CrowdStrike Promotes Sophos, McAfee Vet as New Channel Lead

CrowdStrike on Thursday appointed Michael Rogers vice president of global business development, channel and alliances. This is the company’s highest ranking channel and alliances officer and its overall channel lead. 

Previously, Rogers was the global vice president, partner and alliance sales at CrowdStrike. The company’s former channel leader, Matthew Polly, is stepping into a new role as VP of North America midmarket sales. This is a segment with critical ties to the channel, remaining focused on growing CrowdStrike’s channel partner program. 

Rogers has spent his career working with partners in the cybersecurity industry. Before CrowdStrike, he held executive leadership positions directly supporting alliances and partnerships at McAfee and Sophos. 

CrowdStrike’s Michael Rogers

“Michael Rogers has proven to be a great leader and advocate for CrowdStrike, our partners and our customers, and no one has played a bigger role in growing our channel program over the past few years,” said Jim Seidel, chief sales officer at CrowdStrike. “In a rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape, Michael has always championed a one-team-one-fight approach to helping our customers – bringing to bear the best of CrowdStrike and the unique value of our partners into some of the most critical areas of security. He’s the perfect choice to lead into the next chapter of partner growth.”    

“The difference with CrowdStrike – and why we’ve been able to bring together such an elite network of partners – is that we’ve always advocated for an ecosystem approach that puts customers at the center of our program,” said Rogers. “CrowdStrike and our partners are laser-focused on delivering the solutions, intelligence and expertise required to combat today’s advanced cyber adversaries and help customers stop breaches. When you find partners as committed to the mission as you, customers win, plain and simple.” 

Record Quarter

The new channel leadership appointments come as CrowdStrike announced its fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 results. Incidentally, these come at a time of significant growth and momentum in CrowdStrike’s channel partner program. For fiscal year 2022, CrowdStrike reported a record quarter for its partner ecosystem. Partner-sourced ending ARR grew 83% year-over-year, and MSSP business grew more than 200% year-over-year. This is along with significant traction with its worldwide network of technology alliances, cloud service providers (CSPs), global system integrators (GSIs) and telcos.