Nicole Dezen

The saying goes, you usually don’t change horses midstream. And yet, Microsoft saw a change with its senior-most channel executive role – with former channel chief Rodney Clark not only leaving the company in May, but Microsoft breaking up his responsibilities among three new roles for executives promoted from within.

At the top of the partner organization is Nicole Dezen, who holds the title of chief partner officer and corporate vice president of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft’s Global Partner Solutions organization. She reports to Nick Parker, the former CVP of GPS and the new president of the Industry & Partner Sales (IPS) organization.

Other title changes to accompany Dezen’s include David Smith becoming vice president of channel sales and Julie Sanford serving as vice president of partner go-to-market (GTM), programs and experiences. Both will report to Dezen.

Smith focuses on sales and business growth with channel partners while Sanford is accountable for partner programs and GTM engines.

Dezen had already been promoted in August to the role of CVP of device partner sales. She has more than 25 years of tech sales experience, including 15 at Microsoft. Dezen joined Microsoft in 2007. Past titles include general manager for consumer device sales in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Dezen and her team oversaw the continued execution of Microsoft’s sweeping partner program changes in 2022 – namely, the implementation of Microsoft’s new commerce experience (NCE) and partner capability scores (PCS).

The two changes continue to prove controversial as 2023 gets underway. All eyes within the tech giant’s 400,000-member partner ecosystem are on Dezen and her team on how they will stick the landing as Microsoft remakes its partner program.

Going for the tech giant is, despite the headaches of its partner program changes, Microsoft remains the No. 2 cloud vendor in the market.

The vendor also has plenty of product offerings – including cybersecurity, its Teams collaboration application and its Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) tool – that could cover multiple customer needs as the economy continues to look shaky.

Plus, the Microsoft multiple for partners – with services-led partners making $7.63 for every $1 of Microsoft revenue – is hard to break away from for partners who have built a strong practice with the vendor.