Inside Coro’s Expanded Channel Commitment And What It Means For Partners

Security is top of mind for many businesses, and partners are looking for solutions that are easy to manage and built to grow with their customers.

Coro is taking a simplified approach to midmarket security. In this CRNtv interview, John Crandall, vice president and general manager of Americas at Coro, discusses his channel background, the company’s 100 percent channel commitment and where partners are seeing opportunity.

Sydney Neely: You’ve just stepped into the GM and VP of Americas role and bring decades of channel experience to Coro. How does your experience shape the way you’re approaching this next chapter for Coro and its partners?

John Crandall: I’ve been in the channel in one capacity or another for the past 25 years. I spent the first seven years of my career working at a channel partner. At that time, we actually mailed catalogs to customers so they could see what was new in the marketplace.

Since then, I’ve worked with some great channel companies. In 2010, I was fortunate to get in on the ground floor at Fortinet and helped develop the channel there for more than 10 years.

What’s unique here at Coro is that our executive leadership team isn’t made up of former enterprise sales leaders. We’re all former channel leaders, starting with our CEO, Joe Sykora. This is a channel-first and channel-only company from the top down.

Sydney Neely: You’ve said Coro is 100 percent channel. What does that really mean for Coro as a company and for the partners you support?

John Crandall: It’s always been important to us to help our channel partners find ways to do business in a profitable and predictable manner. It’s going to be my main focus at Coro to help our partners be profitable and predictable in an underserved segment of the security market. Our top priority is seeing our partners succeed.

Going 100 percent channel wasn’t a tactic. It was a commitment to never compete with our partners. Our partners have thousands of sellers that know their customers and their needs far better than any direct sales team ever will.

One of my first meetings when I came on board was with a large reseller. We talked about Coro and where we would fit in an already crowded security ecosystem. They looked at us as a disruptor in the security space, and that’s exactly what we are. We’re not looking to go into our partner network and cannibalize their current revenue streams. We want to help our partners build new pipeline in an underserved, lean IT security segment.

Sydney Neely: Knowing that you are 100 percent channel, what focus and market opportunity do you see with the partners you’re targeting?

John Crandall: Our focus is to simplify security for customers with limited IT resources, or lean IT. It’s difficult for traditional enterprise-focused security vendors to go downmarket and help these customers correctly.

Those same customers also have a need to manage multiple security offerings, which can create vendor sprawl. Because of our unified approach and owning the entire security stack, we can better serve customers in the SMB and distributed enterprise space.

We’re also experiencing success in the SLED markets across North America, especially in K-12 and local government, where there are limited IT resources and budgets.

Sydney Neely: You’ve said your goal is to be the easiest vendor in the channel to work with. How are you defining easy in practice, and what can partners expect from Coro in 2026 and beyond?

John Crandall: We didn’t build our programs in a vacuum. We went to our partners and asked what they wanted to do. We got their feedback and developed programs designed for them.

We also tried to use best practices from prior experiences. It doesn’t mean we got it right every time, but we learned a lot and tried to bring those successful notions here to Coro. We restructured the company to serve as an extension of our partners and support their needs.

One of the things we found with this new approach is a shortened sales cycle. Partners and customers like the message of simplicity, from partner enablement to purchase order. We’re seeing an average sales cycle of less than 30 days.

In 2026, we’re looking to double down on what we began last year with our 100 percent channel approach. We’ll continue listening to our partner network and tightening alignment. With the help of our partners, Coro will be a leader in the security market as we move into 2027 and beyond.

Coro is focused on making partner success simple, predictable and scalable in the year ahead. For more information, visit Coro.net/partners.