Channel Futures Names Its Premier Circle of Excellence Honorees
Meet the channel executives we're honoring.
Jennifer Anaya, vice president of marketing for Ingram Micro, has been with the company for 15 years and in her present position for the past six.
Last year, under Anaya’s direction, Agency Ingram Micro introduced its marketing services throughout more than 40 countries in their Latin America and Export Business IT channels and made it easier for partners to use digital marketing to define and differentiate their value throughout the supply chain. In addition, Ingram Micro ONE brought together nearly 5,000 partners to learn, network, share their experiences and grow their businesses through greater engagement.
“Whether it’s expanding their skill set, sharing best practices or helping change the conversations with prospects and customers to be less technical and more about business outcomes, Ingram Micro is there working side-by-side with our channel partners.”
During the last year, Scott Barlow, vice president of global MSP for Sophos, and his channel team rolled out a number of initiatives for partners. By hosting Fast Track to MSP Connect Flex training and nationwide road shows and setting up user groups in cities across the U.S., they enabled partners to learn about and demo new products as well as informally network with each other. They also integrated with several vendors in the MSP ecosystem to launch an MSP Hub page in the Sophos Partner Portal that provides a one-stop shop for MSPs.
In addition, Sophos expanded its global channel program with its Cloud Security Partner Program, which offers training, certification and financial incentives to help partners support their customers using or migrating to the public cloud.
In the year ahead, Barlow and his team expect to continue seeing more traditional channel partners offering managed security services or even starting to specialize in it. As additional regulations are implemented, partners will also be looking to add additional security technologies such as disk encryption to ensure customers are compliant.
Lief Koepsel has spent 25 years in the indirect channel and will soon complete his second year as Fortinet‘s senior director of marketing. He considers the most important enhancement made to the Fortinet Partner Program last year to be “the revamp of the Deal Registration Program to include all partner levels and introduce a standard significant discount across all levels.
“Since the launch, we’ve seem a 32 percent increase in the number of partners closing deals with deal registration, driving their business growth.”
Koepsel predicts that in the coming year, the convergence of two trends will cause strong growth in partners offering security solutions and services to continue. The first is businesses’ increased need for integrated security to protect against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. The second is the shortage of trained security personnel that is driving customers to their trusted advisers to provide the services they need.
Four months after joining AlienVault in 2015, Mike LaPeters moved from leading the company’s North American channel initiative to his current position as vice president of global channel sales, where he has worldwide responsibility for the AlienVault channel team. He focuses on expanding its channel ecosystem of VARs, VADs and MSSP partners.
LaPeters has more than 20 years of experience building and leading channel organizations in security, infrastructure and storage software products.
Now in his second year as general manager of cloud computing for Kaseya, James Lippie is a 15-year veteran of the indirect channel. Last year he directed the launch of Kaseya Powered Services, which features custom-designed “Go-to-Market-in-a-Box” offerings that enable MSPs to increase monthly recurring revenue and profit. His team also worked to increase the market share of their BMS by Kaseya professional services automation (PSA) product.
“In the past year, our partner ecosystem has grown with the addition of many new leading channel solution providers so that our customers always have the choice to select the best-of-breed technologies that will best suit their business. We do this because we put our customers first and, unlike other vendors in the space, we will never close off our platform.”
When Eric Martorano, chief revenue officer for Intermedia, first joined the company two years ago, he says he saw an untapped opportunity “for partners to fuel Intermedia’s sales engine and be profitably rewarded for doing so.” He helped create a more partner-first mentality in Intermedia’s go-to-market strategy to get there. As a result, the company’s channel business increased substantially this past year and now accounts for more than 80 percent of the company’s business.
“Partners know they can count on Intermedia to continue to create the easy-to-sell, deploy and manage products and services that make their customers a success and make them more profitable in the process.”
