100 People You Don't Know But Should 2014 (Part 2)

Under The Radar

Hidden behind the shining stars on vendors' channel management teams are lots of people who work just as hard toward the success of partners. These behind-the-scenes players may be the driving force behind a partner's new recurring revenue strategy, a high-level channel executive at a lesser-known company, or they may not even be part of channel management, but someone who is still creating a strategy or technology vision that impacts solution providers in the field.

Here we present Part 2 of 100 People You Don't Know But Should, CRN's annual look at the individuals building channel programs, designing special incentives, educating solution providers and evangelizing hot technology.

Also, be sure to check out Part 1 of CRN's look at the unsung heroes behind successful channel partnerships.

John Donnelly, MobileIron

Vice President of Sales

Donnelly is driving MobileIron's global revenue growth and sales operations. During his tenure, he has helped grow grown MobileIron from a start-up to $100 million in revenue in 2013. Almost every deal has been done on channel partner paper as MobileIron is 100 percent focused on the channel.

Frank Colletti, N-able by SolarWinds

Vice President of Sales

Colletti travels the globe to recruit and inspire N-able MSP partners to push the limit. If you catch him at an industry event, pick his brain on best practices the top-performing MSPs are using to generate explosive growth. He's playing an instrumental role in driving N-able's global remote monitoring and management solution and the widespread success of its MSP partners.

David Weeks, N-able by SolarWinds

Channel Strategy Manager

Weeks advises MSPs around the world on best practices -- not just related to N-able’s N-central platform, but also on business acumen and growth. Beyond his in-depth channel understanding, he's lauded for his responsive nature and drive to do right by partners. He is quick to reply to requests and always willing to lend a hand to an MSP in need.

Brian Pawlowski, NetApp

Senior Vice President and Member of Technical Staff

Pawlowski spent much of last year holed up in a clandestine off-campus location out of sight of the rest of his peers as he secretly led development of FlashRay, NetApp's built-from-the-ground-up all-flash array. As details started to emerge, buzz quickly grew as partners realized they'd soon get their hands on some red-hot future-proof technology.

Thomas Stanley, NetApp

Senior Vice President of Global Partner Sales and Alliances

Stanley is very busy maintaining NetApp's historically high channel sales focus in the wake of a move starting this summer by the company to focus on large enterprise sales. His experience in the channel will be key to ensure NetApp's channel partners get their share of those big deals even as direct reps knock on enterprise doors.

Gary Ochs, Netskope

Vice President of Channel Sales

Cloud app security vendor Netskope planted its channel stake in the ground in August when it launched its channel program and brought in Ochs to run it. It tapped Ochs, a 10-year veteran of IBM's Q1 Labs, to usher it through what it expects to be a period of rapid growth. Built with simplicity in mind, the new program includes a referral component, training and demos to get partners off to a running start.

Daniel McAllister, NetSuite

Regional Vice President for Global System Integrator Partners

The former SAP alliances executive made the move to NetSuite last December and is already having a big impact driving strong relationships with global system integrators. With McAllister driving forward a new system integrator program and joint marketing initiatives, NetSuite is becoming an ERP force to be reckoned with in not just the Fortune 5 million, but the Fortune 500.

Kevin Goodman, NTT America

Director of Strategy and Marketing, Indirect Global Solutions

Goodman is leading the channel charge within NTT America's cloud, IP and data center services business, overseeing the unit's recently launched Global Solutions Channel Partner Program. Targeted at both telecom agents and VARs, the program for the first time opens up NTT America's networking, communications, and cloud services offerings, such as IaaS, to the channel.

Steve Kaplan, Nutanix

Vice President of Channel and Strategic Sales

A former VAR and entrepreneur, Kaplan has an inside track with the channel as he builds a partner network for the upstart hyper-converged infrastructure firm. Kaplan has been working with leading-edge disruptive technology on the channel side for years, both as the founder of two VAR firms that were among the first partners of Citrix and VMware, and as an author.

Bill Fitzgerald, Okta

Vice President of Channel Sales

Fitzgerald this summer infused Okta's channel program with new life by adding new incentives and stronger support for solution providers working with the red-hot cloud identity management vendor. He's also targeting Microsoft partners because he says Okta's platform can add stronger authentication and privilege management capabilities for Office 365 migrations.

Sheng Yeo, OrionVM

CEO

Yeo and some college-mates back in Sydney developed a new architecture for cloud computing systems modeled after supercomputers. They launched their IaaS company down-under, and recently set up shop in the U.S., offering a white-label program and huge margins for resellers. Partners say you should believe the hype, as the company delivers its storage and orchestration capabilities as promised.

