CRN October 2020 - Issue 1397

ISSUE 1397 • OCTOBER 2020

crn.com

MEET THE CHANNEL’S UNSUNG HEROES PAGE 14

ARC: VENDOR VICTORY LAP PAGE 24

NEWS, ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVE FOR VARs AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATORS

Zoom Boom!

When work-from-home became the new norm, solution providers jumped into action to help their customers make videoconferencing a reality. Sales of Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex have skyrocketed—but it’s the services that are driving astronomical growth. PAGE 10

CLOUD PARTNER PROGRAM GUIDE PAGE 34

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Computer Reseller News

October 2020

Columns 6 The Final Cut

By Steven Burke

50

On The Record

By Robert Faletra

Features 8 Tech10

These data management and business analytics software tools and cloud services can help turn data into actionable intelligence

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Annual Report Card The results are in: Which vendors earned the highest grades from their partners?

Triple Crown Here are 44 solution providers who have continued to thrive during a challenging year, building on their records of rapid growth and wide-ranging technology expertise

Zoom Boom!

Solution providers almost overnight helped their customers make videoconferencing a reality. Sales of Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex have skyrocketed—but it’s the services that are driving astronomical growth.

100 People You Don’t Know But Should Building strong teams to tackle partner programs, incentives and training is key to any vendor’s success. But who are the individuals on those teams? They may not be familiar faces, but they are all true channel drivers.

For reprints and plaque requests, please contact The YGS Group at 800.290.5460 or http://crnlicensing.com CRN (ISSN 1539-7343), also known as Computer Reseller News, is published 14 times a year (February, April, June, August, October, December and 8 Special Issues) by The Channel Company, One Research Drive, Suite 410A, Westborough, MA 01581, and is free to qualified management personnel at companies involved in the reselling/distribution of computers/ networking systems, software and services. One-year subscription rates for all others in the United States are $209.00; Canada $234.00. Overseas air mail rates are: Europe $380.00; Mexico/South America $380.00; Africa $380.00; Asia/ Australia $480.00. Please mail all subscription inquiries along with checks or money orders to CRN, Dept. 100, P.O. Box 3608, Northbrook, IL 60065-3608. For renewals or change of address, please include the mailing address label appearing on the front cover of the publication. Periodicals postage paid at Worcester, MA, (and additional offices, if applicable). POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CRN, P.O. Box 3608, Northbrook, IL 60065-3608. FOR SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES call (877)705-5559 or go to crn.com/subscribe Copyright© 2020 by The Channel Company. All Rights Reserved. Registered for GST as The Channel Company, GST No. R13288078, Customer No. 2116057, Agreement No. 40011901. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: APC Postal Logistics, LLC PO Box 503 RPO W Beaver Cre, Rich-Hill ON L4B 4R6

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14 Cloud Partner Program Guide

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The cloud has ushered in a new model for partner programs— one centered on simplicity and transparency. See which vendors took that message to heart and are being recognized for their forward thinking this year.

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There’s More Online Most-Read Stories

1. Dell Hires Cisco Canada

President As New Global Channel Chief

2. AWS Controllers for

Kubernetes Will Be A ‘Boon For Developers’

3. Antonio Neri: HPE

GreenLake Is Growing Faster Than Public Cloud

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THE FINAL CUT

iCorps’ IT Leadership On-Demand

‘LIFE-SAVER’ FOR SMB CUSTOMERS STARVING FOR IT INSIGHT

By Steven Burke RACHEL WOODHOUSE, a principal and director of operations for Dyer Brown Architects, Boston, couldn’t be more thrilled that she bet big on iCorps Technologies’ IT Leadership On-Demand service.

With iCorps’ no-nonsense managed services aimed at providing critical business consulting to customers, Dyer Brown made the move to the cloud—including Microsoft Teams—putting in place a safe and secure work-from-home infrastructure before the global pandemic hit this year. “Thank God we made the switch over at the end of last year to the cloud because we were able to work from home,” said Woodhouse, who oversees IT strategy for the national architectural firm, which focuses on corporate workplace design. “That was absolutely a life-saver.”

Just as Dyer Brown—which has played a leading role helping clients retool office buildings for the COVID-19 era—is an extension of the corporate real-estate teams for its clients, iCorps is an extension of the IT business teams of the small- and midsizebusiness customers it serves with its IT Leadership On-Demand service. The service focuses on strategic planning with the aim of driving competitive business advantages for customers.

ICorps provided a “forward-thinking” view of where Dyer Brown needed to take its IT strategy to be successful, said Woodhouse. “They brought up things with their technical knowledge that we just didn’t know about,” she said. “We need more than a partner that is just managed IT. We needed an ongoing gut check of our IT strategy—someone thinking of our best interest with all of our technology decisions.”

Woodhouse credits iCorps’ IT Leadership On-Demand senior technology and systems consultant Anderson Nichols with helping put in place a cloud infrastructure that allowed the firm to serve its clients via the cloud anytime, anywhere and anyplace.

Nichols provided the “high-level, business-level” attention that Dyer Brown needed to propel it forward, said Woodhouse. “This is, in my opinion, our most pivotal operational relationship,” she said. “There is nothing else that even comes close. Getting that right and continuing to deepen that relationship is key.”

The IT Leadership On-Demand managed services model is taking off, driving significant sales growth for iCorps, which has rolled it out nationally. “The world is starving for IT leadership,” said iCorps CEO Mike Hadley. “There is no doubt about it.This is all about helping businesses make wise technology investments and decisions.” iCorps is having a “profitable” year and is hiring additional talent including security engineers and senior technology consultants, said Hadley.

Even with the pandemic, customers have to invest in technology and digitally transform to succeed, said Hadley. “The only way customers can survive and exist is by moving to the cloud,” he said.

“And you have to do it soundly—making good decisions and investments.That’s what we do with IT Leadership On-Demand,” Hadley said.

Make no mistake about it: The iCorps managed services offering provided Dyer Brown with a competitive advantage. In fact, while competitors were scrambling to enable work-at-home scenarios, Dyer Brown was in customer-facing mode, helping its clients navigate the pandemic. “That gave us an edge,” said Woodhouse. “We were able to get a jump on how this might impact clients and real estate. If we had been distracted by technology issues, we absolutely would not have been able to do that.” n

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Visit wotc.crn.com

BACKTALK: Are you providing managed services that give your customers a competitive advantage? Let me know at sburke@thechannelcompany.com.

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T E C H 1 0 : B IG DATA

Deriving Big Insight From Big Data These 10 new data management and business analytics software tools and cloud services help turn data into actionable intelligence

By Rick Whiting

1. ALTERYX ANALYTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION PLATFORM, ANALYTICS HUB AND INTELLIGENCE SUITE

6. MARIADB SKYSQL

2. CLOUDERA DATA PLATFORM PRIVATE CLOUD

7. SCYLLA ENTERPRISE 2020

The Alteryx Analytic Process Automation (APA) Platform is an end-toend data science, machine-learning and analytics process automation system used by analysts and data scientists to prepare, blend, enrich and analyze data. Analytics Hub works with Alteryx APA to consolidate analytic assets into one system where they can be accessed and shared by data workers. Intelligence Suite, part of the Alteryx APA Platform 2020.2 update, works with Analytics Hub and Alteryx Designer to help users without a data science background build predictive models.

Cloudera Data Platform Private Cloud extends the cloud-native speed, simplicity and economics of the Cloudera Data Platform and its data lifecycle capabilities to the data center. Built for hybrid cloud environments, Cloudera Data Platform Private Cloud helps IT management better meet the need for data access for analytics and machine-learning tasks while simplifying platform management with container-based management tools. Cloudera Data Platform Private Cloud can reduce data center costs by increasing server utilization by 70 percent while also reducing storage and data center overhead, according to the company.

3. COCKROACHCLOUD

CockroachCloud is a fully managed cloud instance of CockroachDB, the distributed relational database system developed by Cockroach Labs to support next-generation, cloud-native transactional applications.

Released in beta in 2019, CockroachCloud became generally available this year on Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud Platform.

Cockroach Labs touts the easy scalability of CockroachCloud as well as its ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability)-compliant transaction and data geo-location capabilities.

MariaDB SkySQL is a fully managed cloud Database-as-a-Service edition of the popular MariaDB relational database that supports transactional and analytical applications. SkySQL uses Kubernetes for container orchestration; the ServiceNow workflow engine for inventory, configuration and workflow management; Prometheus for real-time monitoring and alerting; and the Grafana open-source analytics and visualization application for data visualization. SkySQL users also have the ability to customize database options and configurations to meet enterprise-class security, high-availability and disaster recovery requirements.

Scylla Enterprise 2020 is a major release of ScyllaDB’s high-performance NoSQL database for real-time big data workloads. ScyllaDB positions its software as an alternative to Amazon DynamoDB and Scylla Enterprise 2020 includes Alternator, a DynamoDB-compatible API that helps DynamoDB users switch to Scylla without changing application code.

The new release also includes new change data capture capabilities and a new Lightweight Transactions feature that extends ScyllaDB’s data consistency options.

8. TABLEAU 2020.3

The latest update to Tableau’s business analytics platform provides a new Write to Database feature, providing the ability to output to, and update, external databases directly from Tableau Prep Builder. The Tableau update, therefore, expands the platform to serve a broader set of data preparation needs. The release also adds a number of new thirdparty connectors to the Tableau Extension Gallery, including connectors built by some of the company’s technology partners—Actian, Dremio, Elasticsearch, Ocient, Qubole, Sqream and Yellowbrick, with more under development.

9. THOUGHTSPOT DATAFLOW 4. COLLIBRA DATA INTELLIGENCE CLOUD

Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud is a fully managed, cloud-native system that automates data workflows, provides visibility into data assets, ensures security and creates a streamlined way for business users to access and analyze trusted data. Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud is built on a microservices architecture for more easily enhancing data services or developing new ones. It also offers data scoring, which computes a data quality measure at the attribute level, and tools for managing individuals’ data requests.

5. LOGI ANALYTICS LOGI COMPOSER

Logi Composer provides a way for ISVs and corporate developers to build self-service business analysis capabilities directly into commercial and in-house applications and workflows. Logi Composer is used to design, build and embed interactive dashboards and data visualizations into applications and develop connections to popular data sources that underlie them. The tool’s back-end query processing is powered by the Smart Data Connectors technology Logi Analytics acquired in 2019 when it bought Zoomdata.

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ThoughtSpot’s new DataFlow feature within the company’s business analytics platform makes it possible to load data from source databases and file systems into the Falcon in-memory database that powers the ThoughtSpot system. DataFlow allows users to connect to a data source, preview and select data they want to move into ThoughtSpot, and schedule data synchronizations—and this can all be done without coding. DataFlow significantly reduces the amount of technical resources needed to deploy ThoughtSpot while accelerating data access and analysis.

10. ZENDESK EXPLORE ENTERPRISE

A new addition to the Zendesk customer service platform, Explore Enterprise enables real-time data analysis of customer service data to make more informed decisions around sales, support and products to understand customers’ changing needs and improve customer experiences. Explore Enterprise enables data monitoring across customer support channels using prebuilt and customizable live charts and improves team collaboration with advanced report sharing and scheduling capabilities. ■

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C O V E R S T O RY

Zoom Boom!

By Gina Narcisi & Kyle Alspach

W

HEN THE LARGEST HOSPITAL SYSTEM AT THE EPICENTER OF THE COVID-19 CRISIS in New York

City needed to broadcast calls from its CEO to 20,000 physicians, nurses and staff for daily pandemic updates, solution provider Clover Communications recommended Zoom Video Communications. “[On a] Thursday night, the hospital called us with the request.

We looked at four or five other options, but Zoom was the only one that could get 20,000 seats up by Monday morning,” said Dominick Callandriello, president and CEO of Clover, a Morristown, N.J.-based Zoom partner. “These were calls where they were announcing the number of deaths, having moments of silence, and sharing the number of cases. Without this kind of tool, I don’t know how the CEO would have had an opportunity to drive his people to move forward.”

The rise of the global coronavirus pandemic has created unparalleled opportunities for solution providers to drive sales of collaboration and Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) solutions such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex while wrapping in additional services. In particular, videoconferencing as a service became ubiquitous as people across the U.S. rearchitected their lives to work, learn and receive health care from home.

Less than a month into the pandemic, Zoom had already entered the national lexicon, becoming synonymous with videoconferencing, Callandriello said: “Zoom became the Kleenex of video.”

The scope of the opportunity is unlike anything Clover has seen.

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In recent years, UCaaS has accounted for, at best, 20 percent of Clover’s sales as the company focused more heavily on “the plumbing”—networking and telecom services. Over the past 90 days, UCaaS and video-related products have made up about 70 percent of the company’s sales, according to Callandriello.

“We’ve never seen such an acceleration of a product. It’s been really drastic. We’ve seen video and UCaaS advance probably two years in their life cycle from a sales perspective because of the onset of COVID,” Callandriello said.

Videoconferencing has long taken its licks from detractors who felt in-room systems were never easy enough to use. But Zoom’s as-a-service delivery model and simple interface have changed that narrative.

“Zoom took off so quickly because it’s so easy to use and the adoption rate within an organization is unlike any other product we’ve ever seen. Every client meeting has become a video meeting all of a sudden,” said Owen Hayes, vice president of operations for Clover.

Clifton Park, N.Y.-based Subsidium Technologies, a Zoom partner, previously worked with another videoconferencing provider, but the technology was “expensive and complex,” said Ed Degenhart, co-founder and managing partner of Subsidium.

“It was always an obstacle for people to communicate via video,” Degenhart said. “We’ve been amazed at how easily Zoom works.”

Subsidium landed its first large-scale videoconferencing deal in June—75,000 Zoom licenses to one of the largest school districts in the U.S. Many customers, like schools, were forced into adopting videoconferencing technologies rapidly and, at the same time,

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needed to ramp up bandwidth to support these collaboration tools.

Subsidium has been “white-gloving” Zoom video services for its customers, which include implementation and networking, adoption and life-cycle services, Degenhart said. And customers on free trials have been converting to paid accounts, he added.

Investment In Videoconferencing Is Sky High A recent survey from research firm IDC found that 55 percent of technology leaders foresee increased investments in videoconferencing in the current environment—the highest of any technology segment.A separate survey from IDC revealed that the vast majority of U.S. enterprises—87 percent—expect that employees will still work from home at least three days a week even after offices fully reopen.

But these videoconferencing solutions aren’t selling themselves.

In an environment dominated by the COVID-19 crisis, solution providers working with Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex are making money by wrapping services and driving complex solution sales around the off-the-shelf offerings.

At Continuant, a call came in from a large pharmaceutical company that was trying to migrate to the Microsoft Teams collaboration app on its own—but had quickly discovered the task was way too big. “They needed an expert to do it for them,” said David Ellis, vice president of collaboration at Tacoma,Wash.-based Continuant.

For the pharma company, with 25,000 employees spread across multiple countries, moving to cloud-based videoconferencing and collaboration had never seemed necessary until the COVID-19 pandemic hit and workers started using Teams on their own. The cloud video, voice, chat and file-sharing features of Teams “tipped the scale for them,” Ellis said.

Continuant is now migrating that company to Teams, a project that pulls in significant consulting fees and recurring revenue.

Overall, Continuant’s revenue related to Teams is expected to surge by up to 50 percent in 2020 compared with last year. “What’s so attractive with Teams is that there are so many revenue streams for a company like ours,” Ellis said.

For the Teams project at the pharma customer, Continuant started off by holding business case workshops before moving into design and deployment. Recurring revenue will stem from managed services and from ongoing services around adoption and change management, while moving the customer to Teams will also generate hardware revenue from networking and conferencing equipment.

“We’re getting paid all along the way,” Ellis said.

Likewise, at New York-based Logicalis U.S., No. 53 on the 2020 CRN Solution Provider 500, the revenue opportunity from Microsoft Teams professional services such as governance has been massive, said Tim Beamer, senior solutions architect for Logicalis U.S. Governance includes ensuring that roles, permissions, user capabilities and third-party connections are set up in an ideal and secure way for the customer. “That governance piece becomes really critical, and if you get that right, the Teams environment just works a lot better,” he said.

For instance, Logicalis U.S. is helping to deploy Teams for a large health-care provider, which operates in a highly regulated

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industry—raising the stakes for oversight of Teams and opening the door to adding a lot of value, Beamer said. Data protection rules and other regulations “have to be factored in with how you govern and administer that Teams environment,” he said.

“One of the things Microsoft did really well with Teams is they made it very easy for everybody to use. Anybody can create a team by default.That’s good and that’s bad.That means you have to make sure you have a good governance model in place,” Beamer said.

A number of other solution providers also pointed to governance as among the biggest revenue drivers from Teams, which is part of Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription-based productivity suite and includes built-in access to key collaboration apps such as SharePoint and OneDrive. At iV4, a unit of Atlanta-based ProArch, providing Teams governance work has led to a number of “offshoot projects,” said Jeanne Morelli, vice president of operations at iV4.

“When we start talking about what Teams is doing for them, and then we start talking about SharePoint, oftentimes there are business process and workflow projects that stem from that,” Morelli said. “Maybe there are apps that you can add to Teams to help them build out a business process. Maybe there is SharePoint configuration and implementation and customization that results from that conversation.”

Like with the surge in demand for Zoom, the shift to videoconferencing during the initial phases of the COVID-19 crisis was a main booster of Teams usage. Teams has rocketed past 75 million daily active users, according to figures provided by Microsoft as of late April. That’s about four times the size of the Teams user base as of last November. And Microsoft continues to enhance Teams video meetings with new features, including a larger gallery view and “Together Mode,” which places participants into a shared virtual background such as an auditorium.

