over-year growth with midmarket partners.
Raquel Wiley
Amy Williams
Mary Catherine Wilson
Sara Wilson
Sara Wollesen
Director, Partner Sales, Latin America
Sr. Manager, Partner Marketing
Sr. Channel Marketing Manager
TPx Communications
Wiley played an integral role in advancing the TPx channel business, including developing the goto-market plan for the national partner program, launching a unified national partner portal and enabling demandgeneration through marketing automation.
CEO
Pier Group
Sr. Dir., Global Marketing
Williams has strategically guided Pier Group’s vendor and distributor relationships in an effort to fully align with the company’s key partners. This alignment ultimately created a unique environment allowing Pier Group’s channel business to grow over 50 percent year over year.
Linda Wong Sr. Manager, Partner Marketing, Enablement
Couchbase
Dell Technologies
Wilson built the long-term vision for Dell Technologies marketing, distilling trends and challenges in the ever-changing marketing landscape and developing strategic imperatives for the next three to five years.
Veeam
Wilson last year secured an additional investment in channel resources in the region of Latin America. Although a difficult year in economic and political conditions, Veeam saw doubledigit growth in revenue through partner sales and double-digit growth in partner recruitment.
Leslie Wood President, Director, Sales, Marketing
CMIT Solutions of Columbus
IntelePeer
IntelePeer has seen growing interest among enterprises looking to advance their digital transformation. Wollesen helped partners navigate this territory by providing them with sales tools to position IntelePeer’s Atmosphere Communications Platform as a Service to enterprises.
Sasha Wright-Neville Sr. Manager, Worldwide Partner Incentives, Investments
VMware
Wood has been able to market and sell to 12 new managed service customers this year. She also has enabled her company to grow and increase gross revenue sales over double from last year with hardware and installation projects.
Upon transferring to her new team, Wright-Neville began transforming the partner development funds business. She created a revised set of activities and amended the policy guide to create a better partner experience.
Lisa Yu
Jessie Zhang
Victoria Zona
VP, Central Region
Global Partner Sales Director, Asia-Pacific
Sr. Sales Manager, VAR, M&E Distribution
Wong launched several programs, including a portal for the partner ecosystem and a training platform to support partner enablement. She also administers Couchbase’s on-boarding program for registered partners.
Softchoice
In 2019, Yu fully transitioned into her new role at Softchoice. She assessed the current business and focused on how to quickly grow channel impact. She then focused on two key critical areas: customer experience and employee experience.
70
Marcia White
Sheryl Wharff
UiPath
Zhang has grown the UiPath partner community from approximately 30 partners to over 150. She has built meaningful global systems integrator relationships and developed a global-level infrastructure to scale partner relationships.
Seagate
Zona took ownership of one of Seagate’s top brick-and-mortar accounts and grew revenue by 18 percent year over year. She also implemented sales tactics that led to a 13 percent year-over-year increase in revenue from M&E distributors.
JUNE 2020
2020_WOTC_846-903.indd 3
6/9/20 11:10 AM
New York Hilton Midtown, New York, NY December 7-8, 2020 • #WOTC20
Build Connections. Master Leadership. Leave Inspired. Interested in Passes? Space is limited. Register today! $1,349 early-bird rate ends June 30 www.womenofthechannel.com
Keynote Speaker
Erin Brockovich Consumer Advocate, Author, TV Host
508.416.1175 | thechannelcompany.com
Sponsorships and Reserved Tables of 10 Available! Contact Event Director Allison Cohen at acohen@thechannelcompany.com
Top Reasons to Attend: UNMATCHED CONNECTIONS
CURRENT AGENDA
Grow your network by connecting
Join discussions addressing the
with leading suppliers and partner
current climate and evolution
organizations
of the business landscape
EMPOWERING CONTENT
PROVEN RESULTS
Consume best-in-class thought
Explore connections and
leadership focused on corporate and
content to advance your career
personal goals
and your organization
INSPIRATION & INCLUSION Be inspired by women business leaders and learn how to unleash the power of inclusion
Š 2020 The Channel Company, LLC. The Channel Company logo is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
S OLUTI ON PR OVI D E R 5 00
Rising To The Occasion As the coronavirus pandemic took hold, solution providers quickly pivoted to help businesses of all sizes navigate a new work-from-home world
By Rick Whiting
T
he IT industry was riding high as 2020 began. IT vendors and solution providers were enjoying a robust business climate and market researcher Gartner was forecasting that the good times would continue with worldwide IT spending to grow 3.4 percent in the new year to $3.9 trillion. And then everything changed. As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, businesses went into lockdown, layoffs became widespread and what had been a booming economy ground to a near-halt. Gartner’s 2020 forecast, updated on May 13, now predicts that worldwide IT spending will decline 8 percent year over year to $3.4 trillion. Solution providers are not sitting idle, however. Businesses and organizations suddenly shifted their operating model with so many of their employees working from home. Solution providers had to quickly pivot, providing their customers’ homebound employees with laptops, collaboration and videoconferencing tools, access to cloud applications and security technology to protect it all. Solution providers are being challenged this year as never before, and they have risen to the occasion. The pandemic and economic shutdown “have been very disruptive,” said John Flores, executive vice president at Converge Technology Solutions, a fast-growing solution provider that’s debuting on the Solution Provider 500 list this year at No. 50. “We’re not directly in front of our customers,” he said. But Converge Technology Solutions has met the challenge, enabling its own employees to meet the surge in demand from its customers for work-from-home technology, collaboration tools, managed services and security. “We continue to see strong demand for these capabilities from our customers,” Flores said. On the following page we provide the top 50 companies on the 2020 edition of the CRN Solution Provider 500, the annual ranking of the largest solution providers by revenue in North America. Most of the solution providers that have occupied the top
72
Scan here for a look at the full SP500 list.