Tom Kelley, Palo Alto Networks

Senior Director of Global Distribution

If you want a sign of just how channel-committed Palo Alto Networks is look no further than the hiring of 25 year channel veteran Kelley, who joined in March. The former vice president of North America distribution for Polycom already has strong ties with top distributors and is moving quickly to take those relationships to another level. Take this as just one more sign that the security company is on track to grow its business by more than 50 percent annually.

Yudy Vinograd, Paragon Software Group

Director of Channel Sales

Vinograd joined Paragon earlier this year, and went big out the gate by overhauling the company's North American reseller program and rebranding it as Pure Channel. The revamp eliminated the need for revenue commitments, certifications and contracts and added in a guaranteed 30 percent margin. Partners are seeing close rates of well over 40 percent since the program launched.

Dixie Baker, Piston Cloud Computing

Vice President, Field Operations and Sales

Baker is bringing her extensive experience managing inside sales, field sales and sales engineers to bear she ramps up the sales machine at Piston, which is now flat-out driving demand for its new OpenStack 3.5 distribution, launched last month. The new release includes a cost of ownership calculator that lets customers see how Piston's OpenStack compares to the competition.

Mark Arman, Polycom

Vice President of Worldwide Channels

Arman in June stepped in as Polycom's channel chief, taking on responsibilities for leading the unified communications vendor's global partner program and overall channel strategy. He joins as the company aggressively shifts its focus from hardware-based UC appliances to software and services -- a change reflected by its new, subscription-based RealPresence One platform -- and attempts to nudge its partners toward the recurring revenue model.

Adrianna Bustamante, Rackspace

Senior Sales Manager, Digital Practice

Bustamante earns praise for nurturing and growing Rackspace's Digital Practice partner ecosystem. She's tasked with care and feeding of systems integrators, digital agencies, and Rackspace's commerce and content platform partners. Over the past three years, Rackspace has doubled its Digital Practice area sales every year.

Decoa Parker, Rackspace

Senior Program Manager, Partner Sales

Parker is responsible for Rackspace's SaaS Partner Program and is credited with developing the go-to-market and partner/Rackspace joint value propositions for its Media and Entertainment solution. This program combines the unique capabilities of our SaaS partners with the company's famed Fanatical Support of Managed Cloud service offering.

Wendy Cartee, Ruckus Wireless

Vice President of Marketing

Cartee has helped Ruckus become a channel favorite when it comes to networking hardware and wireless solutions for the SMB space. This year, the company has especially focused on driving new recurring revenue opportunities for partners, bringing to market new products that let customers consume Wi-Fi as a subscription-based service.

Lauren Robinette, Samsung Knox

Senior Manager, Channels

Robinette has lofty goals for the coming year with the aim of adding over 1,000 new VARs and systems integrators to the Samsung KNOX partner program. With a good answer for the challenge of enterprise mobile device security and promises of profit margins of up to 70 percent, she shouldn't have a hard time getting partners to hear her out.

Luciano Ravenna, SAP

Regional Director Solution Center, SAP North America

Ravenna wins rave reviews as one of the key partner-facing executives that has dramatically changed the sales culture at SAP. He knows what drives partners -- opportunity and profitability -- and is bringing a new generation of cloud partners into the SAP fold. He's helping prove that SAP supports its partners and has channel in its DNA.

Christie Hamberis, ScanSource

Vice President of Merchandising, ScanSource Security

From POS and Barcode, to Catalyst, to major vendor relationships such as Avaya, Hamberis has helped lead merchandising for many of ScanSource's major business units and focus areas since joining more than 18 years ago. Most recently, Hamberis has been in charge of driving merchandising for ScanSource Security, helping drive a record sales quarter for the Worldwide Barcode & Security division.

John Harrison, ScanSource

Vice president of sales, ScanSource POS and Barcode, US and Canada

Harrison brings more than 20 years of experience to his role, where he draws on a wealth of vertical market expertise from areas such as state and local government, life sciences, transportation/mining, manufacturing, energy and retail, to name a few. His efforts helped drive record sales for the division in the last quarter of 2014, up 10 percent over the year before.

Tom Walker, ScanSource

Vice President of Sales, ScanSource Catalyst

After helping drive business development and sales for ScanSource Catalyst for more than 8 years, Walker was promoted in 2013 to his current role, where he is responsible for strategic sales and helping resellers find new areas of growth throughout the division, which encompases voice, video and unified communications technologies.

