Citrix Names SAP Veteran As New Channel Chief

Citrix Systems on Thursday named a seasoned former SAP and Oracle channel leader to take the helm of its partner organization.

Bronwyn Hastings, who saw years of channel leadership experience at the two enterprise software giants, will start Tuesday as Citrix' senior vice president for worldwide channel sales and ecosystem, leading partner sales worldwide, go-to-market partner programs and partner marketing for all Citrix products.

Hastings will take over from Diane Fanelli, another SAP import, who served as interim channel chief after Craig Stilwell, a highly popular and longtime Citrix executive, left the company in July to become chief revenue officer at Carbonite.

[Related: Citrix Channel Chief To Partners: It’s Time To Expand Practices Beyond Virtualization]

Hastings, a native of Australia, spent the last three years at SAP as senior vice president of business development. Before that, she ran the German software giant's channel org in Asia for eight years as senior vice president for ecosystems & channels APJ.

Her time at SAP followed 13 years at Oracle, where she held many senior roles in the channel org, often in the Asia Pacific region.

Citrix, in a statement, said Hastings will "spearhead the company’s efforts to deliver market-leading digital workspace solutions that transform the employee experience and the way work gets done through its robust ecosystem of partners."

When she officially starts her new job next week, Hastings will report to Mark Ferrer, Citrix' executive vice president and chief revenue officer, who also came to the company from SAP in 2017.

Fanelli, who started at Citrix in April after 25 years at SAP, often holding senior channel positions,

will work side-by-side with Hastings to ensure a seamless transition. Then, at the start of the new year, she will take a new "strategic leadership role in the Worldwide Sales and Services organization," the company said.

Citrix has more than 10,000 partners across several categories: Citrix Solution Advisor, Citrix Service Provider, System Integrator, ISV and Value Added Distributor.

Craig Stilwell took the channel chief position in December of 2016 after 17 years in sales and channel leadership roles at the company.

In his two-and-a-half-year tenure leading the channel org, Stilwell forged close relationships with partners who were navigating a transition from selling licenses from Citrix' on-premises virtualization products to earning recurring revenue through a new spate of cloud-focused offerings.

"In a multi-cloud world of increasing IT complexity, focusing exclusively on application and desktop virtualization leaves money on the table," Stilwell told CRN earlier this year before the company's Citrix Summit conference.

Stilwell touted Citrix Workspace and Citrix Cloud as the products opening up new lines of partner revenue.

Nancy Pautsch, president of Envision IT, a Citrix partner based in Madison, Wis., doesn't know the new channel chief, but hopes she maintains the active dialogue with partners that Stilwell was known for.

"The two-way feedback loop makes Citrix and the partner community, respectively, better, and ultimately benefits our shared customers," Pautsch told CRN.

Hastings will have to focus on keeping partners engaged as they look to add value to the subscription model Citrix has been encouraging them to pursue. That should apply to all market segments, from enterprise to commercial to mid-market to SMB, she said.

Under Stilwell, Citrix ramped-up its partner enablement efforts and "produced great content" to consume through various means, Pautsch said. "It’s appreciated and please keep it up."