For Teams, “the ability to connect via video has been huge,” said Matthew Feeley, partner and director at Bannockburn, Ill.-based Netrix, No. 183 on the 2020 CRN Solution Provider 500. “We have many clients, like law firms, that traditionally didn’t use video. Now they’re using it, and they expect others to use it.”

Depending on how offices take shape as they reopen, it’s likely that many executives and workers will expect to carry over the same video experience they had at home using Teams, Feeley said.

“The expectation will be that the conference room or huddle room needs to be able to work as seamlessly as a Teams meeting does on my laptop,” he said. “So, I think there’s going to be a nice uptick in work around how you truly make those rooms work just as efficiently as a Teams meeting. And video is the driver behind that.”

Combining video with other solutions, like voice, is critical in boosting user adoption and adding more value in the eyes of the customer, Clover’s Callandriello said. “It’s about helping the customers become more productive with the tools. There’s so much these tools can do.”

Clover landed a large Zoom deal during the pandemic with a regional bank that has more than 900 users and 120 branch office locations. The solution provider was able to get 600 users up in three days. Within a week, all of the bank’s employees were using

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C O V E R S T O RY Zoom on a daily basis for video meetings. The deployment was so successful that the bank also migrated to Zoom Phone to put all of its communications on the same platform.

For Avant Communications, a Chicago-based master agent that works with Clover, Zoom swelled to account for 14 percent of the company’s total UCaaS sales year to date in 2020, up from zero the year before, said Alex Danyluk, Avant’s chief strategy officer. “[This made] Avant’s adviser channel the No. 1 channel sales group in second-quarter 2020 for Zoom’s entire channel ecosystem for both overall new sales and Zoom’s new phone service sales,” Danyluk said. “All this occurred as Avant’s overall ecosystem of UCaaS opportunities swelled 86 percent higher during the first months of COVID-19.”

At the end of Zoom’s second fiscal quarter of 2021, which ended July 31, the video specialist had approximately 370,200 customers with more than 10 employees, up approximately 458 percent from the same quarter last fiscal year. Zoom’s total revenue climbed 355 percent year over year to $663.5 million.

With a market cap standing at more than $120 billion, Zoom is now more valuable than IBM and AMD.

Through The Channel Lens While Zoom has worked its way into the daily lives of many users, it is still very much the new kid on the block when it comes to the channel. Rivals Microsoft and Cisco, by comparison, have long and storied histories working with and supporting solution providers.

San Jose, Calif.-based Zoom said about 10 percent of its business comes through the channel today. Zoom, which did some business through the VAR channel previously, launched its first-ever referral partner program in March to also target agent partner types.

The program teamed Zoom with a handful of U.S.-based master agents. But it’s unclear how closely Zoom engages directly with its channel partners.

The Zoom partners that spoke with CRN all work through master agents, arrangements that are going smoothly but offer little insight for those solution providers into the inner workings of Zoom’s channel strategy.

“I think the channel is very new for [Zoom],” said Subsidium’s Degenhart, whose organization works with Zoom through Avant.

Degenhart got the chance to talk to Zoom CEO Eric Yuan about going to market through the channel in 2017.

“Three years ago, we were trying to drive him into the channel and help him understand what our channel is all about,” he said.

“Obviously, they were having success on their own. But it took them this long to understand there’s a whole channel they should leverage. In the end, they did, and I think they are seeing amazing results from that [decision].”

Zoom’s referral partner program saw “staggering growth” in its first two months with about 2,000 agent partners signing on to work with Zoom through master agents, Laura Padilla, head of channel and partners, told CRN. “We’ve seen amazing growth and an amazing response from the partner community. We are now actively trying to meet those

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demands and requests for deal registrations,” she said in April.

Over at Microsoft, the tech giant reported record revenue during its fiscal fourth quarter of 2020, which ended June 30—attributed to the huge growth in cloud products such as Teams. Revenue for the cloud-based Office 365 Commercial offering, which includes Teams, jumped 31 percent during the quarter, year over year.

While much of the initial Teams adoption during the pandemic was about enabling remote work, many solution providers are going deeper with the Teams opportunity, Microsoft channel chief Gavriella Schuster said during an interview in July.

“Where we’ve seen real success is when the partners can come in, and do the adoption and change management around true collaboration—helping customers really understand how to share documents, how to do the white-boarding, how to more effectively engage on an ongoing basis—and go beyond meetings and chat,” said Schuster, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner organization.

At St. Louis-based Perficient, No. 55 on the 2020 CRN Solution Provider 500, a global real-estate customer needed to accelerate its Teams deployment amid the shift to remote work earlier this year.

While the project to get the customer’s 90,000 users onto Teams began in February, “when everything went down in March, that’s when we had to totally turn the boat to the left and change our strategy,” said Ron Jones, practice director for Microsoft modern productivity at Perficient.

For the real-estate customer—which was seeking to standardize on Teams and eliminate other tools such as Skype for Business— Perficient needed to expedite its technical governance work as well as its delivery of adoption and change management services.

The full deployment of Teams for the customer was completed in June, months ahead of the original schedule, and it’s just one of the many Teams projects Perficient has completed in recent months. Nearly 100 percent of Perficient customers now have Teams deployed, compared with 60 percent prior to the pandemic, Jones said. And the revenue opportunities have been countless.

“First are your professional services.Those services can be around a strategy, a road map, a security engagement, a tenant-to-tenant migration, change management. Then there’s technical enablement—which is helping users with the technology on a department by department level,” Jones said. “Then you can take it to the next level by bringing in the apps that customers care about, both on-prem and in the cloud. That’s the real sweet spot that people are starting to look to now. That’s where you start to talk about Teams as a platform.”

Deploying Teams calling capabilities is another emerging opportunity that many solution providers cited.

“What I’m really excited about is the calling portion of this,” Jones said. “That can mean replacing calling systems.And those are very complex projects, and not everyone’s equipped to do those, but thankfully we are.”

Meanwhile, security is a top priority with the emergence of Teams as a central hub for work—creating additional services opportunities for many solution providers.

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C O V E R S T O RY Security is “a great use case where we see an ability to generate revenue from Teams,” said Matt Dierolf, enterprise architect at Blue Bell, Pa.-based Anexinet, No. 212 on the 2020 CRN Solution Provider 500. For Anexinet, revenue opportunities have included consulting services to implement Teams security for customers, as well as recurring revenue from managed services to stay on top of security controls, he said.

“There’s SharePoint within Teams, there’s chat, there are all sorts of things that are compliance-related. We help customers set up controls around that,” Dierolf said. “We make sure the chats are logged and that they have DLP enabled so that the content doesn’t go where they don’t want it to go.”

Teams security engagements for Anexinet have included work for a large manufacturing customer, where most of its IP is intellectual knowledge rather than patents. “We make sure they can track where their data is going,” Dierolf said.

Making a profitable business out of Teams is also realistic for smaller MSPs. Third-party software such as AvePoint enables MSPs to simplify and automate the delivery of many Teams services.

Matthew Bookspan, CEO of Blacktip, an Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based MSP, said his company has been providing services such as Teams backup to SMBs with the help of AvePoint’s offering.

“What we do is we sell you the Blacktip version of Microsoft 365 Business Premium. So that has a higher price point because it has these additional value-added services that are all integrated.

And our clients love it because they don’t have to think about it,” Bookspan said. “At this point we’ve migrated everybody [in the customer base] to Teams.”

At Houston-based EPC Group, meanwhile, in the first three months of the COVID-19 crisis the solution provider performed implementations of Teams for several hundred customers. It moved internal resources into a COVID-19 task force “to get Teams going,” said Errin O’Connor, founder and chief architect.

“We had all hands on deck. We were working 18-hour days, and Saturdays and Sundays, going through and doing Teams implementations. Obviously there was a lot of revenue coming in,” O’Connor said. “But we also did that because our clients were just saying, ‘We’re desperate. We’re in trouble here.’”

Like Teams and Zoom, Cisco’s Webex collaboration platform has been driving growth opportunities for solution providers.

Force 3, a Crofton, Md.-based Cisco Gold Partner, counts several large U.S. government entities as customers. Nearly overnight, those customers have gone from slowly testing and piloting technology in small groups to rolling out videoconferencing to tens of thousands of users.As a result, Force3’s collaboration revenue went from “stagnant” to “accelerated,” said Jason Parry, senior vice president of federal.

Force 3’s customers are using Cisco Webex not only to empower employees working from home, but for workers who had to remain in the office—and now, for those returning.The platform is helping them organize their common spaces to ensure social distancing, Parry said.

“We’ve had requests for large-scale video environments that allow employees not to leave their desks,” he said. “And we’re seeing demand for video endpoints increase for senior individuals

that want a high-def experience.”

Force 3 also is helping to wrap security services around Webex and is boosting adoption by helping customers integrate collaboration within day-to-day business practices. Force 3 in July won a 50,000-seat enterprise collaboration deal and is working to increase user adoption of Webex within that organization, Parry said.

“A big part of that is helping that customer leverage the capabilities they bought and improving the way they do business,” he said.

“This way, you start to move from pure technology consultant to more of a business partner.”

Cisco Webex, which now includes calling, video and messaging, has more than 500 million meeting participants and is logging “well over” 70 billion meeting minutes a quarter, which is a year-overyear usage increase of more than three times, according to San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems in an email to CRN in September.

The channel stalwart has more than 60,000 global partners and about 85 percent of revenue comes from the channel, according to the company. Channel chief Oliver Tuszik said he’s proud of how quickly the company mobilized early in the pandemic to get partners what they needed.

“Webex and all of the key offers provided to partners and customers have become the cornerstone to our customers’ business resiliency. Through Webex and the security built into the platform, partners have been able to not only capture immediate revenue, but also position themselves to accelerate profitable growth through recurring revenue and managed services as customers continue to realize the full power of their initial IT investments,” Tuszik, senior vice president of Cisco’s Global Partner Organization, told CRN. Core Business Technology Solutions (Core BTS), a Cisco Gold partner, has a large collaboration business, especially in the K-12 and higher-education space. Much of that business is being driven

by Cisco Webex sales, said Taki Gikakis, national practice director, collaboration, for Core BTS. Core BTS has taken advantage of Cisco’s CX strategy, a focus the tech giant has been building up over the past three years around life cycle and customer success that rewards partners for staying involved with end users after the initial sale.

“We are constantly engaged with customers,” he said. “Not only are we helping the customer, which is the most important thing, but we’re getting paid for it as well.”

Connecting with customers on a daily basis—especially those coming off free 90-day trials—is crucial to keeping the collaboration revenue flowing, Gikakis said. In fact, Core BTS has tracked every customer on a free Webex trial to provide additional resources and adoption support for all of the platform’s features, such as single sign-on. Webex trials can scale to support 1,000 users, but Core BTS scaled to support 2,000 users for two school districts to help them get the most out of the product during their trial periods.

“Some choose to go with the technology, and some don’t. For the ones that didn’t convert, revisit every single one of them because they still need a solution,” Gikakis said. “If they know we are there for them no matter what and aren’t just trying to make one sale, that really resonates.” n

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100

People You Don’t Know BUT SHOULD

By Jennifer Follett

W

hen it comes to building a bleeding-edge channel strategy, technology vendors constantly have to commit to providing the resources and support their partners need to grow and thrive. Often that takes the form of building strong teams that include people to manage inventive channel programs, bring creativity to channel marketing campaigns and build technical training programs to keep partners one step ahead.

And when times get tough, investments in those kinds of

channel management team members become even more important in building trust with partners and keeping channel sales on track. While some channel executives are familiar faces, many are not. In fact, a vast majority work tirelessly behind the scenes to support their partners without ever being recognized by the channel at large. CRN’s 100 People You Don’t Know But Should spotlights some of the channel’s best and brightest people who may not be as visible as some channel chiefs or CEOs but are just as important to the partner community. Consider them the channel’s unsung heroes.

Tavey Daley

Teresa Carlson

U.S. Commercial Channel, Inside Sales Manager

Acer America

Described as a tireless worker and customer advocate, Daley is responsible for navigating big deals with Acer’s field teams, working with his team to create the special pricing letters that all resellers use for bids on the larger volume opportunities. He is the glue that keeps it all together.

14

Zak Nelson

Director, Marketing, Strategic Business Initiatives

ADT Security Services

With his responsibilities around leading product strategy and development, Nelson has immeasurably helped ADT and its partners improve the way they do business. His efforts to improve the customer experience have helped ADT become a more responsive, agile and attractive provider to partners.

VP, Worldwide Public Sector

Matthew Unangst

Amazon Web Services

Director, Commercial Client Business

Colleagues say Carlson hasn’t gotten enough credit for the investments she’s made to advance partners’ solutions. Her commitment and participation with many partners have led to a growing business for AWS. She meets constantly with the AWS partner community and is helping build a strong ecosystem.

A business and engineering leader with a track record of delivering results, Unangst is one of the driving forces behind AMD’s efforts to push new highperformance systems into the market through the channel.

In addition to financial incentives, AMD has launched other channel rewards and online training.

AMD

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Jeremy Edwards

Eastern Regional Director, Channel Field Sales

APC by Schneider Electric

Anne Arnavat

Sr. Inside Sales Manager

Arrow Electronics

Vivek Khemani

Sr. Director, Channel Enablement, Operation

Aruba, an HPE company

Beth Hoppe

Sr. Sales Planning Manager

AT&T

Edwards is helping APC meet its most important business objectives: partner growth, profitability and satisfaction. He’s also helping lead the team that drives growth in APC’s managed partner channel.

He is determined to set up the company’s channel managers for success so that they can deliver for partners.

Arnavat is described as “the epitome of an unsung channel hero,” known for unselfishly putting partners’ needs first. Many of Arrow’s partner principals have come to rely on her heavily in times of need.

She is credited with having an undeniable impact, earning partners’ trust by ensuring that Arrow delivers.

A key driver of Aruba’s as-aservice initiatives to bring consumption-based networking offerings to the channel, Khemani has also focused on helping partners drive customer engagement and build up their engineering skills. He is now leading the development of the Partner Ambassador Program for top partner engineers.

AT&T’s Alliance Channel underwent extensive changes last year.

Among them were the launches of new compensation plans, a new communication portal, new rules of engagement and new contracts. Hoppe, a 15-year AT&T veteran, was instrumental in delivering these enhancements in a timely manner and with excellence.

Callie Currier

Chad Lindsey

Paige Hansen

Samantha Sisk

Digital Marketing Manager

Axcient

Sales VP, Americas Field Operations

BeyondTrust

Distribution Manager, North America

A data-driven, m u l t i - ch a n n e l marketer and content strategist with a decade of experience, Currier oversees the data protection vendor’s digital marketing campaigns and is doing “amazing things” with its strategy. She is said to utilize her agility and creativity to drive high-impact marketing campaigns.

In his nearly nine years with Barracuda, Lindsey has built a strong foundation for helping partners succeed. He recently tapped into his knowledge of field operations and internal systems to step in as interim channel chief and is spearheading a project to support a subset of Barracuda’s partners in creative ways.

Hansen’s tireless work ethic and dedication have led to long-lasting relationships with partners through engaging enablement sessions, meticulous deal assistance and strong connections with customers. She sets the bar high by bringing a true understanding of the value behind effective and supported partnerships.

In her role m a n a g i n g BitDefender’s distributors for the past two years, Sisk has helped new partners grow and has established closer ties with the distribution channel.

She also has played a key part in helping the security vendor’s MSP and cloud program flourish over the past year.

Katherine Stickels

Colleen Hatala

Stephanie DeSanto

Brian Freeh

BlackBerry

Broadcom

Brother International

Director, North America Field, Channel Marketing

Stickels wins kudos for playing a key role in driving the North America channel strategy and program at BlackBerry. She is tightly aligned with field sales, channel sales, marketing, operations and partners to ensure launch plans and demand-creation programs are successfully executed in the field with partners.

Barracuda Networks

Director, Global Channel Sales

Hatala is tapping into her treasure trove of experience across multiple aspects of channel leadership, including running global channel sales teams, managing global distribution, driving go-to-market, operations and programs for the channel and building a partner engagement model for operational efficiency.

Regional Channel Manager

Sr. Partner Program Development Manager

DeSanto has established herself as a strong sales professional, moving her way up in the Brother organization with a demonstrated skill set in customer service, enterprise software, sales, cold calling and business development, which she’s now bringing to bear to help strengthen the company’s partner program.

Bitdefender

Director, Partner Success

Bvoip

Freeh works to ensure Bvoip’s partners have the tools they need to continually achieve success. He is credited with putting partner success in the spotlight by changing many of the company’s internal processes to help solution providers and is continuing to help modify them every day.

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100 Tim Sheahen

Sr. Director, Sales, North America

BUT SHOULD Anthony D’Angelo

Robert Uphoff

Carbonite,

an OpenText company

Cato Networks

Sheahen works hard to benefit partners and the channel program overall. He is lauded for growing into his leadership and mentorship role in 2019, taking on more responsibility in advising and helping newer sales leaders in other global markets. The OpenText team relies on his knowledge and relationships to drive partner success.

Cato brought D’Angelo on board in July as its first channel chief, where he is focusing on driving success of global master agents, VARs and distributors while developing partnerships with leading systems integrators and MSPs. Out of the gate, he has worked to bring more enablement to partners and increased investment in the program.

A channel advocate who also serves as chief of staff to channel chief Garrett Gee, Uphoff is credited with making a significant impact on CenturyLink’s Channel Partner Program, playing a key role in numerous highprofile projects, such as the CenturyLink Channel Partner Agreement, rules of engagement, compensation and incentive strategies.