Tony Thompson, SilverPeak

Vice President of Marketing

As the key driver of Silver Peak's product marketing and global communications efforts, Thompson has helped the company earn its reputation as a trailblazer in software-defined WAN optimization. Earlier this year, the company was named a "Leader" in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization, an accolade earned by aggressively championing the virtual WAN model.

George Hope, SimpliVity

Head of Global Alliances

Over 12 years of experience managing channels and partners for EMC give Hope a sharp edge in helping upstart SimpliVity quickly mature to take a leading role in hyper-converged infrastructure. His January move to SimpliVity signals that the company is serious about not just making a splash in the nascent hyper-converged infrastructure business, but also about doing it via the channel.

Craig Sieve, SimpliVity

Regional Partner Manager

Sieve is bringing Simplivity's game-changing hyper converged infrastructure to regional partners at a breakneck pace, particularly now as the vendor is ramping up a new channel-only partnership to bring its technology to the Cisco UCS platform. A one-time co-founder of solution provider Foedus, the tech veteran gets that it's all about relationships and knows what channel partners need from their vendors partners in order to thrive.

Tom Blair, SoftLayer, an IBM Company

Senior Vice President of Global Sales

Is there any hotter place to be at IBM than the heart of the sales engine that's driving its SoftLayer cloud business? You'll find Blair smack-dab in the middle of it all, driving everything from business development to sales engineering to channel and alliance partnerships. He joined SoftLayer in November 2010 and hasn't let up since.

Keith Norbie, SolidFire

Senior Business Development Manager

Norbie evangelized the flash storage industry for years as a solution provider, going so far as to start his own flash storage conference that in its first year attracted nearly all the key vendors. That experience will pay off for SolidFire which now has exclusive access to hi storage insights and knowledge of the channel.

Keith Meehan, Sophos

Director of Sales Operations

A well-oiled sales machine can be the secret sauce that pushes a vendor's quarter from good to out-of-this-world. Meehan is keeping the sales trains running and is credited with building out all of processes Sophos's sales teams are using to track accounts, log customer status updates and provide forecasting.

Caralyn Stern, Sophos

Director of Americas Marketing

Stern is lauded as a tireless worker who relentlessly on raising Sophos's profile with solution providers as well as to end user customers in order to drive leads and sales to partners. She works behind the scenes to ensure all marketing and events run smoothly --from funding, to set up to lead distribution.

John Emard, Symantec

Senior Director, North America Channel Operations & Programs

Emard hangs his hat on a series of guiding principles: honesty, integrity, respect, communication, accountability, action and trust, a combination that makes for a channel advocate partners can count on. A 15-year industry veteran, Emard's background includes extensive management experience in sales and operations across the information security and information management landscape.

Rick Kramer, Symantec

Vice President, Sales, National Solution Providers and Global Integrators, North America

Kramer has custody of Symantec's North American Solution Providers and Global Integrators organization, which means he covers the top solution providers in the region and manages $250 million in annual bookings. His track record is more than proven when it comes to building and leading teams across field, specialty and channel sales.

Jana Valenti, Symantec

Director, Channel Marketing

A 10-year Symantec veteran known as a dynamic, results-driven marketing guru, Valenti develops marketing strategy, plans and programs to support Symantec's indirect sales channels, including its North American Large Account Resellers, national solution providers, regional solution providers and MSPs. She's making sure Symantec's channel message is heard loud and clear.

Dave Dennis, Synnex

Senior Vice President, HP, Product Management

Described as "phenomenal" by his colleagues, Dennis has held a variety of sales and marketing positions at Synnex since joining the company more than 20 years ago but most recently has been leading the distributor's HP business, where his long-time expertise has helped drive big growth with HP and earned Synnex a number of repeat awards from the vendor.

Rob Moyer, Synnex

Vice President, Microsoft Global Business Unit and Cloud Services

Moyer's background in positions at VARs, OEMs and distributors helps bring a well-rounded perspective to his role leading the Microsoft Global Business Unit and CloudSolv, Synnex's cloud computing platform. His efforts to guide both Microsoft and cloud strategies for partners helped land Synnex as a finalist for the Microsoft 2014 Distributor Partner of the Year Award.

Kirk Nesbit, Synnex

Vice President, Design & Support Services

With a position helping lead partners' technical services for solution design, deployment and ongoing management, Nesbit is at the front lines of helping Synnex solution providers transform their businesses. As the industry is headed to a more services-led model, Nesbit is helping solution providers leave their histories as transactional companies behind them.

