Former Websense Channel Chief Joins CA Amid Cloud Push

Looking to penetrate even deeper into the recovery management space, CA has hired David Roberts, former VP of channels at Websense, to lead the company’s Recovery Management and Data Modeling (RMDM) business unit. He reports to Mike Crest, GM of the unit, who takes over the business from Adam Famularo, who is now GM of CA’s Cloud Customer Solutions Unit. Here’s a closer look at CA’s channel moves, and the potential implications for VARs seeking data protection and cloud solutions.

CA announced the personnel changes in a letter to its partners signed by Crest. The letter also hints at other changes in the months ahead centered around new ways of helping solution providers increase their revenue.

“CA Technologies understands that you are adopting new models and new technologies to grow your revenue and win the business of end customers who are themselves facing evolving business challenges. Our team is 100 percent committed to helping you do that,” Crest wrote. “For some of you, this means building your MSP or recurring revenue business. For others, it means putting a new twist on your go-to-market strategies as VARs, LARs or systems integrators.”

What it really means, he said, is a stronger focus by RMDM to help its partners grow into a more services-centric model. “There is a pretty substantial desire among the partner community to want to provide more services for their customers,” Crest noted. “We are looking for greater capture of revenue for our partners and as such you will see us continue to expand on how partners can enable more revenue on services. We know that for every dollar spent on product, there are $3 in services, so how can we increase the envelope of dollars for our partners?”

Familiar Name: David Roberts

Bringing Roberts on board to help CA accomplish that is a smart move. Roberts has a solid track record of building and nurturing successful channel programs – as senior VP of Americas Channel Sales at Websense, Roberts built a solid global channel program and changed the company’s go-to-market strategy to a two-tier model. Before that, he was all things channel at McAfee.

Roberts also dropped a few hints about ideas CA has to better help its channel partners move to a services-centric sales model, including having dedicated sales resources for certain verticals such as the government space. “We could, for example, have dedicated resources to provide specialized expertise to the contract and procurement process to help partners in the state and local government vertical,” he said.

The company is also looking at expanding its geographies in areas where it needs more partner coverage, Roberts noted. “We are working on areas where we can add a lot to the business program.”

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