New Barracuda CRO: KKR to Accelerate Growth with Partners

Barracuda, which KKR recently acquired, has appointed security, storage and channel veteran Chris Ross to chief revenue officer (CRO).

In this role, Ross is responsible for worldwide sales and partnerships. He joined Barracuda in 2015 as senior vice president of international sales. He brings over 30 years of technology experience to the company.

As CRO, Ross will focus on accelerating the company’s current growth trajectory across its geographic sales regions.

Barracuda’s Chris Ross

“Having run the EMEA and APAC business for the last seven years, my top priority is to work with our Americas team, to understand the differences in our geographic business, and ensure we get a fast start into the second half of our fiscal year,” Ross said. “After that, there is a long list of priorities, including a significant focus on our channel go to market, looking at how we can leverage best practices across the regions, and ensure we continue to drive momentum with our partners.”

Barracuda has a number of significant initiatives in play over the coming months, he said. The company designed them to expand the market opportunity for the channel.

In addition, Barracuda will remain focused on increasing its resources available to partners, Ross said. That’s both in terms of its team, and also in programs and incentives.

KKR Acquisition ‘Huge Opportunity’

KKR completed its acquisition of Barracuda from Thoma Bravo in August. Thoma Bravo acquired Barracuda in 2018 in a $1.6 billion cash deal.

“The KKR acquisition represents a huge opportunity for both Barracuda and our partners,” Ross said. “KKR is focused on supporting us with our continued growth plans and working with us as we deliver the next generation of our cloud-first cybersecurity solutions. We are dedicated to investing in our team and product portfolio, which in turn represents significant growth opportunities for our partners.”

During the last four years, Barracuda expanded and enhanced its product solutions, he said. It also implemented many operational processes and successfully executed a number of strategic acquisitions. Those helped propel Barracuda toward strong and accelerating growth.

Working with KKR will enable Barracuda to provide additional resources and expertise to accelerate this growth, Ross said. And partners should expect to see Barracuda expand in key areas. Those include managed detection and response (MDR), extended detection and response (XDR), and secure access service edge (SASE) technology.

Innovation in Enablement Programs

Partners should expect to see innovation in the enablement programs that help them to sell Barracuda, Ross said.

“Our close relationships with public cloud providers continue to present immense opportunities for the channel to access alternative budgets within their customers as they maximize co-sell opportunities with Barracuda solutions,” he said. “Furthermore, they should expect us to maintain focus on our managed service offerings and in particular our Skout XDR solution, and the opportunities that will enable them to expand their footprint in their customer base.”

In addition, Barracuda will continue expanding its next-generation SaaS solutions and programs, Ross said. That will enable them to accelerate recurring revenue stream with Barracuda solutions.