Channel Exec Turnover Hits A New High At Top Vendors

What got things going in the first place was the retirement of longtime Sun channel executive Gary Grimes. The news came as no great surprise. Next up was the rather shocking news about HP channel chief Kevin Gilroy's being bumped up to take charge of the $73 billion company's SMB efforts. Those two events appeared to be your garden variety news stories of the day"until the floodgates opened. Then IBM dropped a bomb just as this column was going to print that Michael Borman, general manager of its worldwide partner group, will move on to oversee the iSeries brand. He is being succeeded by Donn Atkins, responsible for IBM software's sales and marketing efforts.

So, it seems Sun and HP are not alone in the influx of new executives who will be overseeing their channel programs from a North American or worldwide basis. The following companies are also in the midst of major changes in their channel programs: Symantec, McAfee (formerly Network Associates), SAP, Maxtor, Hitachi Data Systems, Juniper Networks and IBM, just to name a few. Some of these companies have either hired promising new talent or fired the talent they had. Others have promoted a successful channel chief into a new role, then put a fresh face in his or her place. Suffice to say, it is going to be a wild ride for the next several months as these new players bring in new talent to support their efforts while exerting their will and strategic vision on their organizations. In the backdrop, solution providers will have to build relationships with many of the new players to gain insight into just how channel-friendly and savvy the new blood is.

The more I study these companies and their channel scenarios, the more worried I get. HP's Gilroy was not even 100 days into combining channels before being tapped to run the company's SMB efforts. Meanwhile, SAP has hired the determined Donna Troy, who channel-converted McAfee to make a serious play for partners. Just before the SAP move, besieged Maxtor laid off Stephen DiFranco, who oversaw many of the channel efforts there. Then Juniper, after an exhaustive search, hired Tushar Kothari from Cisco to figure out this whole channel thing. Just a few weeks ago, Symantec shuffled the deck and brought in an unknown to head its U.S. channel efforts. Hitachi Data Systems then suffered the loss of a longtime channel veteran to a consulting firm. Is your head spinning? Mine is.

Vendors are kidding themselves if they believe these changes will not unnerve or rattle their partner communities. Partners will need reassurance that prior channel commitments will not be rolled back. This is still a market built on trust and long-standing relationships, so these types of changes are unsettling for solution-provider executives who make resource commitments based on a handshake or phone call with one of these channel execs. Vendors need to also keep in mind that it has been a long time since such a wholesale change in channel leadership took place. Theirs is not the only company going through such transformation. Theirs is not the only company doing a 50-city roadshow with the new channel executive. Pity the poor VARs who have built businesses around several of the companies mentioned.

Yes, I know, change is inevitable, but it is how it is handled that is most important. These changes all have major ramifications for solution providers, who have built relationships with these executives and get nervous about high-level personnel changes, which usually accompany alterations to programs and strategies based on the incoming individual's beliefs or philosophies.

Symantec, for example, has made a profound change not only to the structure of its channel program"segmenting partners by size of customers they cater to"but also on the personnel side. Symantec's longtime partner executive, Allyson Seelinger, is settling into a new role overseeing the security-software company's worldwide partner network, while Randy Cochran takes over channel sales for the Americas. Seelinger, the 2002 VARBusiness Channel Executive of the Year, was popular, visible and engaged with partners. The move was out of her control, but Symantec picked one heck of time to make the change. While you cannot argue with the company's past success, these moves will test its commitment to the channel and ability to maintain consistency in partner relations.

A word about Cochran: He's a software industry veteran coming to Symantec from Heidrick and Struggles, where he was an executive recruiter for the past six years. In many respects, he is an interesting successor to Seelinger and will have a significant learning curve. In the short term, Cochran plans on being a road warrior, visiting as many partners as he can during the next few weeks. "My focus is to build on the platform [Allyson] established and listen to the partners," Cochran says. "Let's not forget what it is like to sit on the other side of the table."

Like Seelinger, Gilroy fought hard to bring balance to the argument that HP needed to sell more products direct if it were to grow. Gilroy fought successfully, with his achievements well noted by the higher ups. But he never made it to the centennial mark of his "first 100 days" on that job; the powers that be at HP gave him a sweet offer to run the company's SMB business, and Gilroy received all the perks befitting an HP senior vice president. HP has not yet named a successor to Gilroy, but his role is being filled on an interim basis by Scott Anderson, acting general manager of HP's Solution Partner Organization. Anderson has some 17 years of channel partner experience at HP. Still, having an interim executive in this strategic role is dangerous. One can only wonder why HP did not wait to make Gilroy's promotion public until it had decided on his successor.

The obvious question about this new crop of executives is will they fight as hard as Gilroy or Seelinger to convince their companies the channel deserves more resources, investment and support? Will they be willing to accept the slings and arrows of those deriding the channel's value inside their organizations? To accomplish those tasks, it takes political savviness from executives willing to put their careers on the line for the sake of solution providers.

Troy certainly proved she was willing to take risks at McAfee, where she helped establish the company as a serious player in the solution-provider community. "Donna fought the battle to move from direct to indirect," says successor David Roberts, who left Microsoft to join the firm as senior vice president of North American channels. He is one of the few people still in the business who can say he called on ComputerLand.

"My job here is to resolve channel-conflict issues and build as much channel capacity as we can," he says. Roberts must also continue waging the channel battle inside McAfee, which generates some 85 percent of its revenue from direct efforts. "I am up to fighting the battle and excited to do it," he says.

Remember the Rumble in the Jungle? That was the unforgettable 1974 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Troy and Kothari better look at the video because they will have to be pugilists in their new rings as they fight to push their vision for leveraging channel partners forward. Juniper is an exciting opportunity for Kothari, who helped build Cisco's channel, but he is walking into an organization that has a distinct direct culture and one that does not yet understand the channel. Kothari's appointment does signal Juniper's seriousness about the channel, but by no means does it guarantee success. After all, the company's mainstream networking gear is at the high end of the spectrum. Kothari should enjoy his honeymoon period because when it ends it will feel like a left cross from Ali.

Brace yourself for some sparring over the next several months as these channel execs get a feel for the challenges that face them. Let me know if you think they are up to the task at hand at [email protected].