Known as a “fixer” whose commitment to the channel is second to none, Martinez works tirelessly to improve processes and launch tools and systems that make it easier to do business with Charter/ Spectrum. She draws heavily on her knowledge of the channel and its partners to effect change.

Dan Yerushalmi

Don Hart

Dan Peralta

Jason Elizondo

Check Point Software Technologies

Cisco Systems

Citrix Systems

Cohesity

Director, Digital Renewals, Customer Experience

Director, Business Development

Gaby Martinez

VP, Global Channel Sales, Business Development

Chief Customer Officer

CenturyLink

Sr. Channel Operations, Business Metric Analyst

Sr. Director, Sales Operations, SMB

Charter Communications

Head of Global Channel Program Management, Strategy

A former CIO who is all too familiar with c u s t o m e r pain points, Yerushalmi leads by example and is credited with believing in Check Point’s channel, changing the sales culture and driving process change.

He is known for driving accountability and communicating expectations.

Hart supports partners as they optimize their service and subscription sales and renewal businesses. He was instrumental in Cisco’s Renewals Commerce Automation, a low-touch offering that uses AI to identify and deliver high-value, co-branded renewal opportunities for partners.

Peralta brings a channel-first mindset to his role at Citrix and has provided extensive business intelligence and clarity to the company’s channel business. He has worked to highlight important areas that will allow the company to drive more sales through its channel partners.

Elizondo has been working behind the scenes with team members to create tools and programs to help partners succeed with Cohesity. This collaborative approach has resulted in a program that rewards partners for investing in and growing with Cohesity as it aims to scale to $ 1 billion in three years.

Vivian Chavez

Michelle Urso

Graeme Steakley

Laurie Sorensen

Commvault

ConnectWise

Sr. Director, Channel Programs

Comcast Business A Comcast Business indirect channel team member since its inception in 2011, Chavez has built strong relationships with master agents and is credited with providing them with top-notch support and assisting in strategic planning. She has earned the reputation of keeping their best interests in mind.

16

People You Don’t Know

Sr. Manager, Partner Development

Commscope

A productivity and process whiz, Urso is driving operational efficiencies and program execution for Ruckus within Commscope. She worked with IT to build out the channel team’s partner relationship management requirements and continues to identify ways to enable ease of business for partners.

Director, Channel Sales

The results-driven manager of the storage vendor’s highest-performing solution providers in the Americas, Steakley’s focus is on joint business planning and execution of quarterly business reviews. He is described as “the stellar example of a player/coach role model” with a penchant for building loyal teams.

Sr. Learning Architect

As an instrumental player on ConnectWise’s Education team, Sorensen works tirelessly with partners to help them build, communicate, maintain and execute plans. She runs workshops and coaching sessions that help partners focus on what they really want to accomplish and how they are going to get it done.

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100 Shannon Sholtis Sr. Director, Marketing Communications

BUT SHOULD Andrea Ayala

Chris Gowin

Dell Technologies

Eaton

Datto

Sholtis is laserfocused on enabling partners with the resources they need to market their brands and connects with hundreds of partners at every D&H technology event. Whether consulting with partners on their branding and messaging efforts, or performing digital and website audits, her goal is to help partners be better.

Ayala owns vendor management at MSPfocused Datto and is tasked with finding new manufacturers and technology offerings that the company can introduce to its growing channel community. She accomplishes this feat via webinars and introductions, all in an effort to help MSPs find key vendor partners.

A 35-year Dell Te c h n o l o g i e s veteran who is described as irreplaceable, Spring brings a treasure trove of knowledge about the channel as she drives the company’s global goto-market channel strategy.

Her ability to stand up a program or solve an issue never ceases to amaze her colleagues.

Gowin is turning heads by dedicating countless hours to interacting with channel partners and their customers, building up his understanding of their needs and pain points and making sure they have the tools they need to be successful. Many know him as a true friend of the channel.

Aaron Fisher

Rachel Ramsey

Preston Hogue

Dan Satinoff

F5 Networks

FireEye

VP, Sales, Business Development

EdgeConnex

Vendor Alliances Manager

Cindy Spring

Director, Global Go To Market Strategy, Global Channels

D&H Distributing

Manager, Channel Sales

Extreme Networks

Sr. Director, Security Marketing

Sales Director, Southeast, Gulf

Director, Channel, U.S. Public Sector, North America Distribution

Fisher is driving sales and business development at EdgeConnex, one of the hottest edge data center players. Global investment firm EQT Infrastructure snapped up the company in August in a deal reportedly valued north of $2.5 billion.

EQT’s financial resources will help EdgeConnex accelerate growth.

Self-described as a passionate, driven, organized, dependable individual who learns quickly and remains calm under pressure, Ramsey thrives in the face of a challenge and works hard to make a difference in the lives of the Extreme partners who count on the networking vendor for success.

Hogue consistently challenges his peers, management and the channel team on getting past the status quo in F5’s go-to-market strategy.

With past experience working at a solution provider, he can fully put himself in partners’ shoes to understand their needs and the long-term impact they can have for F5.

Described as having contagious energy and an off-thecharts drive to make good things happen for others, Satinoff motivates his team and his peers through positivity and is always seeking new ideas to promote the FireEye channel business.

Robert “Buck” Flannigan

Cindy Toy

Annette Montoya

Shobana Shankar

Fluree

Fortinet

Gigamon

Blockchain startup Fluree is seeing momentum in recruiting systems integrators, consultants, VARs and ISVs to work with its data management platform, and one key reason is Flannigan, who helped launch its first global partner program with the goal of finding partners to help bridge “the last mile.”

Toy works to align Fortinet’s back-end systems and manages its deal registration platform, tapping into her tireless work ethic to ensure that leads are routed appropriately and deal registrations are processed efficiently and quickly, making a huge difference for Fortinet partners duking it out in the sales trenches.

VP, Global Partners

18

People You Don’t Know

Sr. Manager, Channel Marketing

Director, Global Programs, Operations

Montoya is a gogetter who when she sees a problem, solves a problem. She is constantly on the lookout for ways to improve Gigamon’s channel-focused systems, both internal- and externalfacing, and she has developed training for Gigamon teams on systems and programs related to working with channel partners.

Partner Sales Manager

Google Cloud

Shankar’s mission is to help ensure Google’s territory field reps have a strategy that incorporates partners in everything they do. She is lauded for being innovative in developing new approaches to align the teams, including creating a #GrowWithGoogle event that netted 140 new opportunities in a single day.

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Mark Glasgow

Max Ramos

Greg Bucyk

Susan Berntheisel

Hammerspace

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hitachi Vantara

HP Inc.

SVP, Worldwide Sales, Field Operations

Worldwide Channels, Ecosystems Sr. Manager, Everything as a Service

VP, Partner Strategy, GTM, Strategic Alliances

Director, U.S. Commercial Supplies

Hammerspace under Glasgow’s watch has committed itself to the channel by aligning with solution providers that bring significantly more value to their customers through strong IT engineering expertise in data management. With 20 years in sales management under his belt, he adds strong leadership to the Hammerspace sales team.

The unsung hero of the HPE GreenLake cloud services model, Ramos is a 22-year HPE veteran with an MBA in management who has done the behind-thescenes work to make HPE an Everything-as-a-Service leader. HPE GreenLake posted a “record-breaking” 82 percent growth in service orders in the most recent quarter.

Colleagues call Bucyk Hitachi Vant ara’s “bridge,” as he leads its partner enablement strategy with his strong grasp of the vendor’s technology, sense of history and knowledge of the value a channel partner can deliver.

When it comes to strategic projects, he can easily translate complex situations into simple solutions with a focus on partners.

With 22 years of experience at HP and more than 30 years in the channel, Berntheisel has built her career on partner and program development. As a channel advocate, her contributions have helped shape programs and processes to raise the bar on partner profitability with simpler, more predictable programs and support.

Catherine Solazzo

Amelia Paro

Divya Saggar

Yael Caspi

IGEL

Imperva

VP, Performance Marketing, Partner Ecosystem

Channel Development Manager ID Agent, a Kaseya Company

Solazzo led the team that implemented IBM’s partner learning platform to provide training and credentials to the channel, as well as its partner sales enablement platform, which delivers content from across the entire IBM business to help partners close more deals by equipping them with important sales assets.

A cybersecurity and channel sales professional with over 10 years of experience, Paro taps know-how earned from previous experience managing a successful MSP as she works with ID Agent’s cadre of channel partners, MSPs and strategic partners to grow and thrive.

Since joining IGEL in March, Saggar has been key to the launch of the I G E L Ready Program, designing the initiative from scratch to create an ecosystem of compatible applications and devices. She also rolled out a website to showcase best-in-class partner technologies integrated with IGEL OS.

Caspi drives several of Imperva’s critical channel programs and processes, including its partner portal, channel program tier requirements, training credits and rebate program. She keeps the channel program running smoothly and is part of the front-line team driving joint success with the channel.

Kelly Miller

Farrah Zidehsarai

Lenny Tran

Alison Haynes

Ingram Micro

Intel

IntelePeer

IBM

Infoblox

Director, Dell, VMware Business Unit

Miller wins kudos for leading the Infoblox channel team to become the highest-performing in its history, including the close of one of its largest enterprise deals. The channel standout has also overseen the integration of Infoblox technology with offerings from large VARs and systems integrators.

With 20-plus years of channel experience, Zidehsarai is no stranger to building successful working relationships between stakeholders. Colleagues say her “playbook” approach to achieving repeatable growth has been key to Dell’s growth as one of Ingram Micro’s top-performing vendor partners.

Director, Americas Channel

Sr. Manager, IGEL Alliances

Channel Engagement, Americas

Tran champions the voice of the partner within Intel in his role as program manager for its Partner Advisory Boards and carries the load when it comes to all elements of membership and benefit programs. He mentors new employees to make sure they gain a full understanding of the important role of the channel.

Sr. Channel Program Manager

SVP, Marketing, Partner Programs

Known to roll up her sleeves to help her team execute, Haynes is a top advocate for driving content, training, marketing and comarketing efforts with channel partners. She is always looking for new ways to engage with partners and is a key reason the IntelePeer channel grew bookings by over 70 percent in 2019.

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100 Jennifer Latsis

Partner Programs Office Team Lead

Juniper Networks

BUT SHOULD Randall Richard

Head of U.S. Enterprise Sales

Kaspersky Lab

Wendy Welch

Ricardo Pleitez

Lenovo

Lexmark

Sr. Director, U.S. Distribution, Partner Sales

Director, Worldwide SMB Channels

Latsis managed the Americas MDF program, which directly drove Juniper’s channel business and strategic priorities by nurturing partners who are growing their enterprise business with Juniper. She is now tackling the company’s rollout of a partner relationship management solution that aims to boost partner profitability and efficiency.

Since joining Kaspersky in February, Richard has focused on driving sales of its threat intelligence offering out to a broader range of enterprise customers, a task he says requires sophisticated partners that can provide thought leadership. He credits the Kaspersky channel for setting a high standard for building customer trust.

Always on the lookout for ways to ensure channel success, Welch is responsible for driving Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group business through VAR and distribution channels. The group has been focused on providing consistent, improved communications to help maintain tight ties with partners.

Pleitez is making Lexmark’s strategy to “play bigger than we are” a reality by developing and expanding its telesales team over the past year, an effort that is increasing mindshare and winning over new partners while strengthening relationships with existing ones. Pleitez’s proactive approach is improving the overall partner experience.

Casey Higgins

John Zustra

Jim Glackin

Ned D’Antonio

LogicMonitor

Masergy

Director, Channels, Canada, MSP North America

Director, Worldwide Channel, Alliances

Liongard

Lead, Channel Operations

SVP, Global Channel Sales

McAfee

Higgins is the go-to partner guy at Liongard, supporting the company’s push to bring its automation platform to as many MSPs as possible. The upside for partners is profitability and revenue growth with visibility beyond the endpoint and into critical on-premises apps, the network stack and cloud services.

Zustra’s “cando” approach to supporting LogicMonitor’s channel is turning heads, from building enablement programs to improving channel operations to creating dashboards and reports so his team can track its progress. He makes the back office sing, laying the foundation for a thriving partner ecosystem.

A rock star in the telecom space, Glackin joined Masergy as its first-ever global channel chief this summer and brought with him 26 years of experience. Soon afterward the company expanded its SD-WAN portfolio and launched a new partner program that Glackin says gives partners “more swings at bat.”

D’Antonio launched the vendor’s Managed Security Service Partner program and strategy in Canada, and soon after set his sights on including the Americas. The program has driven millions in incremental bookings to McAfee’s Canadian business and is now poised for success in the U.S.

Tracey Pretorius

Marjanne Reijne

Steve Bottini

Hank Humphreys

Sr. Director, Global Partner Strategy

Microsoft

Lauded as “an incredible advocate for Microsoft partners,” Pretorius ensures the needs and perspectives of partners are heard. From creating the partner experience for Microsoft Inspire to sharing feedback with an engineering team, she is committed to amplifying partner voices.

20

People You Don’t Know

Director, Global Partner Programs Management

NetApp

Reijne has been laser-focused on optimizing business processes as she worked to automate NetApp’s on-boarding procedures to shorten the time it takes for partners to get up and running. She sees her role managing partners’ NetApp life cycles as a mission and is always striving to help them grow revenue.

Regional Sales Manager

NeuShield

Bottini is bringing his 20-plus years of security software and hardware sales experience to bear as he builds out NeuShield’s channel. He has taken on the difficult responsibility of making sure the security startup partners’ expectations are not only met but exceeded, and he does so with gusto.

VP, Global Revenue Strategy, Operations

Nextiva

UCaaS specialist Nextiva is in the midst of a channel transformation with a lot of new sales and channel leaders, including Humphreys. While Nextiva’s roots lie in the SMB market, Humphreys is part of the team that’s tapping partners to help it break into the enterprise.

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Paul Mayes

Sr. Director, Global Channel Strategy

Nutanix

Cathy Timmerman Director, Global Channel Programs, Strategy

Nvidia

Clay Magouyrk EVP, Oracle Cloud

Oracle

Richard Nordstrom AVP, Channel Sales

Oracle Netsuite

Mayes has spread his talents wide during his five years at Nutanix, driving channel programs globally to foster loyalty, profitability and operations; building systems to track available sellers; optimizing the quote-to-cash process; and creating global pricing and rebate programs that reward channel partners for high-impact measurable results.

When a problem within Nvidia’s channel team seems unsolvable, it often lands with Timmerman, who has a track record for handling field escalation issues that many channel regional leaders cannot solve. Through the many cross-company relationships she has fostered, she will help create new policies to resolve channel conflicts.

As Oracle’s new cloud chief, Magouyrk is setting his sights high, aiming to penetrate the top tier of the fiercely competitive public cloud market. To get there, he’s focused on a unique value proposition that will drive sales for Oracle and its network of cloud partners: Oracle’s metamorphosis into a cloud-first company.

Nordstrom is lauded as a tireless supporter of Oracle NetSuite’s partners and the business they jointly have together. He is said to work constantly to align the vendor’s business goals with those of its partners, all while ensuring the ultimate success of mutual customers.

Danielle Knight

Sophie Merrifield

Brendan Strain

Wendy Stusrud

Palo Alto Networks

Pax8

Director, Unified Communications/ Contact Center Solutions

A relative newcomer to Palo Alto Networks, Knight has the unique ability to perform well across a lot of different functions at the company and has already moved into a larger role project-managing its largest channel initiatives and providing reporting to keep the team on target with its aggressive growth goals.

When new vendors come into the Pax8 cloud stack, it’s Merrifield who manages the team responsible for helping them launch successfully with the distributor’s cadre of solution providers. Her focus on every step of the cloud buying journey sets up both the vendors and channel partners for success.

With certifications across UC, contact center and network design disciplines, Strain has a 15-plus year track record in the telecommunications, IT and service provider space.

He takes pride in finding the best technology to craft offerings that solve problems customers haven’t yet encountered.

Stusrud manages Pure Storage’s Leads Passed initiative, a program that teaches its sales team how to develop leads and turn them over to partners. As a result, the storage vendor is seeing higher participation in the field from top partners, who are sourcing new business and growing their offerings beyond storage.

Joe Gabriel

Mike Watkins

Dave Govan

VP, Americas Sales

Tanja Froehlingsdorf

Sr. Director, North America Solution Architects

RSA Security

Sr. Director, Global Channel Marketing

Tapping into his ability to combine partner objectives with Red Hat’s business goals, Watkins has led his team to work with a focused set of partners, leading to 30 percent yearover-year growth in bookings. He has built a reputation as a channel champion who strives to improve partner programs.

Govan offers common-sense advice to sales teams in the field: provide the information prospects want in the first meeting and communicate in a way that forms a connection and holds their attention. That’s the strategy he’s using as he aims to grow sales of RSA’s full portfolio of digital risk management offerings.

A self-described channel evangelist with commitment and passion in spades, Froehlingsdorf joined Rubrik earlier this year, tapping into her 15 years of storage channel experience (and her determination and grit as an Ironman triathlete) to maximize the partner pipeline, revenue contributions and ROI.

Channel Programs Manager

Sr. Director, Global Partner Marketing

Qlik

Colleagues credit Gabriel’s partner-savvy marketing leadership skills and ability to keep the partner voice in mind for boosting ROI and usage of its MDF program, creating an uptick in consumption of partnerfacing communications and building success with new offerings such as Qlik Partner Marketing Services.