Rob Rae, vice president of business development for Datto, holds the unique distinction of having been named to the Circle of Excellence for both Channel Partners and Channel Futures. Instrumental in developing Datto’s MSP ecosystem and building Datto’s partner-led go-to-market strategy, Rae oversees many different aspects of the company’s partner programs, including community, events, marketing development funds, vendor management and the partner advisory board, all with the goal of helping partners grow.
A veteran of more than 25 years of sales and B2B activities, Rae has extensive experience in IT hardware, software and service sales. All of his industry experience has been with 100 percent channel-focused organizations, working with VARs, solution providers and MSPs to achieve their goals.
As senior director of community for SolarWinds, Dave Sobel acts as a senior adviser to the company’s executives and product leadership regarding industry trends, emerging technologies and the voice of the customer and the community. Regarded as a leading expert on IT and managed services, cloud computing and virtualization, Sobel has been a speaker at industry events and served as a CompTIA trainer.
Author of the book “Virtualization: Defined,” Sobel has been recognized as one of the top virtualization experts globally as a Microsoft MVP for Virtualization.
In his first year as vice president of channel for Kaspersky Lab, Jason Stein worked with his team to find new ways to help partners become experts in the best methods to protect their customers. They also built out a digital subscription channel framework for partners needing to facilitate changes in licensing and the way customers consume technology.
Stein sees clients looking to channel partners more and more for security services.
“I believe the channel will evolve even more in 2019, digging in deeper with trusted providers to be able to offer more services to clients, both as a VAR and an MSP, while offering a complete security solution, ranging from anti-virus to their cloud environments — both public and private — along with an increased focus on the SOC and fraud prevention, both internally and externally.”
During his nearly 14 years with Webroot, Charles Tomeo has risen from senior systems engineer to vice president of worldwide business sales. In his current position, which he has held since May 2016, he works to increase Webroot’s MSP business, with impressive results: Last year, Webroot added more than 3,800 new MSP partners globally, bringing their overall total to more than 10,000. The company expects that number to continue to grow in the year ahead.
In addition to the endpoint and web security expertise that comes from nearly 20 years in IT security, Tomeo has extensive experience in the remote monitoring and management (RMM) and professional services automation (PSA) markets, which he puts into play into helping create support solutions for Webroot’s partner community.
Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer for Pax8, worked last year to spearhead the continued expansion of the company’s line card, the creation of professional services automation (PSA) integrations into leading providers and the introduction of Pax8 Stax, a business intelligence tool that creates more upsell and cross-sell opportunities for MSPs.
Walsh believes the massive purchasing shift to cloud products can provide tremendous opportunities for those partners willing to take advantage of that shift. And by building on the experience and insights of peers and experts, they can avoid common pitfalls and build their cloud practices more quickly.
But Walsh cautions that partners must always remain focused on the customer. “As the market continues to demand cloud solutions delivered in the most efficient manner, channel partners who will crush this game will be the ones focused on the customer experience.”
Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer for Pax8, worked last year to spearhead the continued expansion of the company’s line card, the creation of professional services automation (PSA) integrations into leading providers and the introduction of Pax8 Stax, a business intelligence tool that creates more upsell and cross-sell opportunities for MSPs.
Walsh believes the massive purchasing shift to cloud products can provide tremendous opportunities for those partners willing to take advantage of that shift. And by building on the experience and insights of peers and experts, they can avoid common pitfalls and build their cloud practices more quickly.
But Walsh cautions that partners must always remain focused on the customer. “As the market continues to demand cloud solutions delivered in the most efficient manner, channel partners who will crush this game will be the ones focused on the customer experience.”
Channel Futures inducted its first-ever Circle of Excellence winners at an awards dinner at Channel Partners Evolution on Thursday night.
The Circle of Excellence program recognizes leaders who are helping their partners create business value for customers. Executives are honored for the vision, innovation and advocacy of the indirect channel during a time of transition and convergence. Winners are selected by Channel Futures.
Click through our gallery to meet the 11 members of our inaugural group of honorees.
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like