More Channel Involvement to Come, Says Axcient's Incoming CEO

For the last 25 years, IT industry veteran David Bennett has been working with channel partners in a string of roles with Webroot, Lenovo, Sony and Kingston, helping to drive the businesses forward. Now, in his new role as the incoming CEO of Axcient, a cloud migration and business availability vendor in Denver, Bennett says he will work hard to find new and improved ways to help MSPs and other partners increase their business as they serve their clients.

Axcient’s David Bennett

Bennett, who will start his new post for the company on March 4, was formerly the chief revenue officer at Webroot, where he saw that company achieve 19 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth under his leadership. In an interview with Channel Futures, he said he will bring that same fervor for success to his new role at Axcient and its more than 3,000 MSP partners.

“The team here at Axcient and I have already talked about this,” he said. “We are committed to the MSP space.”

That means reviewing what is being done today and how things can be done better in the future to work more efficiently with the company’s MSPs, he said. “We’ll look at how we are doing things to meet need of MSPs. It’s a key point. Just like the industries I came from, Axcient works in a wide marketplace with a lot of players in there. Our absolute focus is to provide the best service and support through our MSPs.”

His new job with Axcient is Bennett’s first gig as a CEO, but he says he’s been training for the job through other roles for years, gaining leadership experience and learning about scaling operations and more.

“I’ve had sales and marketing elements, running products and other roles,” he said. “It’s been a pretty well-rounded experience. As the CRO at Webroot, I had marketing, operations and pre-and post-sales experience.”

To prepare for his new post, Bennett has been talking with CEOs from other companies and gaining insights from their experiences. “Any new opportunity is always going to be a huge challenge,” he said.

“My background has always been about people,” he said. “Here, I’m the conductor of the orchestra. It’s all about leveraging people. I’m actually confident that I can step into this role because we’ve got a great team already.”

His main job, he explained, will be finding ways of helping that team become even more successful.

Bennett, who was born and grew up in the United Kingdom, is married and is the father of five children. He collects and builds…

cars from scratch, including a 1957 Ford gas dragster, which is his current project.

Eric White, Axcient’s president, said the company was looking for certain things in its new CEO, including someone who knew the MSP space and had experience with building go-to-market plans, someone with experience scaling channel organizations and a candidate who would be an immediate cultural fit with the company.

Bennett was hired because he was the perfect combination of those factors, said White.

“David has a strong track record of leading successful transformations within the IT industry, and we are excited to welcome him to Axcient,” said White. “He has the knowledge, leadership and experience that will help Axcient partners accelerate growth and gain new momentum in a thriving industry.”

Angus Robertson, the chief marketing officer for Axcient, said a wide range of meetings are being organized to  introduce Bennett to the company’s partners.

“In the first 30 days, we will meet with our Partner Advisory Council, which has 12 members, for introductions,” said Robertson. “Then David will get on road to some events in early March to meet face to face with MSPs. Also the sales and Partner Success Team will get together to arrange meetings with David after he gets here.”

Most of Axcient’s customers are small- to medium-sized businesses, according to Robertson. “We do focus on that higher-touch experience for customers,” through MSPs or VARs with MSP services.

In November 2018, Axcient launched its latest product, its Business Availability Suite, which includes a range of business availability and cloud migration tools and enables MSPs to build secure technology stacks for their customers.