Sr. Director, Vendor Launch

Red Hat

PlanetOne

VP, Americas Channel Sales

Pure Storage

Rubrik

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_100PYSK.indd 7

21

9/29/20 10:51 AM

100

BUT SHOULD

Sherrick Murdoff

Kevin Holmes

Sarah Hill

Salesforce

Scale Computing

SolarWinds MSP

VP, Installed Base, Inside Sales

VP, Partner Investments, M&A

VP, North America Sales

Sr. Events Specialist

Jason Carter SonicWall

Murdoff juggles two complex partner teams at the forefront of Salesforce’s innovation: partner investments and partner M&A. With the former, he teams with Salesforce Ventures to provide equity investments to consulting partners, agencies and ISVs. In the latter, he adds partner perspective to help vet acquisition targets.

Holmes is a big part of the reason Scale Computing has built up a loyal core of partners. He removes roadblocks to smooth the sales process, coordinates with marketing to ease program rollouts, collaborates with product management to bring partner perspective to key road map decisions and works to ensure sales quotas are met.

When the pandemic struck and turned the events business on its head, Hill transformed SolarWinds MSP’s global community events into dynamic virtual engagements.

She took the reins for all virtual event planning and project management to ensure partners still have full access to training, business transformation and partnership-building activities.

Working under the adage that it’s easier to cultivate an existing customer than to find a new one, Carter brings high energy, a strong work ethic and a deep understanding of the channel to his work teaming with security vendor SonicWall’s inside sales team to help partners uncover and develop new opportunities within their existing customer base.

Sara Cloutier

Maryse Schlesinger

Chad Bruhn

Junior Silva

Sophos

Splunk

Star2Star Communications

Manager, Global Channel Programs

Sr. Director, Global Deal Management Desk

VP, Sales Operations, Partner Enablement

Product Manager

StorageCraft Technology

Cloutier has an uncanny ability to put herself in partners’ shoes to make sure the work Sophos does in developing programs takes their needs into account.

She was a driving force in improving the services and support solution providers get through the Sophos Partner Portal and deal registration.

Schlesinger recently stepped into a new role leading Splunk’s deal registration desk, where she will build on her previous success as the director of global partner field operations. In that role, she earned a reputation for making a difference in the lives of partners and bringing vast improvements to the partner experience.

Bruhn serves as a constant resource for Star2Star’s sales team and channel partners, handling many projects and resolving conflicts behind the scenes.

He wins praise as one of the most knowledgeable and hard-working members of the Star2Star team, often answering the toughest questions from partners and customers.

Silva’s understanding of security and cloud trends brings valuable insight to StorageCraft’s product development efforts, including the rollouts of ShadowXafe and OneXafe Solo. He regularly checks in with partners to make sure products are as good in the field as they are on paper.

Casey Gary

Brian Gibellino

Laura Kelly

Kristin Bourassa

Tech Data

T-Mobile

Trend Micro

Director, Product Management

Synnex

Colleagues say Gary is one of the hardest workers at Synnex, where she holds true to the “cando” attitude that is an integral part of the distributor’s culture. She wins praise for protecting partners’ work, streamlining their operations and supporting increases in their profitability through programs and engagement.

22

People You Don’t Know

Sr. Business Development Rep

A rising star on Tech Data’s Reseller Connect team, Gibellino is bringing technology innovation to partners through his work on the marketing portal—which provides tools to help resellers market themselves. He also rolled out syndicated e-commerce tools, helping over 2,000 resellers up their inbound marketing game.

Manager, Channel Marketing

Kelly leads T-Mobile’s channel marketing team, where she is seen as an invaluable resource. She drives efforts to acquire new partners, consults with partners on their own marketing and cultivates awareness of partner solutions and capabilities internally to boost “sell with” efforts.

Strategic Partners Manager

Bourassa is a goal-oriented team player with a strong background in sales, project management, customer relations and mediation who thrives in the fast-paced environment at Trend Micro, where she is helping some of the company’s most strategic solution providers get the most out of their partnerships with the security vendor.

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_100PYSK.indd 8

9/29/20 10:52 AM

Corey Humphreys Sales Application Engineering Supervisor

Tripp Lite

Tom Alexander

Nicholas Wichman

Uplevel Systems

Veeam Software

Founder, CEO

Inside Sales Manager

Ray West

Director, Inside Sales, IT Solutions

Vertiv

Humphreys leads Tripp Lite’s data center application team, which is credited by insiders and customers as a huge differentiator that is having the biggest impact and adding the most value for channel partners.

Humphreys inspires the team to simplify the sales process and help channel partner sales organizations broaden their solutions.

With a string of successful startup acquisitions under his belt, Alexander is now focused on smallbusiness infrastructure at Uplevel Systems. It’s a sweet spot to be in as its focus on helping distributed offices control their infrastructure, stabilize internet connections and ensure corporate security is perfectly suited to today’s work-from-home environment.

While Veeam has an extensive sales and support team dedicated to partner and service providers, Wichman is a noted standout. He leans on his past experience in the Veeam sales team trenches to offer guidance and support to his team with perspective, making him a steady and reliable resource.

West took over leadership of Vertiv’s inside sales representatives group about a year after it was created and has since honed the team’s focus on the federal, state/local, education and health-care verticals with U.S.-based call centers that are standing by to answer all the partner community’s questions and meet their needs.

Sonal Patel

Ronda Ralph

Sue Nolin

Marc Laliberte

Vonage

Wasabi Technologies

WatchGuard Technologies

Sr. Director, Partner Operating Model

VMware

Channel Program Manager

VP, Inside Sales

Sr. Security Analyst

Patel has helped transform the channel organization at VMware by implementing consistent role definitions across the geographic business units and implementing an efficient operating model. Her work is credited with creating better engagement between VMware and its partners.

Ralph has been making great strides in one of Vonage’s core strategy goals: defining and implementing a solid partner on-boarding process and overhauling its partner portal. She manages a team of channel success coordinators who, under her tutelage, are adding more value to the channel partner experience.

When it comes to accelerating sales, Wasabi turns to Nolin.

She is constantly working to up the cloud storage vendor’s game when it comes to supporting solution providers’ sales efforts every day. She knows the channel is key to her and Wasabi’s success.

Security nerd, white-hat hacker and expert in all things Wa t c h G u a r d , Laliberte works with partners on everything from designing their implementations and vetting their product ideas to supporting their marketing and presales efforts.

Andrew Perry

Grainne McQuaid

Amanda Maxwell

Jeanine Bierlein

Zix

Zoom Video Communications

WekaIO

Leader, Global Partner Field Marketing

With WekaIO’s 100 percent focus on channel sales, Perry is zeroed in on ensuring partner success, drawing on over 25 years of experience leading global sales teams at various companies. Last fall he launched the WekaIO Innovation Network global partner program as the next step in its channel evolution.

Colleagues emphatically label McQuaid as a star who is bringing her talents to bear in expanding Xerox’s demand generation initiatives globally. She’s a 24-year company veteran with a Six Sigma Black Belt who prides herself on being a highly collaborative, effective network-builder wellskilled at delivering results as part of a team.

VP, Sales

Xerox

Channel Program Manager

Although her tenure at Zix is only a year long so far, she’s already having a big impact on partner relationships and revenue, offering top-notch support to channel account managers and Zix partners.

From developing spot-on marketing campaigns to supporting Channel Partner Advisory Council meetings, she’s making a difference.

Head of Channel Operations

Bierlein joined Zoom in April to help the hottest tamale in the videoconferencing-as-a-service market ramp up its channel efforts. She brings with her a 20-plus year history of scaling and optimizing operations in fresh ways that produce results and inspire teammates.

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_100PYSK.indd 9

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9/29/20 10:52 AM

C R N AN N UAL RE P O RT CAR D

Vendors Take A Victory Lap

For the 35th year, CRN offered solution providers in North America the opportunity to grade the performance of their IT vendor partners with the CRN Annual Report Card. Solution providers were asked to score vendors across 24 technology categories, such as cloud storage, converged/hyperconverged infrastructure, industry-standard servers and network security. Partners graded vendors on a total of 21 criteria spanning four categories: product innovation, support, partnership, and managed and cloud services.

In some technology areas a single vendor dominated the scoring, winning top grades across all criteria categories and, in some cases, sweeping all individual criteria. Other technology categories were more competitive with top grades split between two or more vendors with the winning vendor attaining the highest average overall score.

Read on to see which IT companies are at the top of their game in the eyes of their channel partners.

Scan the QR code to see the full 2020 ARC database.

24

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_ARC.indd 1

SOURCE: ANNUAL REPORT CARD 2020

9/29/20 10:55 AM

ARC ANNUAL REPORT CARD CLOU D STORAG E

B US I N E S S I NTE LLIG E NCE TO OLS

WASABI TECHNOLOGIES

NVIDIA

Channel Chief: Alvin Da Costa, VP, Global Partner Organization

Channel Chief: Marty Falaro, SVP, Global Sales, Alliances

scores for product innovation (87.8), partnership (82.8) and

also scored highest overall for partnership (84.5).

managed and cloud services (86.4).

Nvidia

94.5

84.6

84.5

78.9

86.0

OVE RALL SCOR E

petitive technology category. The company had the highest

for support, and 78.9 for managed and cloud services. Nvidia

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

86.0. The company scored 94.5 for product innovation, 84.6

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

in. Wasabi received an overall ARC score of 83.3 in this com-

SUPPORT AVERAGES

ing message of no hidden storage fees or cloud vendor lock-

ness Intelligence Tools category with an overall ARC score of

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

chine-learning workloads. Nvidia came out on top in the Busi-

OVE RALL SCOR E

Web Services and Microsoft Azure, competing on its market-

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

industry as it plays David to industry Goliaths like Amazon

ingly used to power business analytics, data science and ma-

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

its high-performance GPU semiconductors that are increas-

SUPPORT AVERAGES

Cloud storage startup Wasabi has been making waves in the

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

Nvidia has been shaking up the microprocessor industry with

Information Builders

80.1

76.0

77.1

68.9

75.7

Wasabi Technologies

87.8

75.1

82.8

86.4

83.3

ConnectWise

78.2

69.0

69.7

68.2

71.6

Veeam Software

84.0

75.2

80.0

80.3

80.1

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOLS

C O L L A B O R AT I O N

CLOUD STORAGE

CONVERGED/HYPERCONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE

POLY

SCALE COMPUTING

Channel Chief: Nick Tidd, VP, Global Channel Sales

Channel Chief: Scott Mann, Director, North American Channel

an overall ARC score of 92.3. The company swept the cat-

services. The company’s impressive 90.1 average score for prod-

egory with top scores of 94.9 for product innovation, 91.6

uct innovation included grades of 94.7 for richness of product

for support, 94.4 for partnership and 87.6 for managed and

features and functionality and 93.8 for product marketability.

cloud services.

COLLABORATION Poly

90.1

78.6

85.0

72.7

82.0

SOURCE: ANNUAL REPORT CARD 2020

CRN_Oct2020_ARC.indd 2

OVE RALL SCOR E

Scale Computing took top honors in this category, achieving

support, 85.0 for partnership and 72.7 for managed and cloud

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

ARC score of 82.0 in this category, racking up scores of 78.6 for

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

hypervisor and backup/disaster recovery in a single system.

SUPPORT AVERAGES

technology and appliances that combine servers, storage,

for their combined 15,000 partners. Poly attained an overall

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

channel programs into one highly anticipated partner program

OVE RALL SCOR E

cloud with its HC3 Hypercore software and virtualization

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

proach computing in the data center, at the edge and in the

ferencing giant completed the merger of the two companies’

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

former acquired Polycom for $2 billion. In April the videocon-

SUPPORT AVERAGES

Scale Computing has been changing the way businesses ap-

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

Plantronics and Polycom rebranded as Poly last year after the

Scale Computing

94.9

91.6

94.4

87.6

92.3

HPE

89.6

83.6

87.5

82.7

86.0

CONVERGED/ HYPERCONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE

OCTOBER 2020

25

9/29/20 10:56 AM

ARC ANNUAL REPORT CARD D ATA P R O T E C T I O N S O F T W A R E

D ATA S E C U R I T Y

DATTO

SYMANTEC

Channel Chief: Rob Rae, SVP, Business Development

A DIVISION OF BROADCOM

Channel Chief: Roy Borden, VP, Global Partner Sales

tive technology category with an overall ARC score of 86.8,

security business spun off as NortonLifeLock. The acquisi-

thanks to the company’s top scores for support (84.8) and

tion was completed on Nov. 4 with Symantec retaining its

managed and cloud services (84.1).

name. Symantec received an overall ARC score of 68.7 in OVE RALL SCOR E

Symantec for $10.7 billion with the company’s consumer

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

struck a deal to acquire the enterprise security business of

customers. Datto came out on top in this highly competi-

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

RMM tools, and other products for MSPs and their SMB

SUPPORT AVERAGES

One year ago semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

Datto provides backup and recovery software, PSA and

Datto

90.5

84.8

86.9

84.1

86.8

Barracuda Networks

90.9

84.1

86.7

83.4

86.5

StorageCraft Tecnology

89.1

83.3

86.9

82.4

85.6

this all-important technology category. That included scores

82.3

85.2

79.4

78.1

79.2

Veeam Software

83.5

72.8

73.4

72.1

75.9

EDGE COMPUTING

Symantec, a division of Broadcom

OVE RALL SCOR E

86.2

75.1

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

83.8

83.5

DATA SECURITY

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

88.0

partnership and 67.2 for managed and cloud services.

SUPPORT AVERAGES

HPE Wasabi Technologies

of 74.8 for product innovation, 63.3 for support, 68.3 for

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

DATA PROTECTION SOFTWARE

74.8

63.3

68.3

67.2

68.7

E NTE R P R I S E N ET WOR K STORAG E

SCALE COMPUTING

HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE

Channel Chief: Scott Mann, Director, North American Channel

Channel Chief: Paul Hunter, North America Managing Director

Scale Computing has been making a name for itself in edge

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been a leader in the industry

computing with its HC3 Hypercore software, HE150 and

move toward as-a-service with its GreenLake offering and

HE500 appliances, and HC3 Edge Solutions. The company

vow to shift its entire product portfolio to an Everything-as-

made a clean sweep of the Edge Computing category with

a-Service model by 2022. In August HPE named Paul Hunter,

an overall ARC score of 92.4. Partners gave Scale Comput-

the company’s global channel chief since October 2017, to be

ing scores of 96.2 for product innovation (including 105.6 for

managing director of HPE’s North America business following

product quality and reliability, the second-highest grade in this

the sudden departure of Dan Belanger. HPE received an over-

year’s ARC) and 93.2 for support, 94.4 for partnership and

all ARC score of 88.4 in this category. That included grades of

85.2 for managed and cloud services.

92.9 for product innovation, 86.1 for support, 88.6 for partner-

85.2

92.4

Nvidia

92.7

86.1

85.5

78.9

86.1

26

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_ARC.indd 3

HPE

OVE RALL SCOR E

OVE RALL SCOR E

94.4

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

93.2

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

96.2

ENTERPRISE NETWORK STORAGE

SUPPORT AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

Scale Computing

EDGE COMPUTING

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

ship and 85.2 for managed and cloud services.

92.9

86.1

88.6

85.2

88.4

SOURCE: ANNUAL REPORT CARD 2020

9/29/20 10:56 AM

ADVERTISEMENT

C R N

A R C

W I N N E R ’ S

C I R C L E

Eaton Credits Big Wins To Customer Loyalty Partners demand flexibility and reliable service when seeking out relationships with companies that supply their end-users with the best products. For them, Eaton delivered.

Eaton was the overall winner of the Power Protection and Management category of the 2020 CRN Annual Report Card, the third time in five years it has topped the category. Eaton remained successful and popular with partners, despite the many hurdles caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting business shifts.

Of course, none of this was possible without the input from Eaton’s partners. They answered the call and expressed their enthusiasm for all the work Eaton does, something the company takes seriously and works to continually improve those opinions. Many of the positives are due to Eaton’s focus on ease of integration, post-sales support, marketing support and brand marketability.

“ It’s exciting and humbling to win this award three out of the last five years and to see that our scores move up and to the right with our partner base. We appreciate everything our partners do on our behalf, what they do with us and how they communicate about Eaton. We’ve had a great ride coming into this marketplace and we’ll continue to make it great.”

— Curtiz Gangi, U.S. Channel Chief

Eaton has been ahead of the curve with innovation and is making strides to integrate alliance partners and converged and hyperconverged infrastructure. It’s also been a priority to educate solution providers about the importance of power management and why it should matter to partners and customers. Eaton has trained its focus on power management-as-a-service while emphasizing managed services and recurring revenue opportunities.

Keeping these partner connections open during the past several months hasn’t been easy. Eaton, like other companies, has done business virtually, but that hasn’t changed its customer service effort. It just took a bit more work to ensure that these partners are both engaged and understanding what their option are to best deal with difficult times. Mainly, Eaton asked questions to partners and found they want new capabilities. Naturally, Eaton pivoted, creating a two-to-three-year vision going forward, so that partners continue to have their voices heard and needs met. Power management-as-aservice will be a relevant practice, while ramping up software and service sales, to provide the partner base with what is needed.

Considering how partners view Eaton today, they’re in for a great future, as the company continues to meet and exceed that level of excellence partners have come to expect.

To hear more on Eaton’s 2020 ARC win or power management-as-aservice, please visit https://buff.ly/2YjBmiU.

A R C

ARC ANNUAL REPORT CARD E NTE R PR I S E N ETWOR K I N FRASTR UCTU R E

ARUBA

E NTE R PR I S E WI R E LE SS LANs

ARUBA

A HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE COMPANY

Channel Chief: Donna Grothjan, VP, Worldwide Channels

A HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE COMPANY

Channel Chief: Donna Grothjan, VP, Worldwide Channels

That included scores of 97.4 for product innovation (includ-

product quality and reliability), 87.8 in support, 92.2 in part-

ing 100.3 for technical innovation), 86.5 for support, 91.5

nership and 85.8 in managed and cloud services.

for partnership and 86.6 for managed and cloud services.

