Aruba: New Channel Chief, Products Spell Partner Opportunity

Harold

The company recently hired channel sales veteran Jim Harold to lead its channel efforts, and is working on specialization and segmentation efforts with its partners. Add in technology aimed at the midmarket and mobile device management (MDM), and Aruba seems to be hitting the channel high points.

Harold, who formerly was vice president of Global Channel Sales at Blue Coat Networks, is no stranger to the channel, having held similar positions at SafeNet, Bay Networks, Enterasys and Network Appliance, to name a few. He lives and breathes the channel so much that he named his sailboat “Channel Sails” (insert groan here).

“I worked with (Aruba Networks President) Dominic Orr at Bay Networks, so I knew the culture he created and what a dynamic company Aruba is,” Harold said of his decision to join Aruba in August. “We’ve been able to expand channel coverage — I’ve added nine channel team members in last month. That, plus where the company is now are proof points that Aruba wants to accelerate growth with its channel.”

The company recently invested in a new partner management system to accelerate partner enablement, and its sales organization has added incentives to spur partner sales, such as paying its sales reps a bonus when a partner sells professional services. “We’re walking into an exciting situation where could take business to the next level,” Harold said.

As Aruba has focused efforts around BYOD/MDM, enterprise and midmarket opportunities, it has seen a need for specialization and segmentation with its channel partners. “Partners need deeper background in other areas,” Harold said. “So Aruba created a special program and rewards for those who have invested and trained in the ClearPass product.

“We found with ClearPass solution the complexion of the channel partner has changed,” he continued. “Wireless is prevalent and we have partners that have been solid security partners who now are selling wireless but driving as much or more services with it. We’re also seeing a lot of specific solution partners who could be specialized in specific markets. It’s like peanut butter and jelly — companies need to update their wireless infrastructure so that’s getting dragged along with the solution itself. Specializations are a way to discern that.”

Another new area of growth with partners, Harold noted, is professional services, which took the company by surprise. “Those have really gotten partners excited, and the company has been challenged with getting interested partners trained quickly enough. The demand is there; partners that have invested are happy to have opportunity to drive additional revenue, and culture of noncompete is working quite well.”

Its latest offering, the 7200 Series mobility controllers, promise to bring a new level of application delivery optimization by using deep packet inspection for Layer 7 to identify application traffic and manage traffic accordingly.

“There is a new driver ahead of us: BYOA, which stands for ‘bring your own application,’” said Manav Khurana, senior director of Americas Marketing at Aruba. “Most device users download a number of apps, which means higher bandwidth and greater security problem when on a corporate network. The channel can use some of the new technologies we have to deliver guaranteed application performance, such as  AppRF, which gives network intelligence to recognize the app coming onto the network and automatically control it. AppRF is included in the 7200 series controller.”

The 7200 is an opportunity for Aruba to train partners on migrating customers from older technology,” Harold noted. “We are using every opportunity to get in front of partners, and I believe we are doing a good job with that.”