ranks of the Solution Provider 500 have held onto their positions in 2020. The top six are unchanged, with IBM Global Services retaining the top spot followed by Accenture, DXC Technology, Tata Consulting Services, CDW and Cognizant. New to the list this year is NTT Data Services at No. 7. NTT acquired the former Dell IT Services business (previously Perot Systems) in November 2016 for $3.1 billion. NTT has since made aggressive moves to grow, including launching a data center services business in 2018 and moving into AWS consulting services with this year’s acquisition of Flux7 Labs. Capgemini, World Wide Technology and Leidos round out the top 10 of the Solution Provider 500. A number of companies made impressive gains on this year’s list, either through organic growth, acquisitions or a combination. DXC Technology spinoff Perspecta, for example, rose six spots to No. 19 while EPAM Systems moved up seven spots to No. 27. Also making significant gains were Slalom Consulting (No. 30 from No. 43), ConvergeOne (No. 31 from No. 36), CBTS/OnX (No. 33 from No. 44) and AVI-SPL (No. 36 from No. 47). AHEAD, a provider of digital business infrastructure, merged with Data Blue and Sovereign Systems in 2019, leapfrogging the Chicago-based solution provider to No. 36 from No. 75. This year’s Solution Provider 500 list also features 84 companies that are new to the Solution Provider 500 list including CyrusOne (No. 42), Converge Technology Solutions, ECS (No. 52), and RSM US (No. 87). This year’s Solution Provider 500 companies collectively generated $393 billion in 2019, up more than 3 percent from the $381 billion last year’s Solution Provider 500 generated in 2018.
For information on purchasing the complete Solution Provider 500 list with all collected firmographic data, please contact sales@ thechannelcompany.com or call 508-416-1175.
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_SP500.indd 1
6/9/20 10:38 AM
THE LIST
1-50
2020 Rank
2019 Rank
Company
Location
Website
Top Executive
1
1
IBM Global Services
Armonk, N.Y.
www.ibm.com
Arvind Krishna, CEO
2
2
Accenture
Chicago
www.accenture.com
Julie Sweet, CEO
3
3
DXC Technology
Tysons, Va.
www.dxc.technology
Mike Salvino, President, CEO
4
4
Tata Consultancy Services
New York
www.tcs.com
Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO, Managing Director
5
5
CDW
Vernon Hills, Ill.
www.cdw.com
Christine A. Leahy, President, CEO
6
6
Cognizant
Teaneck, N.J.
www.cognizant.com
Brian Humphries, CEO
7
–
NTT Data Services (formerly Dell Services)
Plano, Texas
www.nttdata.com
Toshio Iwamoto, President, CEO
8
7
Capgemini
Wayne, Pa.
www.capgemini.com
Paul Hermelin, Chairman, CEO
9
8
World Wide Technology
Maryland Heights, Mo.
www.wwt.com
James Kavanaugh, CEO
10
9
Leidos
Reston, Va.
www.leidos.com
Roger Krone, CEO
11
10
SHI International
Somerset, N.J.
www.shi.com
Thai Lee, President, CEO
12
11
CGI
Montreal, Quebec
www.cgi.com
George Schindler, President, CEO
13
–
Wipro Technologies
New York
www.wipro.com
Thierry Delaporte, CEO
14
12
GDIT
Falls Church, Va.