Chris Archibald, Talari Networks

Senior Director, Channel Management

WAN optimization vendor Talari brought Archibald in this summer as part of a company-wide effort to grow its channel business, giving him the mandate to expand the vendor's relationships with solutions providers, distributors and resellers worldwide. He is also tasked with helping existing partners by streamlining sales, marketing, training and support efforts.

Phil Filippelli, Tech Data

Vice President, e-Business

Filippelli develops and executes Tech Data's e-business strategy and works to help solution providers streamline operations and generate revenue. Since coming to Tech Data in 2011, he has guided the team that helped create Tech Data's award-winning StreamOne global cloud platform, the AccessTD app and the new tdSMB web site, released in March 2014.

Marc McClure, Tech Data

Director, Field Sales

McClure oversees Tech Data's field-based selling resources, priding himself on helping partners become get a sneak peek at where the market is headed. He noted in a recent blogpost the distributor has made significant investments in the past several years to help solution providers pursue cloud platforms and other advanced tech developments in an efficient manner.

Amanda England, Telesphere

Senior Channel Executive

Cloud VoIP player Telesphere this summer brought England into a newly created role to develop and build agent relationships with partners in Texas and the surrounding region. She's described by colleagues as "a conscientious, creative and tenacious salesperson, known for building new business and forging strong relations with business partners."

Alan Fortier, TraceSecurity

Director of Channel Sales

Fortier has spent the last two years bringing the full weight of his experience driving partner recruitment, partner development, go-to-market strategies and channel training to bear as he builds up TraceSecurity's partner base and drives the company's cloud-based security offerings to partners building IT Governance, Risk and Compliance business practices.

Mario Forziati, VCE

Director Channels East and Canada

A highly regarded Cisco sales executive with outstanding partner and customer contacts who made the move to VCE, Forziati deserves a lot of credit for continuing to drive VCE sales momentum in the East and Canada, where he's forging strong channel partnerships and making sure VCE partners have the tools they need to succeed.

Doug Hazelman, Veeam

Vice President of Product Strategy

If "cool" means helping grow your business so quickly that VMware asks you to withdraw from its partner conference, then Veeam's Hazelman is cool. In nearly seven years with Veeam, Hazelman has been the company's chief evangelizer, making him very busy teaching channel partners why protecting data in VMware environments needs a different approach from that offered by traditional data protection vendors.

Michelle Gialanella, Verizon Wireless

Consultant, Partner Experience

Verizon has revamped its channel strategy over the past few years with Gialanella, as partner experience consultant at the U.S. carrier and service provider giant, helping to fuel those efforts. Following a massive redesign of its U.S. partner program last year, Verizon's Enterprise Solutions business said in July it's opening an additional 1,700 of its top enterprise accounts to partners.

Eric Herzog, Violin Memory

CMO and SVP of Business Development

After years of successfully marketing the storage industry's largest vendor, EMC, what is the natural next move? Why not to Violin Memory, a storage vendor that was almost written off by the industry just a year ago but is now seeing a resurgence of excitement thanks in large part to Herzog's solid planning and evangelism.

Mathew Lodge, VMware

Vice President, Cloud Services

Leading the charge on an aggressive expansion of VMware cloud services, Lodge has changed the game with a pay as you go model -- even on a per minute basis -- for VMware’s vCloud Air public cloud with a pay as you go pricing model.

David Bennett, Webroot

Vice President of Worldwide Consumer and SMB Sales

Bennett drove the rollout of a new partner program that saw cloud-based antivirus vendor Webroot invest in joint marketing and seminars, white papers, training and support to grow its base of resellers in North America and attract managed service providers with a recently released console. The company now counts over 1,200 solution providers.

Lynn Murphy, Westcon

Executive Vice President of North America

After 17 years with the distributor, Murphy is known within Westcon as one of the strongest executives in the channel space, always bringing new thought leadership and trends into the organization. In May, Murphy was rewarded to her efforts with a promotion to her current role, where she is keeping the distributor's North American business on track and in synch with partner needs.

Jay Rubin, WTG

COO

As Chief Operating Officer of WTG, Rubin has no doubt played a key role in the master agent's shift toward cloud services and the recurring revenue model. WTG, as of May, had seen a 10 percent jump in its recurring revenue in 2014, which now constitutes 90 percent of its total revenue.