Splunk Appoints Microsoft Vet to Lead Global Channel Strategy, Ecosystem

Software company Splunk has hired Microsoft vet Gretchen O’Hara as its new vice president of worldwide channels and alliances.

O’Hara is responsible for evolving Splunk’s channel strategy and ecosystem to improve the customer and partner experience. In addition, she’ll scale Splunk solutions to support customers operating in a distributed, hybrid, multicloud world.

O’Hara’s role is similar to the role previously held by Bill Hustad. He is now Okta’s global channel chief.

Before joining Splunk, O’Hara was with Microsoft more than 18 years and most recently was vice president of U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) and sustainability strategy.

Splunk’s Gretchen O’Hara

“There are few technology companies in the world with the combination of product, people and market potential as Splunk,” she wrote about her new role in a blog. “And Splunk has only scratched the surface of its amazing growth potential. In my career, I’ve developed channels and alliances, worked across every partner type possible, and helped build and lead one of the tech industry’s largest partner ecosystems. Splunk is an unparalleled opportunity for me to participate in the next wave of transformation that is helping customers succeed in a distributed, hybrid, multicloud world.”

Splunk, Partners ‘Uniquely Positioned’ to Help Customers

O’Hara said Splunk and its partners are “uniquely positioned” to deliver customer outcomes. The company has built a “highly extensible” platform. It leverages data at “unparalleled scale,” with security and observability solutions that yield real ROI for customers.

“Splunk partners help customers adopt Splunk solutions and gain significant long-term value from additional use cases,” she said.

A Splunk spokesperson said O’Hara will b  “laser-focused” on Splunk’s global channels and alliances success.

“As part of this role, she will build on the foundation that we’ve built with Splunk Partnerverse, and work to enhance and streamline our partner enablement, education and communication,” the spokesperson said. “With more than 25 years of channel sales, marketing alliances and ecosystem development, Gretchen is a proven leader who understands the broad ecosystem of partners and alliances necessary to bring our solutions successfully to life with our customers.”

Splunk was looking for someone who could build and develop new things. It also wanted someone who has seen transformation at scale.

“And we think we really found that in Gretchen,” the spokesperson said. “Splunk is in a period of tremendous growth. And we have evolved our strategy to capture the opportunity ahead.”