Former Microsoft Exec Jennifer Heard Joins Turbonomic To Focus On Creating Opportunities For Channel Partners

Jennifer Heard, formerly of Microsoft, hasrecently joinedBoston-based Turbonomic as the company's senior vice president of global strategic partners. In an interview with CRNtv, Heard discusses her focus on changing the way partners engage with the channel, specifically when it comes to the management of data centers.

Turbonomic is a 400-person cloud and virtualization software company featuring a product called VMTurbo Operations Manager. Its software is a self-managing, autonomic platform that assures peak performance of applications in the cloud.

[Related:CRN Exclusive: Turbonomic SVP Jennifer Heard Looks To The Channel As 'Force Multiplier']

Part of Heard’s focus is for partners to make a profit by automating how they maintain their customer cloud accounts – moving the maintenance part of their portfolio to the more strategic part of their portfolio. By doing this, she said, partners will see a 30 to 50 percent return on investment.

"My vision is that the channel is the best place to ignite the energy, the passion, and the commitment to saving the customers money with their data center," she said in an interview with CRNtv. "One data center at a time, we’re going to change the world, and that can only be done through the channel."