Aruba, an HPE company

95.9

87.8

92.2

85.8

90.7

Nvidia

90.8

79.2

83.5

76.4

82.9

ENTERPRISE NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

INDUSTRY-STANDARD SERVERS

ENTERPRISE WIRELESS LANs

Aruba, an HPE company

OVE RALL SCOR E

ba an overall ARC score of 90.8 for this technology category.

top scores of 95.9 in product innovation (including 101.7 in

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

ture category with an overall ARC score of 90.7. That included

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

from edge systems for business analytics. Partners gave Aru-

SUPPORT AVERAGES

connecting devices, protecting endpoints and gathering data

gy with Aruba. Aruba swept the Enterprise Network Infrastruc-

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

HPE plans to combine Silver Peak and its SD-WAN technolo-

OVE RALL SCOR E

growth in network edge computing, offering technology for

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

sitioned itself and its technology portfolio for expected

acquisition of Silver Peak Systems, which closed on Sept. 21.

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

panding its presence in the red-hot SD-WAN arena with HPE’s

SUPPORT AVERAGES

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has po-

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, will be ex-

97.4

86.5

91.5

86.6

90.8

MANAGED SERVICES SOFTWARE: RMM/PSA

DATTO

HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE

Channel Chief: Rob Rae, SVP, Business Development

Channel Chief: Paul Hunter, North America Managing Director

for support, 80.0 for partnership and 81.2 for managed and

for managed and cloud services.

cloud services.

OVE RALL SCOR E

pany received grades of 86.3 for product innovation, 77.5

reliability), 87.4 for support, 88.9 for partnership and 84.1

MANAGED PRINT SERVICES AVERAGES

product innovation (including 100.8 in product quality and

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

PSA category with an overall ARC score of 81.5. The com-

SUPPORT AVERAGES

tomers. Datto swept the Managed Services Software: RMM/

channel-mainstay category. That included scores of 94.3 for

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

ceived an overall ARC score of 88.9 from partners in this

OVE RALL SCOR E

the procurement of IT products and services for their cus-

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

oper of a real-time platform that enables MSPs to simplify

of 2020 as part of this year’s Top 100 Executives. HPE re-

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

CEO Antonio Neri as its No. 1 Most Influential Executive

SUPPORT AVERAGES

In July Datto acquired Gluh Pty, an Australia-based devel-

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

CRN named Hewlett Packard Enterprise President and

HPE

94.3

87.4

88.9

84.1

88.9

Datto

86.3

77.5

80.0

81.2

81.5

Nvidia

87.2

81.0

82.9

78.1

82.5

ConnectWise

73.5

66.4

67.2

70.5

69.6

INDUSTRYSTANDARD SERVERS

28

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_ARC.indd 4

MANAGED SERVICES SOFTWARE: RMM/ PSA

SOURCE: ANNUAL REPORT CARD 2020

9/29/20 10:57 AM

ADVERTISEMENT

C R N

A R C

W I N N E R ’ S

C I R C L E

Partners Help Lexmark GO To The Top The channel community spoke, and they said Lexmark is their vendor of choice when it comes to printers. Over the past year, Lexmark’s service to partners catapulted it to top-of-mind for the community, helping the company receive the 2020 Annual Report Card category wins in both multifunction printers and workgroup color printers. Lexmark took advantage of the opportunity to help partners in need in the midst of the drastic market changes this year, providing unmatched value and service.

Of course, Lexmark’s success and wins don’t happen without the channel partners. Through the company’s partner program, Lexmark made significant investments to bring the right products to market, along with the decades of industry experience to ensure customer needs are met. This includes the GO line of products that are always on the shelf, competitive and profitable. These devices have full-spectrum security that scale to business needs.

“ We’re going to continue to listen to our partners. One of the most incredible things I’ve witnessed over the last two decades in this industry is the resiliency of the VAR community. We will continue to support our partners by investing in offerings, partner education and programs that deliver profitable growth.”

A R C

— Greg Chavers, NA Channel Vice President, Lexmark

Lexmark put a focus on partner communication and collaboration, investing in resources to address these customer needs. Through the Lexmark Connect partner program, the company provides access to imaging solutions, tools, resources and benefits that differentiate it from marketplace peers.

Considering the past several months of uncertainty and change, Lexmark’s products and support tools proved to be a hit among customers due to the security, simple setup and remote management capabilities.

And Lexmark doesn’t plan to stop here. The key is to continue to listen to customer needs and concerns from a resilient VAR community. There’s been a whirlwind of issues for businesses, forcing them to change how they operate in order to remain successful. Despite the disruption, the strength of VAR should be in focus in this climate, especially with cloud solutions, remote management and managed service acquisition models. Lexmark is here to help partners through investment in offerings, partner education and programs to keep profitable growth.

Lexmark’s impressive transformation this year shows that the company is a leader in the channel and is committed to getting partners the best service at the best value. It’s the perfect formula for a longlasting partnership.

Learn more about the Lexmark partner program by visiting www.lexmark.com/en_us/lexmark-connect.html

CRN_Oct2020_ARC_Lexmark.indd 1

9/21/20 4:02 PM

ARC ANNUAL REPORT CARD M U LT I F U N C T I O N P R I N T E R S

N ETWOR K CON N ECTIVITY

LEXMARK

COMCAST BUSINESS Channel Chief: Craig Schlagbaum, SVP, Indirect Sales

Channel Chief: Greg Chavers North America Channel VP

Lexmark has been expanding its technology portfolio to

With the coronavirus pandemic forcing many people to

include a range of products that print, secure and manage

work from home, Comcast has reported surging demand

information. This year the company made its Cloud Print

this year for its high-speed broadband internet, wireless net-

Management system available through its channel partners.

working and other business services. Partners gave Comcast

Lexmark was the winner in Multifunction Printers with an

Business an overall ARC score of 75.9 in the Network Con-

overall ARC score of 80.4, including scores of 77.8 for sup-

nectivity category. That included scores of 80.3 for product

port, 79.9 for partnership and 80.4 for managed print ser-

innovation, 74.9 for support, 78.7 for partnership and 68.8

vices. Lexmark also took the top average score (82.3) for

for managed and cloud services.

80.4

80.4

Xerox

78.5

69.2

70.8

73.3

73.5

N ETWOR K S ECU R ITY—E NTE R PR I S E

Comcast Business

OVE RALL SCOR E

OVE RALL SCOR E

79.9

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

MANGED PRINT SERVICES AVERAGES

77.8

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

82.3

NETWORK CONNECTIVITY

SUPPORT AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

Lexmark

MULTIFUNCTION PRINTERS

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

product innovation.

80.3

74.9

78.7

68.8

75.9

N ETWOR K S ECU R ITY—S M B

FORTINET

FORTINET

Channel Chief: Jon Bove, VP, Channel Sales

Channel Chief: Jon Bove, VP, Channel Sales

Fortinet’s sweep of this category—with an overall score of

In July Fortinet acquired cloud security startup Opaq Networks,

90.0—was impressive given the number of competitors.

a move that broadens its portfolio to help customers strength-

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

Fortinet

94.5

88.3

91.3

84.8

90.0

Aruba, an HPE Company

88.5

82.4

85.1

80.0

84.2

WatchGuard Technologies

89.3

84.3

83.3

76.2

83.6

Check Point Software Technologies

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

en protection of distributed networks from data centers and

81.6

74.0

76.8

73.4

76.7

Fortinet

92.1

85.0

88.0

80.1

86.6

SonicWall

79.6

75.8

77.5

72.8

76.6

WatchGuard Technologies

91.1

83.1

84.5

78.1

84.5

Barracuda Networks

79.6

74.4

76.0

72.1

75.7

SonicWall

86.1

80.5

83.1

75.2

81.4

64.8

54.5

57.5

57.6

58.9

Check Point Software Technologies

84.4

78.2

80.1

78.8

80.6

NETWORK SECURITY— ENTERPRISE

Symantec, a Division of Broadcom

30

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_ARC.indd 5

branch offices to remote users and Internet of Things devices.

Fortinet faced stiff competition in this product category as well but came out on top with an overall ARC score of 86.6.

NETWORK SECURITY—SMB

SOURCE: ANNUAL REPORT CARD 2020

9/29/20 10:57 AM

ADVERTISEMENT

C R N

A R C

W I N N E R ’ S

C I R C L E

Acer’s Planning Benefits Partners, Leads To Big Wins Acer aimed to prioritize its channel partners this year and, according to its partner community, it succeeded.

Partners again praised Acer for its hard work, with the company proving to be the favored vendor in the Notebooks/Mobile Computers category of the 2020 CRN Annual Report Card, sweeping every award in the vertical. Acer has navigated a whirlwind year, but never lost sight of its partners’ needs.

When the year began, Acer had concerns about tariffs on Chromebooks and notebooks, so it made sure to overstock its shelves. That allowed Acer to offer partners pre-tariff pricing on these items. The tariffs didn’t happen, but Acer customers were able to get the products they needed at still-affordable prices. Acer also began its new channel programs, refreshed its Elite VAR and Alliance VAR programs, along with the sales team.

“I’m thrilled we got this award. We work so hard to foster relationships with channel partners and end users. It’s great to be acknowledged for that.”

— Jennifer Wadland, VP, US commercial sales, Acer

A R C

New service programs and customized customer warranties showed Acer’s further commitment to maintaining and supporting their partner relationships. Its holistic approach to channel support produced the best programs for end users. The small, seasoned team at Acer doesn’t work like competitors. They’re not only experienced but are constantly making themselves available to help customers and ensure both partners’ and end-users’ needs are served.

With so many successes this year, partners can look forward to further wins in the next 12 months.

The focus will be on both the channel and the end-users, but still providing high-end service and care to its strong, established partners. Channel partners can expect more training and roadmap opportunities in the coming months.

Acer plans to stay true to its core, making sure it listens to partners’ needs as it charts a course forward. When customers tell Acer they need something, whether it’s customization, warranties or other issues, Acer is there every step of the way.

Partner with Acer and take advantage of this partner-first mentality combined with great computing products that are ahead of the curve.

Explore Acer Remote Work Solutions with Chromebook Enterprise Spin 713

CRN_Oct2020_ARC_Acer.indd 1

9/23/20 1:39 PM

ARC ANNUAL REPORT CARD NOTE BO OK S / MOB I LE C OM P UTE R S

P OW E R P ROTECTION AN D MANAG E M E NT

ACER AMERICA

EATON

Channel Chief: Philip Burger, Sr. Director, U.S. Channel

Channel Chief: Curtiz Gangi, VP, U.S. Channels for Data Center Sales

In June Acer America launched its new Enduro line of rug-

Earlier this year power management technology provider

ged notebooks and tablets and the new Swift 5 ultrathin and

Eaton expanded its data center power distribution and

light notebook. At the same time the company expanded its

monitoring product portfolio with the acquisition of Power

Predator gaming portfolio with new desktops, monitors and

Distribution, a leading supplier of mission-critical power

accessories. Acer America received an overall ARC score of

distribution, static switching and power monitoring equip-

73.6 from partners in this category. That included scores of

ment and services for data centers. Eaton came out on top in

80.6 for product innovation, 70.3 for support, 75.6 for part-

this competitive category with an overall ARC score of 87.0.

Tripp Lite

89.6

85.2

APC by Schneider Electric

89.3

85.7

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

80.6

70.3

75.6

66.4

73.6

Vertiv

85.0

80.8

PROCESSORS

OVE RALL SCOR E

87.7

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

90.9

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

Acer America

Eaton

POWER PROTECTION AND MANAGEMENT

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

NOTEBOOKS/ MOBILE COMPUTERS

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

nership and 66.4 for managed and cloud services.

91.2

77.5

87.0

89.3

77.5

85.6

87.8

76.0

84.9

83.6

69.7

80.0

S D -WAN

INTEL

SILVER PEAK SYSTEMS

Channel Chief: Jason Kimrey, GM, U.S. Channel Scale, Partners

Channel Chief: Ken Marks, VP, Channel Sales

With so many people working from home because of the

Hewlett Packard Enterprise just closed its acquisition of Silver

pandemic, the need for desktops, notebooks and laptops has

Peak, a longtime leader in the fast-growing SD-WAN market

surged, driving up demand for Intel’s client processors, includ-

segment, for approximately $925 million. HPE plans to com-

ing new products like the 10th-generation Intel Core S-series

bine Silver Peak and its SD-WAN technology with its Aruba

and vPro processors. Intel won this all-important category with

networking subsidiary. Silver Peak came out on top with an

an overall ARC score of 83.9. The chipmaker’s score in prod-

overall ARC score of 88.8. That included top grades of 92.8 for

uct innovation was an impressive 95.0, in addition to scores of

product innovation, 88.2 for support, 90.0 for partnership and

80.4 for support, 85.3 for partnership and 72.7 for managed

83.4 for managed and cloud services.

SUPPORT AVERAGES

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

Silver Peak Systems

92.8

88.2

90.0

83.4

88.8

Intel

95.0

80.4

85.3

72.7

83.9

Fortinet

91.4

87.0

88.9

83.0

87.8

Nvidia

91.5

80.0

82.6

72.4

82.1

Barracuda Networks

78.8

75.8

77.8

72.8

76.4

PROCESSORS

32

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_ARC.indd 6

SD-WAN

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

and cloud services.

SOURCE: ANNUAL REPORT CARD 2020

9/29/20 10:58 AM

ARC ANNUAL REPORT CARD S ECU R IT Y—E N DP OI NT P ROTECTION

S ECU R ITY MANAG E M E NT

FORTINET

CHECK POINT SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES

Channel Chief: Jon Bove, VP, Channel Sales

Channel Chief: Frank Rauch, Head of Worldwide Channel Sales

Check Point CEO Gil Shwed recently told industry analysts

Fortinet dominated the Security Management category with

that his company plans to leverage the channel much more in

an overall ARC score of 86.7. That got a boost from the

the future to help bring in new customers. Check Point domi-

company’s high score for product innovation (92.3), includ-

nated this category with an overall ARC score of 83.5. That in-

ing grades of 97.9 for product quality and reliability, 96.4

cluded scores of 86.0 for product innovation, 80.1 for support,

for richness of product features/functionality, and 95.4 for

84.9 for partnership and 82.3 for managed and cloud services.

product technical innovation. Fortinet scored 82.9 for sup-

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

port, 88.4 for partnership and 82.3 for managed and cloud

Check Point Software Technologies

86.0

80.1

84.9

82.3

83.5

SonicWall

80.8

77.2

81.9

77.0

79.3

ESET North America

79.3

75.3

80.2

74.7

77.5

58.8

48.6

50.8

54.4

53.4

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

of Broadcom

SUPPORT AVERAGES

Symantec, a Division

services.

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

SECURITY— ENDPOINT PROTECTION

Fortinet

92.3

82.9

88.4

82.3

86.7

ConnectWise

75.7

70.2

73.6

70.6

72.7

Symantec

56.0

48.2

49.4

48.5

50.8

SECURITY MANAGEMENT

WOR KG ROU P C OLOR P R I NTE R S

S M B E XTE R NAL STORAG E HAR DWAR E

LEXMARK

BUFFALO TECHNOLOGY

Channel Chief: Greg Chavers North America Channel VP

Channel Chief: Bill Rhodes, Director, Channel Sales

Buffalo Americas, the U.S. company of Japan-based Buffalo

Earlier this year Lexmark debuted 13 new printers and multi-

Technology, recently named Arata Nakamura as the compa-

function printers for SMB and enterprise customers, including

ny’s new CEO. Nakamura has been with Buffalo Technology

new 300- and 400-Series Go Line devices, that provide com-

for more than 25 years and was previously COO of Buffalo

plete business-class capabilities in a smaller footprint. Lexmark

Americas. Buffalo Technology pulled off a clean sweep of this

came out on top this year in Workgroup Color Printers with

category with an overall ARC score of 88.8. That included

an overall ARC score of 80.3. That included scores of 83.0 for

an impressive 93.1 score for product innovation, which got a

product innovation, 77.7 for support, 79.5 for partnership and

boost from a 104.2 grade for product quality and reliability–

79.2 for managed print services.

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

MANAGED & CLOUD SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

Buffalo Technology

93.1

88.8

93.0

79.4

88.8

PRODUCT INNOVATION AVERAGES

SUPPORT AVERAGES

PARTNERSHIP AVERAGES

MANAGED PRINT SERVICES AVERAGES

OVE RALL SCOR E

one of the highest scores on this year’s ARC.

HPE

87.0

80.3

82.4

73.0

81.0

Lexmark

83.0

77.7

79.5

79.2

80.3

Synology

88.6

75.4

76.0

65.9

77.1

Xerox

78.4

69.5

70.3

73.8

73.4

SMB EXTERNAL STORAGE HARDWARE

SOURCE: ANNUAL REPORT CARD 2020

CRN_Oct2020_ARC.indd 7

WORKGROUP COLOR PRINTERS

OCTOBER 2020

33

9/29/20 10:58 AM

C L O U D PA R T N E R P R O G R A M G U I D E

Simplicity, Transparency Are Today’s Touchstones

By Joseph Tsidulko

P

artner programs were once rigid things, complicated to navigate and costly to participate in. But like so many other parts of the tech industry, the cloud has flipped that model on its head.

These days, revamped programs from name-brand giants and novel ones from emerging startups more often aim to impose simplicity.

Rather than bogging down partners in elaborate tiering structures, revenue attainment thresholds and stringent on-boarding mechanisms, modern channel organizations focus on helping those partners effectively deliver specific solutions geared to their technological and industry expertise.

