Zerto Hires Avnet, Tech Data Vet as Director of Channel Sales Americas

By Todd R. Weiss

Six months after bringing in former VMware and Cisco channel executive Jim Ortbals to lead its global channel and cloud sales efforts, disaster recovery and backup vendor Zerto has hired a new director of channel sales for the Americas to help the company drive its channel relationships. Also hired was a new director of sales for the east Americas.

Zerto’s Eric Barnhart

Zerto’s new role director of channel sales for the Americas is Eric Barnhart, who previously worked for Avnet Technology Solutions, Tech Data and other companies, before arriving to assist Ortbals at Zerto.

In his new role, Barnhart will be responsible for tying the VAR community into the sales process and organization while assisting Ortbals in the Americas.

Barnhart told Channel Partners that he has spent the majority of his IT career in distribution, including at Avnet where he was responsible for storage systems and more. He has had a longstanding relationship with channel partners in all of his roles in his career, he said.

“My team and I were called upon to be trusted advisers, to help as resellers worked to transform their businesses,” said Barnhart. “We were an integral part of the VAR and reseller ecosystems.”

Barnhart said he will work under Ortbals to work specifically with channel partners in the Americas so Ortbals can work globally on channel relationships with cloud service providers and others for the company.

“I’m excited about the opportunity,” said Barnhart. “I see Zerto as a transformative solution for channel partners, who have evolved over last 30 years” from hard resellers into service providers and more. “They’ve worked for manufacturers, set up shops, developed customer relationships, and became VARs as they added services.”

Today’s channel partners are keenly interested in the valuations of their companies, said Barnhart. “The valuation of a VAR or reseller is top of mind for most of those folks today. Those partners are keenly interested in the valuation of their companies so they need to evolve as more than just a reseller,” including gaining recurring revenue for sustained growth.

“Zerto as an IT resilience platform is an enabler of that transformation,” he said. “That means our ability to drive new consumption models and our ability to drive cloud. I’m excited about continuing to help them.”

Zerto’s Emily North Weeks

Also hired into Zerto’s expanding channel team is Emily North Weeks, who will serve as the director of sales for the east Americas. Weeks is a former Cisco sales manager with more than 20 years of channel sales experience. She also previously worked for Microsoft and Veaam.

Weeks said she wants to use her channel experience to help influence Zerto’s cloud channel strategy moving forward. She said she’s “looking forward to working with the Zerto cloud service providers (CSPs) and creating strong relationships to accelerate and optimize how customers manage disaster recovery, data protection and cloud.”

Ortbals came to Zerto in late February as its new vice president of global channels and cloud sales with the goals of helping grow the…

…company’s combined channel partner and cloud businesses. The company recently unveiled the latest version of its flagship disaster recovery and backup application, Zerto 7.0, and introduced new enterprise subscription-based licensing and services for customers. For channel partners, both announcements offer new avenues for revenue and services growth for traditional partners such as VARs and systems integrators and for cloud service provider partners.

Zerto’s flagship product is its IT Resilience Platform, an enterprise-grade platform which customers can use to replace multiple disaster and data protection applications and services. The platform combines Zerto disaster recovery, Zerto backup and cloud mobility services for users. The company’s partner network includes more than 1,800 VARs and systems integrators and more than 350 cloud service providers. The company says it has more than 6,000 customers around the world.