In Realignment, BMC Won't Fill Global Channel Chief Post

This week John McMahon, BMC's new senior vice president of worldwide sales and services, acknowledged in an e-mail interview that Cook's last day at BMC was June 30. But he declined to disclose the circumstances surrounding her departure.

McMahon said he sees managing BMC's global channels as part of his own responsibilities and the company would not be hiring a new global channel chief. McMahon joined BMC in April when it acquired BladeLogic where McMahon was chief operating officer.

"We have been working to focus BMC's attention even more tightly on our channel partners," McMahon said. "To help strengthen those working relationships, we moved BMC's channel organization from a highly centralized model to a more flexible, geo-based model so that the channel is more tightly integrated with the specific needs of different geographies around the world," he wrote.

Becky Fuller, BMC's Americas channels vice president, now reports to Ken Mellet, vice president and general manager for North America, according to McMahon. Bjorn Mattsson, the company's long-time channels and partners director in EMEA, now reports to Luca Lazzaron, who oversees BMC's EMEA operations. And Paul Arthur, channels director in Asia Pacific, now reports to Larry Vaughan, vice president of sales and services and head of the worldwide emerging markets business, McMahon said.

"BMC is completely committed to the channel," McMahon said in his e-mail. While noting that he had been with the company only a short period of time, "the importance of our channel program to BMC's success is very clear to me."

One BMC channel partner expressed mixed emotions about the changes. The company's channel management is not as visible as before, "so that's definitely a concern," said David Savino, vice president of professional services at Column Technologies, a Downers Grove, Ill.-based BMC Elite partner that resells BMC products and provides implementation, training and support services. He also said there has been some conflict with the vendor's direct sales operations.

Savino said BMC also has been increasing its certification requirements for partners that, while increasing solution providers' costs, should raise the bar for resellers and improve customer service. "So we think that's a good thing," he said. And he said the company generally remains committed to the channel, particularly praising Fuller as "a strong channel advocate."

BMC relies on the channel for about 30 percent of its $2 billion in annual sales, according to its application for the VARBusiness Partner Program Guide earlier this year. The BMC Partner Network program, launched in Aug. 2005, had 84 partners in North America and 400 worldwide, at the time of the application.