CRN Exclusive: Carbon Black Hires Microsoft Vet As Channel Chief

Carbon Black has tapped Microsoft veteran Victor Gureghian Baez to lead its channel operations as the company looks to strengthen its international footprint and better leverage IT distribution.

Baez comes to the Waltham, Mass.-based endpoint security vendor after five-and-a-half years at Microsoft, where he worked alongside Carbon Black's recently-hired Chief Revenue Officer Thomas Hansen. Baez replaces Ken Hammond, who became Carbon Black's channel chief in December 2015 after leading the channel within Cisco's $2.5 billion security sales organization.

"There's obviously an expectation that they're going to be growing at a pretty fast pace outside of the U.S," Baez told CRN . "A channel strategy has to be global, and you have to be able to leverage the best practices from around the world."

[Related: Carbon Black Hires Former Dropbox Exec As Its First Chief Revenue Officer]

Carbon Black does more than three-quarters of its business today in the United States but believes it could achieve a 60/40 ratio between U.S. and foreign sales in the coming years through rapid growth in its Asia-Pacific, Australian, Japanese and European operations, Baez said. The company already has channel leadership in place in EMEA and APAC, Baez said, and has received positive partner feedback.

"There's a tremendous growth opportunity," Baez said.

Baez believes he is well-suited to lead Carbon Black's international expansion given his experience working in every major region of the world save for the Middle East and Africa. Carbon Black's strong community of incident responders specializing in helping end users understand the dynamics behind a particular breach should give the company a competitive advantage abroad, according to Baez.

Carbon Black should also gain a better foothold with data center infrastructure partners around the globe through a new distributor relationship inked earlier this year with Centennial, Colo.-based Arrow Electronics, Baez said.

Baez expects that most of Carbon Black's partners in North America and elsewhere will ultimately end up going through distribution, although the vendor will continue to offer certification, training and leads to its channel. Going through distributors will make it easier for solution providers to procure and bundle multiple products from a single source.

Baez will be tasked with leading channel revenue and growth as well as accelerating the company's global reseller footprint and incident response program. Carbon Black is looking to accelerate the rollout of its Predictive Security Cloud, which collects and analyzes unfiltered endpoint data to make predictions about – and protect against – future and unknown attacks.

During Baez's time at Microsoft, he spent four-and-a-half years leading the Redmond, Wash.-based vendor's SMB and midmarket channels in Latin America and less than a year spearheading worldwide distribution and indirect channel efforts. Baez spent his first three years at Microsoft working under Hansen, who served as the company's worldwide vice president of small and medium business until September 2015.

Hanson's arrival at Carbon Black played a "pretty big role" in Baez's decision to join the company three months later. Baez said he has been impressed by Hansen's solid track record at Microsoft and elsewhere, as well as his dynamic and entrepreneurial nature.

"We're in a people business," Baez said.

Before his time at Microsoft, Baez spent two years as Belkin's managing director of Latin America, four years at Netgear as a senior director of Latin America, Asia-Pacific and China, and 11 years as a managing director for Tech Data in the Americas and Europe.

Carbon Black drives more than 90 percent of all sales through the channel and has strengthened its partner portfolio with more than 75 MSSP/incident response solution providers worldwide, according to the company.