Startups like Wasabi Technologies have the chance to implement such programs from the get-go.

“We are born-in-the-cloud, so we don’t have the legacy partner program to gum things up,” Laurie Mitchell, senior director of partner marketing at Wasabi, told CRN. Boston-based Wasabi launched its business a few years ago selling direct, but quickly recognized the imperative of migrating the business to a channel model.

In many ways, the channel found Wasabi’s solution even before it introduced a formal program a year and a half ago, Mitchell said, propelling almost half the business today to stem from indirect sales.

With the goal of becoming entirely channel-led, the Wasabi Partner Network seeks to attract more resellers by offering a framework and portal that facilitate quick on-boarding and effective enablement, Mitchell said.

It’s better to be a support arm to the channel, she told CRN, than to set hurdles partners constantly need to surmount.

“We want to recruit and attain new partners and we want to give them what they need to be successful, not charge them for it, and make it super easy for them to access it, and then we grow the business together,” Mitchell said.

Ernest Jones has seen his share of legacy partner programs as a longtime channel executive at IBM and Oracle.

But earlier this year, when Jones took the helm of Red Hat’s North American channel as vice president of commercial partners and alliances, he knew the landscape had changed.

“All partners don’t fit the cookie cutter anymore,” Jones told CRN. “Now it’s become about those partners that have expertise in the solution area in the industries and the markets they know they’re going to focus on.”

34

Partner programs must recognize that ongoing shift among resellers, integrators, MSPs and even distributors toward specialization by supporting development of unique niches, he said.

“Partners will always gravitate toward those products that offer the best value and provide a solution to a business problem for their end user,” Jones said.

Red Hat’s Partner Connect program concentrates on helping members differentiate themselves by understanding where they need to play, how to deliver complex solutions in a hybrid environment and how to add value, he said.

To that end, Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat has published about a dozen “value solutions plays” that work with partners to leverage their core capabilities and industry expertise in developing and implementing their own IP. In the cloud era, channel program frameworks need to take on the characteristics of the technology they support, Bronwyn Hastings, senior vice president for worldwide channel sales, ecosystems, at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Citrix Systems, told CRN. “The program itself has to have that agility of the cloud, and the capability to have things plug in as you transform and move along your timeline,” she said. “If you become too hardened in the program, it doesn’t give you that flexibility and agility as you move through that cycle.”

Partners primarily select technology vendors based on the business opportunity presented by their solutions—then they’ll look at the structure of a program like Citrix’s to ensure it serves the purpose of supporting that business decision, Hastings said.

One key channel innovation for the cloud era is transparency, Hastings said, something that had been lacking in legacy models.

Today’s partners insist on full visibility into the program’s parameters, as well as bi-directional cooperation that ensures they can deliver value to customers and a great experience.

As enterprises rapidly adopt cloud, partners are thinking about “putting the customer at the center and how does your program drive that,” Hastings said. ■

Scan the QR code to see the full 2020 CRN Cloud PPG database on CRN.com

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_CPPG.indd 1

9/29/20 10:59 AM

Cloud Partner Program Guide COMPANY/PROGRAM

CHANNEL CHIEF

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

ACQUIA

Peter Ford VP, Global Channels, Partners, Alliances

Acquia Cloud Site Factory helps customers govern many sites and even brands from one center of digital excellence, while Acquia Cloud offers an open-source cloud solution that allows for a best-of-breed approach for midmarket- and enterprise-level customers.

Acquia is a FedRamp-compliant cloud service provider.

Geoff Ashley VP, Partner Strategy, Programs

Acumatica provides partners with ongoing subscription revenue and some of the highest margins in the industry.

David Tharp VP, Global Partner Organization

Anaplan partners are part of pioneering a new category: Connected Planning. By being part of PartnerConnect, they are a key force in driving Connected Planning to customers.

Anaplan has developed top-notch training courses and a sales and technical enablement program to get partners sales- and delivery-ready.

Tom Signorello CEO

Arcserve offers competitive cloud pricing and dedicated cloud training that focuses on solution needs, instead of budget. Its cloud pricing model allows partners to experience aggressive growth while elevating the customer experience. All partners are on-boarded at the Silver level with respect to cloud solutions, receiving strong gross profit on Day One.

Tushar Kothari CEO

Attivo’s threat detection offering has been proven effective at scale in large cloud deployments and is complementary to existing threat prevention solutions. Partners can deliver Attivo deception-based threat detection services as a managed services offering for ongoing annuity sales and can sell the detection solution and additional professional services.

Derek Toone SVP, Global Channel Partners

Partners have an opportunity to sell a cloud platform for process automation with broad cognitive intelligence and a Bot Store marketplace. The company’s program provides special deal discounts for selling the cloud offering along with support from account and technical teams.

Jon Brinton VP, North America Channel Sales

There are three possible incentives for Cloud Agents. As a Cloud Agent migrates up the levels, the recurring commission benefit increases. For Bronze, it is the Master Agent base plus 2 percent, 3 percent for Silver, 4 percent for Gold and 5 percent for Platinum, all based on seats sold in the last 12 months.

Angus Robertson Chief Revenue Officer

The top three benefits of joining the Axcient Partner Program are access to the Axcient Marketing Portal, leads and MDF. Axcient took time to design a partner program that would enable partners to automate their business operations, market their company and grow.

Neal Bradbury VP, MSP Strategic Partnerships

When partners join the Barracuda MSP Partner Program, they gain the ability to create comprehensive service offerings. With a broad solution portfolio, MSP partners can offer multilayered security and data protection solutions. Built-in reporting on threat and activity levels makes it easy for MSPs to show the unique value they provide to each customer.

Boston Cloud Channel Program: Acquia Channel Program

ACUMATICA Bellevue, Wash.

Cloud Channel Program: Acumatica Partner Program

ANAPLAN San Francisco Cloud Channel Program: PartnerConnect

ARCSERVE Eden Prairie, Minn.

Cloud Channel Program: Arcserve Accelerate

ATTIVO NETWORKS Fremont, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Attivo Networks Cloud Partner Program

AUTOMATION ANYWHERE San Jose, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Automation Anywhere Partner Program

AVAYA Santa Clara, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Avaya Edge Cloud Program

AXCIENT Denver Cloud Channel Program: Axcient Partner Program

BARRACUDA MSP Chelmsford, Mass.

Cloud Channel Program: Barracuda MSP Partner Program

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_CPPG.indd 2

35

9/29/20 11:55 AM

Cloud Partner Program Guide COMPANY/PROGRAM

CHANNEL CHIEF

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

BARRACUDA NETWORKS

Glenn Esposito, SVP, Sales, Field Operations

Barracuda Networks partners receive prequalified leads, deal registration, short sales cycles, phone and on-site support, demo access, partner portal and more. In addition, in certain situations, Barracuda increases the margin that will be paid to channel partners on the consumption portion of their public cloud revenue by 3X to 10X.

Steve Kelley, President, GM, Business Solutions Group

The Bitdefender Partner Advantage Network benefits are tailored to support each partner type in the most effective way. Partners are entitled to numerous benefits such as sales and marketing tools, leads program, competitive training and certifications, hands-on training, Not-For-Resale (NFR) licenses and partner visibility.

Anne-Laure du Fou Global Partner Program Manager

Partners with their own Bonita Cloud can manage many customer projects easily on a single platform. Bonita Cloud enables multiple environments, so partners can host multiple customers with different environments on the same platform, and it autoscales up or down for project cost flexibility.

George Bardissi CEO

Bvoip offers a centralized and mutlitenant cloud unified communications platform.

Partners can set their pricing while receiving monthly recurring profit.

Oliver Tuszik SVP, Global Partner Organization

Partners can leverage higher up-front discounts across Cisco technologies, including Meraki products, with the Simplified Pricing incentive. Products purchased under Simplified Pricing can be combined with the Migration Incentive Program. Partners also can enroll in the Value Incentive Program and receive back-end rebates on eligible products.

Bronwyn Hastings SVP, Worldwide Channel Sales, Ecosystems

Citrix supports partners who find, grow, renew and extend cloud deals to be more profitable and add more value to their customers. Citrix also provides a depth and breadth of sales and technical enablement as well as a variety of demand generation resources to every level of partner, regardless of their business model.

Jim Adams Head of Worldwide Channels, Alliances

Partners have the ability to use CloudBolt software in a managed services offering and can sell professional services as part of their overall solution. The company offers an annuity-based subscription model with a 95 percent-plus renewal rate.

Matthew Harrell Global Head of Channel Sales, Partnerships

Cloudflare provides a range of enablement options (self-serve, online webinars, partner academies) to ensure partners can develop their expertise and provides reseller discounting across partner tiers. Top partners have a designated partner account team that provides training, go-to-market support, quarterly reviews and quarterly joint account planning.

Bill Lipsin VP, Global Channel Sales

Cohesity provides partners with a co-design workshop and access to training. It also offers effective and repeatable go-to-market as well as increased revenue opportunities at lower costs.

Craig Schlagbaum VP, Channel Chief

Comcast provides a reliable and respected program with the products, support and tools needed to succeed in today’s digital era. Partners can generate recurring revenue with operations, sales, engineering and marketing support from an experienced team dedicated solely to them.

Campbell, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Barracuda North America Channel Partner Program— Advanced Security Cloud Competency

BITDEFENDER Santa Clara, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Bitdefender Partner Advantage Network

BONITASOFT San Francisco Cloud Channel Program: Certified Bonitasoft Partner Program

BVOIP Hatfield, Pa. Cloud Channel Program: Bvoip Partner Program

CISCO SYSTEMS San Jose, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Cloud and Managed Services Program

CITRIX SYSTEMS Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Cloud Channel Program: Citrix Partner Program

CLOUDBOLT SOFTWARE Rockville, Md. Cloud Channel Program: CloudBolt Partner Connect Program

CLOUDFLARE San Francisco Cloud Channel Program: Cloudflare Partner Services Program

COHESITY San Jose, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Cohesity Partner Program for Service Providers

COMCAST BUSINESS Philadelphia Cloud Channel Program: Comcast Business Solutions Provider Program

36

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_CPPG.indd 3

9/29/20 11:00 AM

BEST OF BREED VIRTUAL SERIES

October 28 • 11:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. EDT • #BOB20

Be Our Guest at the Exclusive BoB Virtual Event Series: Fall 2020 If you are a leader of one of the IT channel’s most esteemed solution provider organizations and a CRN® List company honoree — Solution Provider 500, Tech Elite 250 and Fast Growth 150 — we welcome you to join us and your executive-level vendor peers for this 2 ½ hour online event featuring: • Empowering CEO Interviews • SP 500 Solution Provider Spotlight • Economic and Market Trend Keynotes

• CRN® Triple Crown Showcase • Peer-to-Peer Networking • Content Gallery, including Executive Sessions

BoB CEO Interviews: Antonio Neri CEO Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Jim Whitehurst President IBM

Featured Speakers:

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Apply to Attend 508.416.1175 | thechannelcompany.com

Thomas J. Cunningham, Ph.D. SVP & Chief Economist Metro Atlanta Chamber

www.BoBVirtual.com

© 2020 The Channel Company, LLC. The Channel Company logo is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

Cloud Partner Program Guide COMPANY/PROGRAM

CHANNEL CHIEF

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

COMMSCOPE

Raelyn Kritzer VP, Worldwide Channel

Cloud-specialized partners receive specialized pricing on cloud products, prioritized allocation of qualified cloud trial leads and proposal-based MDF.

Mercer Rowe VP, Global Channels, Alliances

Partners have a clear growth path and route-independent opportunity with increasing financial benefits as they grow their competency and offer multiple service lines. Technical certification offerings enable deep competency to set up and manage Commvault-based service offerings.

Terry Kerans Director, Channel Sales, North America

Coreview offers partners the ability to increase their recurring revenue from existing Microsoft license customers. The company offers partners additional discounts for all registered deals in addition to regular promotions and incentive programs to encourage stronger partnerships.

Alex Donchuk Global Channel Director

Creatio is a global software company that provides a low-code platform for process management and CRM.

Jessica Barlow Director, Channels, Alliances

Ctera offers a unified platform for edge-to-cloud file services, enabling partners to sell solutions for NAS/file server replacement; modern file collaboration; data tiering and archiving; and backup—all of which can be centrally managed from a single-pane-ofglass dashboard.

Joe Vranicar Chief Revenue Officer

Partners have the ability to sell Datrium Disaster Recovery as a Service in a specific region as well as find new service opportunities and enhanced go-to-market support.

Rob Rae SVP, Business Development

One benefit available for all partner tiers at no cost is full access to the Datto Marketing Automation Platform (MarketNow), where MSPs can fully customize and launch prebuilt email drip campaigns, social media campaigns, etc., to their prospect lists for lead generation and education of the cloud.

Rola Dagher Global Channel Chief

The Dell Technologies Cloud Service Provider program track provides partners with greater opportunities to deliver transformative IT infrastructure solutions with pre-engineered as-aservice solutions and a consistent hybrid cloud operating model made possible by the Dell Technologies Cloud portfolio.

Connor Cox Director, Business Development

Partners get the competitive advantage that comes with enabling customers to securely access their cloud workloads and services—whether hosted by the partner or some other cloud service provider. DH2i provides extremely competitive margins and helps partners access recurring revenue sources while assisting customers with the transition to the cloud.

Rosanna Pellegrino SVP, Business Development, Sales

Digital Defense’s Cloud Platform is available to all of the company’s channel partners.

Hickory, N.C. Cloud Channel Program: CommScope PartnerPro Network Ruckus Cloud Technology Specialization

COMMVAULT Tinton Falls, N.J. Cloud Channel Program: Partner Advantage Program

COREVIEW Alpharetta, Ga. Cloud Channel Program: CorePartner

CREATIO (FORMERLY BPM’ONLINE) Boston Cloud Channel Program: Creatio Partner Program

CTERA New York Channel Program: Ctera Cloud Accelerator Channel Program

DATRIUM Sunnyvale, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: DRaaS Select

DATTO Norwalk, Conn.

Cloud Channel Program: Datto Global Partner Program

DELL TECHNOLOGIES Round Rock, Texas Cloud Channel Program: Dell Technologies Partner Program Cloud Service Provider Track

DH2I Fort Collins, Colo.

Cloud Channel Program: DH2i DxAdvantage Channel Partner Program

DIGITAL DEFENSE San Antonio Cloud Channel Program: Digital Defense SecureCloud Alliance Program

38

OCTOBER 2020

CRN_Oct2020_CPPG.indd 4

9/29/20 11:00 AM

Cloud Partner Program Guide COMPANY/PROGRAM

CHANNEL CHIEF

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

DIGITAL GUARDIAN

Troy Gabel VP, North America Sales

Digital Guardian offers strong margins on a yearly recurring revenue stream and highermargin value-added services opportunities. The company also provides easier enablement and delivery of services through its cloud-hosted SaaS solution.

Timm Hoyt Global VP, Partners, Alliances

Druva brings the simplicity and scale of the public cloud to enterprise backup and data management.

Mark Fitzmaurice VP, Worldwide Channel Sales

By joining the ExtraHop Panorama Cloud Program, resellers and MSPs help customers improve the security of their cloud environment and ease the migration to the cloud with traffic visibility. Partners work directly with ExtraHop’s dedicated cloud sales team and benefit from deal registration and access to ExtraHop’s channel and sales resources.

Lisa Citron VP, Worldwide Channel Sales

F5 Networks offer flexible licensing options to support partner revenue models, service delivery offerings that expedite partners’ go-to-market, and competitive margins.

Carolee Gearhart VP, Worldwide Channel Sales

Through specializations and expertise, Google Cloud offers partners the ability to differentiate their business and demonstrate to customers the ability to address their business problems. With Google Cloud Partner Advantage, the company is focused on succeeding together with partners, collaboratively, by helping customers win.

John W. Ryan Head of Channels, Alliances, Systems Integrators

Guardicore provides a SaaS-based (cloud) delivery model that enables a costeffective and highly scalable deployment model. Partners leverage this model to deliver an infrastructure-agnostic approach to security that extends across legacy (bare metal), private virtualized, public cloud and containers.

Todd Palmer SVP, Strategic Partners, Alliances

Hitachi Vantara offers cloud partners a broad range of hardware, software and services offerings built to support demanding customer requirements for cloud architecture, infrastructure, application migration, data protection and more. It also offers a range of programs and processes to accelerate development of differentiated solutions.

Bogdan Viher VP, International Sales, Channels

HYCU provides a data protection and management offering across multi-clouds, regardless of whether it is on-premises or public cloud, and a data migration offering across multi-clouds.

Merlin Knott Global Head of Channel

Attaching cloud support services to license and implementation/integration services is key to the IFS Partner Network. Partners have access to dedicated channel management and IFS cloud team specialists.

Balaji Subramanian Global Channel Chief

Through IGEL Cloud Gateway and IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS), IGEL partners can build Desktop-as-a-Service solutions that enable smart, simple and secure endpoint management regardless of where the endpoint is located.

Koorosh Khashayar VP, Global Channels

Iland was recognized by Gartner as a leader in Disaster Recovery as a Service. Top-notch security and compliance reporting and tools are available to partners to help ease customers’ digital transformation. Partners have complete control and visibility into customers’ cloud usage through the iland Cloud Console.

Waltham, Mass.

