Ex-Microsoft Channel Chief Gavriella Schuster Talks Open Systems Role

Gavriella Schuster has been out of her role as Microsoft’s channel chief for about six months now. But that doesn’t mean the longtime partner advocate has stepped away from the world of indirect technology sales. Instead, because she has taken on multiple initiatives, her new ventures seem to be bringing her closer to the community. Consider her latest appointment as a board member for Open Systems. And she’s delivering a keynote address at Nerdio’s upcoming conference in Cancun.

Schuster has a lot more going on, too. She holds a chair advisory seat with the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners, spearheads diversity, equity and inclusion efforts (including with Channel Futures) and sits on several boards. To that last point, her work with Open Systems really hits home with a lot of channel partners because of the company’s focus on security.

Gavriella Schuster

“The value that Open Systems has to offer to an MSP is to actually become more like an MSSP, without having to invest in overhead, and add security in, to think beyond the desktop and infrastructure and how that wraps the whole customer’s environment together,” Schuster recently told Channel Futures.

Click the slideshow above to learn more about Schuster’s decision to join the Open Systems board; plus, the direction in which she hopes to guide the company, and challenges she expects partners to face in 2022.