Sandy Hogan Leaps from VMware to SADA

Former VMware channel head Sandy Hogan has a new job. On Wednesday, word broke that Hogan will serve as the first-ever chief revenue officer at managed service provider SADA. She starts on July 18.

SADA’s Sandy Hogan

Hogan left VMware on July 6. Her departure came as Broadcom prepares to buy VMware, but a spokesperson said Hogan did not leave as a result of that pending, $61 billion deal. Rather, the spokesperson said, “This is a personal career decision not related to Broadcom.”

To be sure, Hogan’s role at SADA will offer her new opportunities even as she continues to interact with the indirect channel. Similar to what she did at VMware, Hogan will focus on expanding sales and footprint — yet with enterprises, instead of resellers, MSPs, integrators or the like.

The shift from a vendor to an MSP exposes Hogan to a range of different goals and capabilities. That’s in part because SADA aligns only with Google Cloud, whereas VMware teams with each of the hyperscalers. And, again, Hogan will work to increase adoption of SADA’s services directly among organizations, not channel partners. Indeed, SADA’s efforts and people served as big motivators for Hogan to move from VMware to the MSP.

“SADA’s mission to build a ‘Forever-Company’ rooted in providing incredible value to customers deeply resonated with my values,” Hogan said. “SADA’s unparalleled culture, supported by its best-in-class talent, provides the opportunity for us to create a whole new category of capabilities and further innovate across the business. I am thrilled to be a part of SADA’s next chapter of growth and look forward to what we will achieve together.”

Sandy Hogan: From Cisco, Rackspace and VMware to SADA

Hogan comes to SADA after a little more than two years as senior vice president of worldwide commercial and partner sales at VMware. There, she was instrumental in helping to bring VMware away from its legacy hardware roots into the cloud world. She also embraced the ecosystem concept within the channel and stood out as one of its most vocal champions. Prior to VMware, Hogan served as executive vice president and general manager at Rackspace. Her experience at that large MSP is more than likely to inform her efforts at SADA. During her time at Rackspace, Hogan oversaw new customer segments, the full customer life cycle, and transformed business models. And many partners know Hogan from her 15 years at Cisco Systems. There, she held various go-to-market and other roles.

Choosing to jump on board at SADA will no doubt pay off for Hogan (and SADA). SADA has experienced impressive growth over the past few years and has risen in profile within the channel. The company’s decision to specialize in Google Cloud has clearly paid off: SADA is so confident in its ability to cement Google Cloud adoption that it has committed to sell $2.5 billion worth of the cloud provider’s solutions over the next three years. Hogan will prove a vital part of that initiative — among others.

“SADA’s continued success is measured by the long-lasting impact we make on our customers and their transformation journey and Sandy’s customer-first approach aligns with our customer for life business model, which made her a perfect addition to our team,” said Tony Safoian, president and CEO of SADA. “I’m excited to welcome her to the SADA family and look forward to the global growth we will experience with her on board.”

SADA’s Growth

In just the past year or so, SADA has made significant moves that have expanded its market reach. For example, in 2021, the MSP opened a global delivery center in Armenia. It also snapped up ByteWave Digital and transformed it into SADA India for around-the clock support and delivery services. SADA also continues to grow in Canada, the U.K. and Ireland, and has plans for more support sales and pre-sales engineering throughout EMEA. Further, SADA continues to beef up its SaaS Alliance Program (read about the launch of that effort here).