Cloud Channel Program: Synergy Partner Program

DRUVA Sunnyvale, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Druva Compass

EXTRAHOP Seattle Cloud Channel Program: Panorama Cloud Program

F5 NETWORKS Seattle Cloud Channel Program: F5 Unity+ Partner Program

GOOGLE CLOUD Mountain View, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Google Cloud Partner Advantage

GUARDICORE Boston Cloud Channel Program: Guardicore Partner Program

HITACHI VANTARA Santa Clara, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Hitachi Vantara Partner Program

HYCU Boston Cloud Channel Program: HYCU Multi-Cloud Partner Program

IFS Itasca, Ill. Cloud Channel Program: IFS Partner Network

IGEL San Francisco Cloud Channel Program: IGEL Partner Program

ILAND Houston Cloud Channel Program: iland Partner Program

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Cloud Partner Program Guide COMPANY/PROGRAM

CHANNEL CHIEF

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

INFOBLOX

Lori Cornmesser VP, Worldwide Channel Sales

Top benefits for partners include training; incremental marketing investment and tools (demo and partner activation kit); incentive rewards (special promotion, spifs, rebate); and marketing campaigns.

Paul Bay EVP, President, Global Technology Solutions

Ingram Micro partners receive special pricing, access to training and partner development, and go-to-market services.

Greg Baur VP, GM, Global Scale, Partners

Intel offers partners hands-on training for hardware and cloud applications and tools that enable them to more effectively sell Intel-based cloud solutions.

Jeremy Jones Chief Commercial Officer

Intelepeer has a 100 percent channel go-to-market strategy. Its offerings are easy to sell and come with simple pricing packages. The company also offers partners competitive commissions and incentives.

Adam Hofeler VP, Worldwide Sales

By joining the Ironscales Partner Program, providers benefit from seeing how multiple phishing incidents across customers are related and can be remediated in real time, at scale.

Partners have access to fast and easy-to-implement solutions that are simple to understand and sell.

Gordon Mackintosh VP, Global Partner, Virtual Sales

Juniper’s stackable software rebates give qualifying partners in the Cloud Specialization up to 25 percent back on eligible software. A CMSP assessment evaluates partner capabilities and provides best-practice recommendations to optimize their cloud and managed services potential.

Laura Blackmer SVP, Dealer Sales

Konica Minolta partners have access to multiple cloud infrastructure and disaster recovery offerings for customers and prospects, which creates larger transaction sizes.

Additional revenue and margin are available by bundling complementary managed IT and security services.

Justin Duling SVP, Commercial Director, Location Intelligence Services

Loqate GBG offers partners flexible and versatile API deployment options. APIs can be integrated in cloud workflows or on-premises.

John Lindsley VP, Channels

Mitel provides partners greater choice in meeting customers’ individual business needs with private, public and hybrid cloud solutions. As part of its partner program, Mitel offers direct access to sales, marketing, technical and customer success resources as well as competitive compensation.

Tina Valdez COO

Morpheus is the control center at the heart of multi-cloud digital transformation and enterprise automation. It connects to clouds, hardware, hypervisors, networks, load balancers, ITSM tools, data protection systems and more. Once in place, partners get an instant view into other opportunities and can achieve long-term recurring revenue.

Santa Clara, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: BuildingBlox Partner Program

INGRAM MICRO Irvine, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Ingram Micro Cloud

INTEL Santa Clara, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Intel Technology Provider Cloud Data Center Specialist

INTELEPEER San Mateo, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Cloud Advantage Partner Program

IRONSCALES Atlanta Cloud Channel Program: Ironscales Partner Program

JUNIPER NETWORKS Sunnyvale, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Juniper Partner Advantage Program—Cloud and Managed Services Program

KONICA MINOLTA BUSINESS SOLUTIONS U.S.A. Ramsey, N.J. Cloud Channel Program: Konica Minolta Dealer Program

LOQATE, A GBG SOLUTION Redwood City, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Loqate Global Channel Program

MITEL Plano, Texas Cloud Channel Program: Mitel Global Partner Program

MORPHEUS DATA Greenwood Village, Colo.

Cloud Channel Program: Morpheus Data MVP Program

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Cloud Partner Program Guide COMPANY/PROGRAM

CHANNEL CHIEF

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

NETAPP

Chris Lamborn Head of Global Partner Go To Market, Programs

NetApp’s incentives are designed to offer partners similar margins to that of hardware resale as well as help them see the long-term benefits of recurring payments and monetize on customers’ growth in the cloud . The Cloud First partner team works closely with partners to help them define what the best-selling strategies will be for their customer base.

Reza Parsia VP, Strategic Partner Management

NetDocuments’ cloud-based content management service allows organizations of all sizes to reduce costs and increase security, mobility, compliance and disaster recovery for content from anywhere and on any device.

David Rogers VP, Worldwide Alliances, Channel Sales

Netskope is sold through partners as an annual SaaS subscription, delivered in the cloud.

Its partner-centric sales model and growing product family mean partners enjoy strong renewal and upsell sales. Netskope’s model extends to deep integration with cloud-based technical alliance partners, giving partners upsell/cross-sell potential.

Andrew Clarke Head of Global Channel Strategy

One Identity’s focus on open standards ensures security without additional expenses by allowing services to be built on top of security solutions already in place. One Identity helps partners begin their identity journey where they are most familiar: Active Directory and Azure Active Directory, as it is often the first step for customers moving to the cloud.

Jason McKinney Chief Revenue Officer

Panzura gives partners the opportunity to generate revenue by helping enterprise customers resolve their most vexing global data management challenges. Panzura’s cost-effective, complete solution for NAS management delivers a number of benefits to partners.

Ryan Walsh Chief Channel Officer

Pax8 offers partners unique benefits that enable them to achieve more with cloud technology. Key benefits include the easy-to-navigate cloud marketplace; Pax8 Stax, a BI tool that reveals gaps in the partner’s technology stack so they can see upsell and cross-sell opportunities; and service delivery support all the way through the life-cycle process.

Jonathan Hartman SVP, Sales

By joining the PlanetOne Partner Program, partners will find a growing portfolio of 250-plus providers focused on cloud enablement and traditional network connectivity, data center, and cloud services and solutions. They will also be supported by marketing, sales and engineering teams with a proven track record in helping them navigate the sales process.

Chris Moore SVP, Global Partners, Alliances

Within the Qlik Partner Program, partners have the ability to develop and attach new services when selling Qlik Cloud solutions and can expand their revenue with existing and new customers by entering new vertical markets and new geographies by quickly activating analytics services.

Chris Catanzaro VP, Channel Sales

The Recorded Future Security Intelligence Platform produces security intelligence that disrupts adversaries at scale. It combines analytics with human expertise to unite a variety of open-source, dark web, technical sources and original research.

Mark Enzweiler SVP, Global Partners, Alliances

Red Hat offers a flexible pay-as-you-go consumption model; systems management solutions to manage Red Hat cloud offerings; and premium Red Hat support for all infrastructure components purchased from Red Hat.

Zane Long SVP, Global Channel Sales

RingCentral offers an intuitive platform for voice, video meetings, team messaging and collaboration, and contact center.

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Cloud First Partner Program

NETDOCUMENTS Lehi, Utah Cloud Channel Program: NetDocuments Cloud Partner Program

NETSKOPE Santa Clara, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Netskope Partner Program

ONE IDENTITY Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: One Identity Partner Circle Program

PANZURA Campbell, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Freedom and Vizion.ai Partner Program

PAX8 Greenwood Village, Colo.

Cloud Channel Program: Wingman Partner Program

PLANETONE Scottsdale, Ariz.

Cloud Channel Program: PlanetOne Partner Program

QLIK King of Prussia, Pa. Cloud Channel Program: Qlik Partner Program—Managed Services Business Model

RECORDED FUTURE Somerville, Mass.

Cloud Channel Program: Recorded Future Channel Program

RED HAT Raleigh, N.C. Cloud Channel Program: Certified Cloud and Service Provider Program

RINGCENTRAL Belmont, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Ignite Partner Program

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Cloud Partner Program Guide COMPANY/PROGRAM

CHANNEL CHIEF

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

SAGE INTACCT

Taylor Macdonald SVP, Channel Sales

Sage Intacct partners own their customer relationships. When they sell a Sage Intacct solution to a new customer, they earn the margin in place at the time of the sale for the life of their customer. Sage Intacct’s 95 percent customer renewal rate means recurring revenue, year after year, for partners.

J.C. Collins VP, COO, Industries, Partners

Salesforce’s partner community, with over 120,000 active members, has the ability to engage with one another through Chatter, can access unlimited gamified learning tools, and have the opportunity to run their business by submitting deal registration and support cases.

Karl Fahrbach Chief Partner Officer

Partners receive one year of free use of the SAP Cloud Platform to build modern cloud applications. Partners also lower their risk and receive a 20 percent commission on the annual contract value, a way for partners new to the cloud or established ones to generate cloud sales.

Ulf Persson VP, Global Business Development

Partners can count on Seeburger every step of the way through the entire implementation and sales process. Partners also have wide-ranging access to proven cloud integration solutions/services and the ability to leverage Seeburger’s industry-leading experts.

Eric Jewett VP, International

SkyKick empowers channel partners to launch cloud offerings, grow their cloud customer base and become more profitable. In working with 20,000 MSPs, SkyKick has distilled their insight and best practices into SkyKick Cloud Success, a transformation road map comprised of tools, content, training and programs for partners.

Mike Cullen Group VP, Partner Success

The SolarWinds MSP portfolio delivers broad, scalable IT service management solutions that integrate layered security, collective intelligence and smart automation. Its products are designed to enable MSPs to provide highly effective outsourced IT services to SMBs.

Kendra Krause SVP, Global Channels, Sales Operations

Sophos partners receive training and support from Sophos Security Architects who specialize in cloud security and migration. Partners also see cloud workload protection and cloud security posture management.

Andy Zollo VP, Worldwide Sales

StorageCraft’s cloud offerings better enable partners to lead with service-level agreement capabilities, which empowers them to offer powerful uptime and data recoverability. Via the secure self-service portal, partners centrally manage and monitor all accounts as well as fail over a client in a disaster without third-party intervention.

Rachel Cassidy SVP, Global Channel

SUSE partners receive a discount off retail list price, named partner executive coverage, and no-cost training for skills certifications.

Michael Urban President, Worldwide Technology Solutions Distribution

Stellr Connect bundles hardware and software into packaged solutions for cloud, mobility, IoT and emerging technologies on a recurring monthly subscription model. It also provides private-labeled offerings and services including workshops, assessments, new quoting tools, new ROI models and playbooks.

Rich Hume CEO

Partners can develop a differentiated portfolio with top cloud providers like Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and more, and identify key training required to showcase their expertise. The Enablement Sprints framework provides a streamlined road map to help partners on-board, build and accelerate their cloud practice in less than 90 days.

San Jose, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Sage Intacct Partner Program

SALESFORCE San Francisco Cloud Channel Program: Salesforce Partner Program

SAP Newtown Square, Pa. Cloud Channel Program: SAP PartnerEdge

SEEBURGER Atlanta Cloud Channel Program: Seeburger Partner Program

SKYKICK Seattle Cloud Channel Program: SkyKick IT Cloud Partner Program

SOLARWINDS MSP Morrisville, N.C. Cloud Channel Program: SolarWinds MSP Channel Partner Program

SOPHOS Burlington, Mass.

Cloud Channel Program: Sophos Cloud Security Provider Program

STORAGECRAFT TECHNOLOGY Draper, Utah Cloud Channel Program: StorageCraft Partner Success Program

SUSE Provo, Utah Cloud Channel Program: Cloud Service Provider Program

SYNNEX Greenville, S.C. Cloud Channel Program: Synnex Stellr Connect

TECH DATA Clearwater, Fla. Cloud Channel Program: Digital Cloud Practice Builder

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Cloud Partner Program Guide COMPANY/PROGRAM

CHANNEL CHIEF

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

TECH DATA

Rich Hume CEO

Tech Data’s IoT and Analytics Practice Builder Roadshow workshop series provides partners the enablement needed to succeed and grow their cloud revenue as IoT and analytics increase data, which increases the need for cloud. The series provides partners the context they need to engage in next-gen conversations with customers.

Steve Mock VP, Business Development

Valimail is 100 percent cloud-based, so all partners are part of the cloud partner program. Valimail’s Zero Trust Sender Identity Platform is open to any partner who wishes to leverage its approach to addressing existing gaps in email security by leveraging sender identity to stop advanced phishing and email impersonation attacks.

Kevin Rooney VP, Americas Partner Sales

With Veeam, partners hold the license, rather than reselling to their customers. Partners can deploy the license in their cloud, on another cloud, or even at the customer’s site.

Veeam now covers virtual, physical and cloud-based workloads, addressing nearly any customer need.

Sandy Hogan SVP, Worldwide Commercial, Partner Sales

The VMware Cloud Provider Program enables partners to consume VMware products and services on a pay-as-you-go, pay-as-you-grow, monthly subscription model. In addition, VMware Cloud Provider partners can offer services to VMware customers who use VMware technologies in their data centers and are looking to extend their workloads to the cloud.

Sandy Hogan SVP, Worldwide Commercial, Partner Sales

The top benefits of the CloudHealth Channel Program all tie back to a single overarching objective: to accelerate business for MSPs and enable them to deliver greater customer value. CloudHealth provides partners with visibility into cost, usage and performance of public cloud resources and enables them to provide key cloud management services.

Brian Parsons Channel Chief, Executive Director, Enterprise Sales

Voyant’s channel integration with the direct sales team supports partners throughout the sales process, making it easy for them to add Voyant while eliminating channel conflict. This positions partners to do what they do best: introduce opportunities and serve as the trusted adviser while building an end-to-end solution that includes business voice communications.

Marty Falaro SVP, Global Sales, Alliances

Partners can simplify for customers the transition from on-premises to cloud storage by giving them the choice of monthly recurring pay-as-you-go billing or reserved capacity storage committed up-front billing. Partners can earn margins and bundle cloud storage with other solutions like backup and archive and price it their own way to maximize profit.

Andrew Perry VP, Sales

WekaIO has embarked upon a 100 percent channel-centric go-to-market strategy. This year it launched the WekaIO Innovation Network to empower partners with the solutions and technical expertise required to deliver an enhanced value proposition that solves customers’ biggest data-intensive challenges and accelerates technical computing.

Jim Ortbals

Zerto’s program goals and product delivery are tied to a Cloud Service Provider-specific business model and preferred method of billing. The program delivers consistent rewards across partner types. Cloud-specific materials, tools, resources and support are built exclusively for Zerto’s Cloud Service Provider partners.

Clearwater, Fla. Cloud Channel Program: IoT and Analytics Practice Builder Roadshow

VALIMAIL San Francisco Cloud Channel Program: Valimail Partner Program

VEEAM SOFTWARE Columbus, Ohio Cloud Channel Program: Veeam Cloud and Service Provider Program

VMWARE Palo Alto, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: VMware Cloud Provider Program

VMWARE Palo Alto, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: CloudHealth Partner Program

VOYANT Boulder, Colo.

Cloud Channel Program: Voyant Partner Program

WASABI TECHNOLOGIES Boston Cloud Channel Program: Wasabi Partner Network

WEKAIO Campbell, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: WekaIO Innovation Network

ZERTO

Boston

Cloud Channel Program: Zerto Alliance Partner Program

ZOOM VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS

San Jose, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Zoom Channel Partner Program

ZSCALER

San Jose, Calif.

Cloud Channel Program: Zscaler Partner Program

VP, Global Cloud, Channel

Laura Padilla Head of Global Channels, Business Development

Al Caravelli VP, Global Alliances, Channels

Zoom provides ongoing referral commissions as part of the Agent Referral Program. Zoom sales support can help partners close opportunities, which include the ability to offer the full Zoom portfolio of services to customers, including Zoom Phone.

Zscaler is moving to a focused-partner approach and adopting a self-service engine.

Focused partners will have lucrative lead-sharing, services subcontracting and practice build architecture time not available to other partners.

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T R I P L E C R O W N AWA R D

Stepping Up And Standing Out

By Rick Whiting

W

ith a global pandemic, a faltering economy and national turmoil over racial injustice, 2020 has been a year of challenges. For the IT industry and the channel community, it also has been a year of sudden shifts in demand for IT products and services as customers moved to a work-from-home model that required more laptop PCs, collaboration tools and remote support.

And yet many solution providers that exceled during the economic expansion in recent years are continuing to thrive this year by building on their records of rapid growth and leveraging strengths such as their technical proficiency and deep service offerings.

Each year CRN develops lists and rankings of solution providers, including the Solution Provider 500, the largest solution providers in North America by revenue; the Fast Growth 150, ranking the fastest-growing solution providers; and the Tech Elite 250, which identifies solution providers with the highest-level certifications from major IT vendors.

And each year a number of solution providers make all three lists—an impressive accomplishment. This year 44 solution providers pulled off that feat to become the 2020 class of CRN Triple Crown winners.

One such company is San Diego-based Evotek, which is appearing on the Triple Crown list for the third consecutive year. Evotek operates data center, cybersecurity, cloud, networking and communications, and digital platform practices.

44

While Evotek boasts deep expertise in those technology areas, founder and CEO Cesar Enciso said what makes the company stand out are its deep-relationship advisory services and its service-focused culture. “The culture is most definitely the biggest differentiator in what we’re doing,” Enciso said.

Each of Evotek’s practices is led by a former corporate IT executive who has dealt with many of the challenges customers face: The cybersecurity practice, for example, is led by a former chief information security officer. Evotek consultants not only look at customers’ current IT and business needs, “but what they need to get to where they want to be in four or five years,” he said.

Making this year’s Triple Crown list for the second consecutive year, meanwhile, is Thrive Networks, which offers next-generation cloud, cybersecurity, disaster recovery and global network management technology services.