www.gdit.com
Amy Gilliland, President
15
14
Insight Enterprises
Tempe, Ariz.
www.insight.com
Ken Lamneck, President, CEO
16
15
SoftwareOne
Waukesha, Wis.
www.softwareone.com
Dieter Schlosser, CEO
17
18
Carahsoft Technology
Reston, Va.
www.carahsoft.com
Craig P. Abod, President, CEO
18
20
CACI
Arlington, Va.
www.caci.com
John Mengucci, President, CEO
19
25
Perspecta
Chantilly, Va.
www.perspecta.com
Mac Curtis, President, CEO
20
17
Conduent
Basking Ridge, N.J.
www.conduent.com
Cliff Skelton, CEO
21
22
Sirius
San Antonio
www.siriuscom.com
Joe Mertens, President, CEO
22
23
Presidio
New York
www.presidio.com
Bob Cagnazzi, CEO
23
24
Unisys
Blue Bell, Pa.
www.unisys.com
Peter A. Altabef, Chairman, CEO
24
26
Connection
Merrimack, N.H.
www.connection.com
Timothy McGrath, President, CEO
25
28
Atos
Purchase, N.Y.
www.atos.net
Thierry Breton, Chairman, CEO
26
27
Optiv
Denver
www.optiv.com
Kevin Lynch, CEO
27
34
EPAM Systems
Newtown, Pa.
www.epam.com
Arkadiy Dobkin, President, CEO
28 (t.)
–
Avanade
Seattle
www.avanade.com
Adam Warby, CEO
28 (t.)
31
Zones
Auburn, Wash.
www.zones.com
Firoz Lalji, President, CEO
30
43
Slalom Consulting
Seattle
www.slalom.com
Brad Jackson, CEO
31
36
ConvergeOne
Bloomington, Minn.
www.convergeone.com
John McKenna Jr., Chairman, CEO
32
37
Softchoice
Oakville, Ontario
www.softchoice.com
Vince De Palma, President, CEO
33
44
CBTS/OnX
Cincinnati
www.cbts.com
Jeff Lackey, President, CBTS
34
39
Consolidated Communications
Mattoon, Ill.
www.consolidated.com
Bob Udell, President, CEO
35
38
ePlus Technology
Herndon, Va.
www.eplus.com
Mark Marron, President, CEO
36 (t.)
47
AVI-SPL
Tampa, Fla.
www.avispl.com
John Zettel, CEO
36 (t.)
75
AHEAD
Chicago
www.thinkahead.com
Daniel Adamany, Founder, CEO
38
41
VirtusaPolaris
Southborough, Mass.
www.virtusa.com
Samir Dhir, President
39
40
Trace3
Irvine, Calif.
www.trace3.com
Rich Fennessy, CEO
40
189
HTC Global Services
Troy, Mich.
www.htcinc.com
Madhava Reddy, President, CEO
41
–
CompuCom
Dallas
www.compucom.com
Mick Slattery, President
42
–
CyrusOne
Dallas
www.cyrusone.com
Tesh Durvasula, President, CEO
43
45
Iron Bow Technologies
Herndon, Va.
www.ironbow.com
Rene LaVigne, President, CEO
44
–
Computacenter U.S.
San Francisco
www.computacenter.com
Michael Keogh, President
45
49
One Diversified
Kenilworth, N.J.
www.diversifiedus.com
Fred D’Alessandro, Chairman, CEO
46
–
Pomeroy Technologies
Hebron, Ky.
www.pomeroy.com
Chris Froman, President, CEO
47
50
GDT
Dallas
www.gdt.com
JW Roberts, CEO
48
58
ThunderCat Technology
Reston, Va.
www.thundercattech.com
Tom Deierlein, CEO
49
64
Red River Technology
Claremont, N.H.
www.redriver.com
Alan Dumas, CEO
50
–
Converge Technology Solutions
Toronto, Ontario
www.convergetp.com
Shaun Maine, CEO
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_SP500.indd 2
73
6/9/20 11:30 AM
ON TH E R ECOR D
The Coronavirus And 5G Technology, A Perfect Match
H
By Robert Faletra
ISTORICALLY, MAJOR SHIFTS in our industry have come via technological advances that force new business models. When the Altair 8800 came on the scene in 1975, inventor Ed Roberts at its introduction coined the term “personal computer.” Apple, of course, came to market a few years later. But it wasn’t until the early 1980s when both Apple and the IBM PC were competing for dominance that the PC revolution took off and the world began to change, effectively beginning the downfall of the word processor and the mini-computer. In the 1993 time frame, the internet took hold and another rapid change occurred in how information was exchanged. Roughly a decade later, Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, began talking about cloud computing, and within a short time the industry was again in upheaval. Mixed in with all these changes were economic events, including the dot-com crash of 2001 and the financial crisis of 2008, which also helped reshape the market by forcing questionable business models to the curb, where they were quickly crushed. The coronavirus and the economic shutdown it has caused worldwide are imposing dramatic changes on the world and will impact high-tech through the coming months and years. The advent of 5G technology is coming as well, and together the two have the potential to create dramatic challenges and opportunities for solution providers and their high-tech supplier partners. The stars are lined up to result in an extremely rapid movement toward a completely different business environment centered around remote instant information access. When 5G hits in earnest over the next few years, the coronavirus will already have paved the way for many of the societal changes to occur, allowing for a remaking of how and where we work. 74
Millions of people who never would have considered working remotely have become acclimated to it and see both the benefits and challenges. In addition, many business leaders who would never have considered having a widely dispersed workforce are seeing these positive and negative impacts. 5G technology’s ability to produce lightning-speed data transfer wirelessly and ubiquitously will be key in a world in which remote information workers have become more acceptable. A preference to be remote and productive will spawn new products and companies to take advantage of the opportunity. Ultimately, if we can immediately contact a co-worker via video to chat up a work problem and gather the data we both need to see as if we were working side by side, that changes the work environment and perhaps increases efficiency. Fewer distractions that come with being in a home office paired with the ability to collaborate as if we were together is enticing. We are partially there today, but it needs to be more fluid. For information workers, the ability to live and work away from expensive cities and still pursue meaningful careers means lower but good wages for the individual and business, creating a different economic model. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is driving toward 50 percent of the workforce being remote and living in lower-cost locales may not become the norm immediately, but it will be an option for many businesses in a post-coronavirus world. It may not mean a decline of Silicon Valley, but it is bound to result in a rise of other lower-cost alternatives that have the potential to change many business models, allowing for a lower margin but higher EBITDA. n
BACKTALK: Make something happen. Robert Faletra is Executive Chairman of The Channel Company. You can contact him via email at rfaletra@thechannelcompany.com.
JUNE 2020
CRN_June2020_Faletra.indd 1
6/9/20 10:52 AM
ADVERTISEMENT
How To
Succeed
by Seeing the Whole Story
Attain Sustainable Solution Provider Success With Supermicro Supermicro was founded in San Jose, Calif., in 1993 and later expanded operations into Taiwan and the Netherlands by 1998. Supermicro now has a global manufacturing footprint across Silicon Valley, the Netherlands and Taiwan, totaling nearly 2 million square feet. Supermicro currently has global operations in more than 100 countries and continues to expand. In October 2019, Supermicro announced a new, worldwide partner enablement program, enhancing the company’s global partner ecosystem. The partner enablement program gives partners what they need to deliver optimized solutions based on Supermicro’s broad portfolio of Resource-Savings servers and storage solutions. The Supermicro partner network spans resellers, systems integrators and technology integrators, giving partners the tools needed to help their customers drive revenue. This includes expanded product training, proof-of-concept support for increased testing and validation, early-access programs, co-marketing support for joint advertising and marketing programs, and online promotion for comprehensive web support. Supermicro is poised for success in storage and server hardware. As a leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and innovation, Supermicro delivers end-to-end green computing solutions to the data center, cloud computing, enterprise IT, AI/machine learning, HPC and 5G/Telco markets. Our Building Block Solutions® approach helps Supermicro provide a broad range of SKUs to build application-optimized solutions based on specific requirements. In 2001, Supermicro created the industry’s first dual Intel® Xeon® server. That server has evolved into a full portfolio of product families, including multi-node Twin, Blade, Ultra, GPU, Embedded and SuperStorage solutions. Recognized as a company of consistent growth, Supermicro was named the ‘World’s Fastest Growing IT Infrastructure’ company in 2016 by Fortune magazine. As a leader in energy-efficient computing, Supermicro’s goal is to promote the adoption and deployment of technologies that can lower costs and reduce the impact on the environment. Resource Saving Architecture continues our tradition of green computing innovation and provides TCO savings for our customers.
Learn more at: www.supermicro.com
CRN_June2020_HowTo_SuperMicro.indd 1
6/9/20 3:54 PM
CRN_Feb2020_Cannnon.indd 1
2/7/20 9:46 AM