Based in Foxborough, Mass., Thrive targets midmarket customers, offering the kind of sophisticated services customers might expect from an IBM or Cognizant, according to CEO Rob Stephenson, but with the more personal service of a smaller MSP. “Our goal has really been to build a sophisticated cloud- and cybersecurity-focused MSP that can handle the midmarket,” Stephenson said. “The midmarket is looking for a lot of deep engineering resources that are focused on cloud and cybersecurity, but still provide a strong, white-glove, concierge level of support.” ■

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2nd Watch Doug Schneider CEO Seattle

2nd Watch offers services around business transformation, data center migration and application modernization, cloud computing, data engineering, DevOps, compliance, security, business continuity and managed services.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 134 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 30 2020 Fast Growth: 117.86% Triple Crown Winner: 2017, 2018

AHEAD

Daniel Adamany Founder, CEO Chicago

AHEAD helps customers build and sustain digital business platforms, including enterprise cloud infrastructure engineering services and delivering modern applications.

It was the winner of VMware’s 2020 Americas Partner of the Year Award for Services Excellence.

Advanced Computer Concepts Reza Zarafshar President McLean, Va.

Advanced Computer Concepts focuses on cloud, collaboration, cybersecurity, data center, networking and audio/visual systems—all supported with professional and managed services.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 99 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 132 2020 Fast Growth: 43.69% Triple Crown Winner: 2015, 2016, 2017

Aqueduct Technologies Manak Ahluwalia President, CEO Waltham, Mass.

Aqueduct provides managed, professional and IT assessment services to customers throughout New England in areas including data center, enterprise networking, advanced security, cloud, collaboration and carrier services.

Advanced Network Management Raminder Mann CEO Albuquerque, N.M.

Advanced Network Management provides IT solutions and managed services to customers across the West, focusing on network automation, data center, cloud, collaboration, security and Salesforce applications.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 170 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 133 2020 Fast Growth: 43.60% Triple Crown Winner: 2017

Aspire Technology Partners John Harris Co-Founder, President, CEO Eatontown, N.J.

AEC Group Danielle Mizia President Oakdale, Pa.

AEC Group specializes in cloud, data center, telecommunications and mobility; system architecture, design and deployment; and security, disaster recovery and business continuity through the AEC Technology Assistance Center.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 238 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 28 2020 Fast Growth: 120.98% Triple Crown Winner: 2017, 2018, 2019

ATSG

Anthony D’Ambrosi CEO New York

Aspire Technology Partners powers customers’ complete business transformations with a focus on digital infrastructure, collaboration and cybersecurity technologies.

ATSG’s managed services lineup includes rediTech (applications, tools and infrastructure), rediManage (end-user support, digital workplace, cloud, mobility and application management) and rediSecure (managed security).

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 207 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 87 2020 Fast Growth: 60.50% Triple Crown Winner: 2016

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 264 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 38 2020 Fast Growth: 96.87% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 36 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 15 2020 Fast Growth: 198.85% Triple Crown Winner: 2015

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 288 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 125 2020 Fast Growth: 45.43% Triple Crown Winner: 2017, 2018, 2019

Business IT Source

C Spire Business

CB Technologies

CBTS

Business IT Source provides a broad range of IT products and solutions including personal systems, servers, storage systems, network and communications gear, data protection products, and printers and accessories.

C Spire provides voice, wireless, business internet and cloud services to customers in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. Data center services include data protection and backup and recovery while cloud offerings span public, private and hybrid cloud services.

CB Technologies specializes in a number of key practice areas including hybrid IT, high-performance computing and analytics, industrial Internet of Things and IT supply chain optimization— the latter focused on streamlining IT procurement.

CBTS focuses on IT infrastructure (compute, network and data management), cloud computing (infrastructure, public cloud and cloud management) communications (UCaaS, SD-WAN and collaboration) and security services and technology.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 91 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 138 2020 Fast Growth: 41.74% Triple Crown Winner: 2014

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 148 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 90 2020 Fast Growth: 59.39% Triple Crown Winner: 2016, 2019

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 33 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 131 2020 Fast Growth: 44.20% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

Clearpath Solutions Group

Computacenter Fusionstorm

Coretelligent

Decisive Technologies

Clearpath provides managed and consulting services and customized IT solutions. The company boasts expertise with data center, cloud, IP networking, data protection, IT security, and communications and collaboration technologies.

Computacenter acquired Fusionstorm in September 2018, creating a channel powerhouse with solutions, services and expertise in data center and hybrid cloud, analytics and big data, cybersecurity and more.

Coretelligent offers services for IT planning and strategy, IT support, security and compliance, cloud management, backup and disaster recovery, and co-managed services. It has deep expertise in the financial services and life sciences verticals.

Decisive Technologies focuses on cloud, virtualization, data storage, enterprise networking and IT security technologies surrounded with architecture planning, design and engineering, deployment and integration, and maintenance and optimization services.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 44 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 89 2020 Fast Growth: 59.75% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 344 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 42 2020 Fast Growth: 93.05% Triple Crown Winner: 2017

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 220 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 37 2020 Fast Growth: 98.72% Triple Crown Winner: 2018, 2019

Bob Frauenheim Founder, Principal Buffalo Grove, Ill.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 167 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 82 2020 Fast Growth: 63.31% Triple Crown Winner: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

Gary Vaughan President, CEO Reston, Va.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 315 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 140 2020 Fast Growth: 40.63% Triple Crown Winner: 2014, 2015

Hu Meena Chairman, CEO Ridgeland, Miss.

Michael Keogh President, Computacenter U.S. San Francisco

Kelly Ireland Founder, CEO Orange, Calif.

Kevin Routhier Founder, President, CEO Westwood, Mass.

Jeff Lackey President Cincinnati

Mike Smith, President Ottawa, Ontario

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DH Technologies Devin Henderson CEO Leesburg, Va.

Evotek

Cesar Enciso Founder, CEO San Diego

DH Technologies develops IT solutions that incorporate technologies in virtual desktop infrastructure, enterprise cloud, security, networking, AI and machine learning, big data, hyperconverged systems and NVMe shared accelerated storage.

Evotek leads customer engagements with its deep consulting and executive advisory services around practices in cybersecurity, data center, mobility and digital platforms—with each practice led by former client-side executives with experience in each discipline.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 289 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 18 2020 Fast Growth: 167.24% Triple Crown Winner: 2017, 2019

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 132 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 24 2020 Fast Growth: 133.35% Triple Crown Winner: 2018, 2019

HighPoint

InCare Technologies

Focus Technology Solutions

Douglas Alexander CEO Boston

Focus provides professional and technology maintenance services in IT infrastructure management, server support, network and desktop monitoring, help desk, cloud, data centers and cybersecurity.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 277 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 109 2020 Fast Growth: 50.92% Triple Crown Winner: 2014, 2015, 2016

High Availability

Steve Eisenhart CEO Eden Prairie, Minn.

High Availability is a provider and integrator of data center products, data management solutions and cloud services.

It develops customized solutions and services using its five-step approach: discover, design, deploy, operate and optimize.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 194 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 148 2020 Fast Growth: 38.25% Triple Crown Winner: 2018, 2019

iVision

Kelser

InCare serves SMBs, local government and K-12 schools from its offices in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Services include managed backup and disaster recovery, email migration and Office 365 managed services, and network and security solutions.

IVision builds its practices around cloud, networking and security technologies, combined with consulting services in IT strategy, cloud computing, and technology transformation and life-cycle management; and cloud, network and security managed services.

With a focus on customers in the Northeast, Kelser offers IT managed services and solutions in data center, network and wireless, cybersecurity, business continuity and disaster recovery, and supply chain technologies.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 107 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 139 2020 Fast Growth: 40.88% Triple Crown Winner: 2015

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 439 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 70 2020 Fast Growth: 67.79% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 240 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 128 2020 Fast Growth: 44.44% Triple Crown Winner: 2015, 2018

Lewan Technology

Logically

Melillo Consulting

Mobius Partners

A leading HPE authorized service management partner, Melillo boasts expertise in IT operations service management, infrastructure, digital transformation, business performance management, and customer support services.

Mobius Partners serves customers throughout Texas and the central U.S. with an emphasis on providing advanced IT in cloud, data center, DevOps and digital workspace combined with managed, security and analytics services.

Mike Mendiburu President Sparta, N.J.

HighPoint’s IT solutions and services business is built around data center (including hyperconverged infrastructure and virtualization), security, mobility and collaboration technologies, combined with professional, managed and OEM maintenance services.

Steve St. John President Denver

Lewan provides managed IT services, technology solutions and printer/copier management. Solutions include cloud and virtualization systems, collaboration, networking, security and risk management, and application delivery and mobility.

Brian Walker CEO Birmingham, Ala.

Mike Cowles CEO Portland, Maine

Logically specializes in providing a range of managed IT services to small and midsize companies, health-care organizations, nonprofits and public sector agencies. Services are delivered through the company’s OpLogic MSP platform.

Gabe Damiani Founder, CEO Atlanta

Dan Sytsma President Somerset, N.J.

Barry Kelly President, CEO East Hartford, Conn.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 197 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 71 2020 Fast Growth: 67.67% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

Jay Uribe and Junab Ali, CoFounders, Presidents San Antonio

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 254 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 150 2020 Fast Growth: 37.88% Triple Crown Winner: 2015

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 401 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 52 2020 Fast Growth: 82.64% Triple Crown Winner: 2016

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 209 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 59 2020 Fast Growth: 75.44% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 304 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 121 2020 Fast Growth: 46.50% Triple Crown Winner: 2017

N2grate

NexusTek

Ntiva

Steven Freidkin CEO McLean, Va.

Pegasus Technology Solutions

NexusTek specializes in managed IT services for SMBs, offering business technology solutions and services covering hosted infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, Disaster Recovery as a Service, unified communications, and server and network monitoring.

Ntiva offers managed IT, security, cloud and business telephony services, as well as strategic IT consulting and application development expertise. In January Ntiva acquired MSP Equilibrium IT Solutions, its third Chicago-area acquisition.

Pegasus focuses on services around cloud, security, infrastructure and as-a-service solutions. A Hewlett Packard Enterprise Platinum partner, Pegasus describes its services and solutions as “enterprise-class” for companies of all sizes.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 208 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 19 2020 Fast Growth: 155.73% Triple Crown Winner: 2019

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 310 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 20 2020 Fast Growth: 145.09% Triple Crown Winner: 2018, 2019

Steve Halligan CEO Greenbelt, Md.

With a focus on federal agencies, the public sector and large enterprises, N2grate provides expertise in managed services and solutions in data center infrastructure and management tools, cloud and co-location, virtualization, security, networks, and intelligent storage.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 105 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 22 2020 Fast Growth: 136.67% Triple Crown Winner: 2017, 2018

Bill Wosilius CEO Greenwood Village, Colo.

Buck Jones Founder, CEO Frisco, Texas

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 437 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 63 2020 Fast Growth: 71.72% Triple Crown Winner: 2018, 2019

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Red River

Rove

Serving commercial and government customers across the U.S., Red River’s expertise and offerings in managed, consulting and life-cycle services span data center, cloud, networking, security, collaboration, DevOps, analytics and mobility.

Rove serves customers across the Southeast, providing strategic services including multi-cloud integration, public and private cloud, cloud readiness assessment, cloud application migration, application modernization and DevOps.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 49 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 69 2020 Fast Growth: 67.96% Triple Crown Winner: 2015, 2016

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 432 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 43 2020 Fast Growth: 90.43% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 198 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 67 2020 Fast Growth: 69.23% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

Structured Communication Systems

Sycomp

Technologent

Alan Dumas CEO Claremont, N.H.

Ron Fowler President, CEO Clackamas, Ore.

David Brown CEO Charlotte, N.C.

Michael Symons CEO Foster City, Calif.

Saturn Business Systems

Sirius Computer Solutions

Saturn develops data center and cloud solutions incorporating hyperconverged and composable infrastructure, hybrid and private cloud, networking and security and HPE’s GreenLake as-a-service offering.

Sirius provides cloud and managed services, security, and business transformation solutions. In May Sirius acquired Advanced Systems Group—the company’s eighth acquisition since 2014.

Alan Krieger Founder, President New York

Marco Mohajer President Irvine, Calif.

Joe Mertens President, CEO San Antonio

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 21 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 91 2020 Fast Growth: 58.86% Triple Crown Winner: 2017, 2018, 2019

Thrive Networks

Rob Stephenson CEO Foxborough, Mass.

Structured provides managed, professional and systems integration services in security integration, data center operations, multi-cloud architecture and helps customers identify digital transformation opportunities.

Sycomp is a global provider of cloud and data center services and security solutions. The company’s lineup of professional services includes IT system assessment and analysis, design and architecture, integration and implementation, and training and support.

Technologent is a global provider of IT, data, cloud and security services and solutions focused on enterprise-class data centers and IT infrastructure. Technologent offers remote access, remote collaboration and virtual desktop infrastructure bursting solutions.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 178 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 124 2020 Fast Growth: 45.46% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 73 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 135 2020 Fast Growth: 42.32% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 58 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 113 2020 Fast Growth: 50.40% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 278 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 54 2020 Fast Growth: 81.52% Triple Crown Winner: 2019

ThunderCat Technology

vCore

Winslow Technology Group

Zivaro

Tom Deierlein CEO Reston, Va.

Under the tagline “complexity minimized, performance optimized,” ThunderCat Technology delivers IT services and solutions to government organizations, educational institutions and commercial companies.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 48 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 40 2020 Fast Growth: 95.15% Triple Crown Winner: New to list

Steve Leavitt Founder, CEO Scottsdale, Ariz.

vCore specializes in cloud and automation, data center infrastructure, networking and security. Its Operations-as-aService covers systems management, cloud, enterprise Network Operations Centers, identity management and Office 365.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 172 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 65 2020 Fast Growth: 70.09% Triple Crown Winner: 2017, 2018, 2019

Scott Winslow Founder, President Waltham, Mass.

Winslow Technology Group helps businesses realize the value of hyperconverged, software-defined and hybrid cloud infrastructure with its expertise in servers, storage, cloud, security and more.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 356 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 111 2020 Fast Growth: 50.65% Triple Crown Winner: 2017, 2018, 2019

Congratulations to all of this year’s honorees!

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Thrive Networks provides managed services and outsourced IT support.

Core to its offerings is the Thrive5 Methodology covering IT strategy, IT assessment, solution design, implementation and optimization, and 24x7 managed services.

Greg Byles CEO Denver

Zivaro has cloud, data center, network infrastructure, network security, unified communications and big data analytics practices. It is a Cisco Gold partner with Master Networking Specialist and HyperFlex and Webex Contact Center certifications.

2020 SP 500 Rank: No. 104 2020 Fast Growth Rank: No. 106 2020 Fast Growth: 53.33% Triple Crown Winner: 2019

FAST GROWTH

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ON TH E R ECOR D

Should You Prepare For A Protracted Downturn?

H

By Robert Faletra

IGH-TECH has largely been spared many of the challenges facing most industries as a result of the coronavirus and the forced economic shutdown used to combat the contagiousness of COVID-19. But whether that will be the case if economies worldwide are not allowed to return to normal remains unlikely.

To a large degree, high-tech has benefited from the fact that poorly prepared government agencies and politicians worldwide saw no option other than forcing citizens to quarantine.

The run-up in sales of mobile devices, richer networks and videoconferencing technology is part of the proof.

The solution provider community has largely done well selling and supporting the capability to deploy a dispersed work-from-home workforce. But while some of their customers can accomplish their sales and service goals from remote nontouch locations, that’s not true across the board.

With government bailout funds ending, and not unlimited if they are extended, we are soon going to see a jump in job elimination of white-collar workers. If the economy isn’t allowed to fully open soon, the number of furloughed workers is going to skyrocket.

Empty office parks prompted by massive work-from-home initiatives mean local restaurants aren’t operating at capacity.

Cars aren’t being driven as they once were, so gas pumps aren’t cranking nor are tires and brakes wearing down. Business at auto repair shops as a result is slow.

Most importantly, the fact that many schools are being closed to in-person instruction is having a huge ripple effect.

It limits parents’ ability to work as they once did, in turn reducing the productivity and income or eliminating it. With no school sports, the local sporting goods store that provides uniforms and equipment is heading toward closure.

My point here is that with this pandemic problem unsolved since it escaped from China, small businesses across the country are getting clobbered, and many are closing or on the brink.

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To consider the seriousness of this, small business makes up 50 percent of private sector employment and 43 percent of high-tech employment. If you categorize small business as companies with fewer than 500 employees, as the government does, of the roughly 28 million companies in the U.S. only about 18,500 are above that small-business threshold.

The supply chain has been disrupted by all this as well. Roofers are telling customers they have a six-month backlog because they can’t source the materials they need. Bicycle shops are being told by all the major suppliers to not expect any new inventory before April of next year. If you have tried to buy a new household appliance, you know the backorder is months.

The question is what will solution providers, most of which are small businesses as well, face if this goes on much longer?

Nearly every business today is a high-tech consumer. The small local bicycle shop has a point-of-sale system with ordering capabilities and inventory management. Solution providers supply them, and if there are fewer of these shops or if they have less business, so will solution providers at some point.

It’s just smart business to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

The best sales team you can muster is an advantage because while there are customers in trouble, there are others that are growing nicely and weathering the storm.

It’s times like these that make it clear how important it is to build a recurring services revenue model. The surge in sales of solutions that cater toward enabling a remote workforce isn’t over and to some degree will continue as companies reexamine real-estate needs.

But this pandemic has and is causing real harm to the economy, and it isn’t going to rebound the day we begin vaccinating the population. n

B A C K T A L K : Make something happen. Robert Faletra is Executive Chairman of The Channel Company. You can contact him via email at rfaletra@thechannelcompany.com.

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