2011 Women of the Channel
Our 2011 Women of the Channel, our annual who's who of female channel executives, spotlights the industry's top female talent.
2011 Women of the Channel
Power 100: Part 1
Power 100: Part 2
Summer Reading List
How To Perform A Work-Life Balancing Act
10 Tips For Young Women Just Breaking Into IT
110% + 110% = Exhausted
Director, VAR Sales
Websense
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 18
Highlights: Websense's VAR partner base grew significantly in 2010, scoring several technical achievements and growing incremental revenue by selling across the entire Websense Triton solution, says Acquista. Websense also introduced a new team of field sales engineers in 2010 to better support channel partners and invested in more resources and support for those partners that are invested in Websense.
Goals: In 2011, Websense has been focused on helping partners grow their incremental business, seize new opportunities and build their brand by offering greater marketing and demand-generation resources. The company is also working to ensure partners have what they need to sell Websense more effectively and better support their customers, according to Acquista. In addition, she says, Websense will continue to invest in the technical enablement of partners to help build their security specialization and bolster their business value.
Director, North American Region Channel & Distribution, Sales & Marketing Group
Intel
Years in position: 6 months
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: The most significant achievement for Alt was the launch of the Intel Technology Provider program, which aims to support the sales and marketing efforts of all Intel channel partners.
Goals: Alt's aim is to evolve Intel channel programs to encompass new channel partners selling Intel products at all levels of integration. Part of that goal is to continue to better enable system builders, ODMs and resellers in new business models, new vertical markets and new product categories.
Vice President, Corporate Marketing
NetEnrich
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 14
Highlights: Anaya provided strategic communications and market strategy for the launch of Ingram Micro's new divisional initiative introduced in November 2010. In April, she helped develop and launch NetEnrich's Closet to Cloud program and brand platform.
Goals: Anaya aims to establish sales, marketing and enablement support within NetEnrich's Partner Program to give 400 partners new tools to grow and develop their IT and managed services businesses. She plans to develop new IT service products that make it easier for channel partners to deliver remote managed networking, virtualization, storage and cloud services around the hardware/software solutions they sell.
Vice President, Worldwide Channel Sales
Guidance Software
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Ash was instrumental in the implementation of Guidance Software's new Guidance Global Partner Program, which gives channel partners the ability to build new service practices or augment existing practices around EnCase Cybersecurity. Ash also was named a 2011 Channel Chief.
Goals: In the next year, Ash plans to ensure that Guidance Software has training programs in place to enable partners to sell more effectively and establish programs that allow them to drive their own professional services around Guidance Software's products. She also plans to improve internal processes to make it easier for partners to do business with the company.
Senior Director, Channel Marketing Americas
Symantec
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: Atchison unveiled Symantec Campaign Creator and the Symantec Partner Support Center for Marketing to enable partners, specifically SMBs with limited time and budget, to improve the speed and efficiency of their marketing campaigns and leverage Symantec's marketing resources to drive more demand for their businesses. In addition, Atchison focused on enhancing the company's partner community by offering tools such as Content Syndication, Social Media, Marketing Menu and sales and technical enablement activities.
Goals: Atchison will continue to focus on driving more engagement with partners and help them utilize Symantec's partner resources to ensure their success. This includes the development of more tools, programs and incentives to help partners drive more revenue. Other priorities include additional training, as well as taking advantage of Symantec's Partner Community and social media to better engage with partners, and continuing to foster the relationships between Symantec's channel partners and global strategic alliances.
Senior Vice President, Global & Transformational Partnerships, Worldwide Partner Organization
Cisco Systems
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 6
Highlights: The creation of Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organization has allowed for a more strategic and integrated focus on global and transformational partners, says Bahr, which helps Cisco define new business models and routes to market.
Goals: Bahr will continue to help partners get closer to customers to address business solution needs and help them expand their services offerings by mapping them to the following Architectural Plays: Borderless Network, virtualization and collaboration. These position partners as the business process innovators for customers and reinforce their value in helping customers achieve their business goals, according to Bahr.
Vice President, Sales
Bell Techlogix
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Baker cites 12% overall company growth, 45% services growth and the success of data center monitoring as key accomplishments. Bell Techlogix also added the Cisco Unified Computing System specialization and practice as well as EMC to its product lines and completed several large virtualization projects.
Goals: Baker hopes to achieve 15% company growth and 30% services growth with the formation of a National Business Development team. She also aims to launch a Managed Service Provider offering.
Global Director, Partner Programs
Compuware
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Compuware made many key strides last year, says Baker. It invested in key technologies that bring partners closer to the business and provided them with customizable marketing collateral and sales tools. In addition, Compuware integrated separate business units into the Compuware Partner Network program; launched a specific initiative for service providers to enable the cloud; and held its first global partner conference.
Goals: Baker plans to roll out improved global online training, introduce an individual certification program and accreditation for partners, and launch new programs to drive adoption for sales, technical and marketing enablement. In addition, she says, Compuware's business is growing at a rapid pace so onboarding team members will be as critical as onboarding partners. Compuware's goal is to streamline that process and have channel managers ready and effective as soon as possible.
Chief of Staff, Vice President, Channel Strategy, Data Management
CA Technologies
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 23
Highlights: Over the past year, Balent notes, CA has accelerated partner and customer confidence through the alignment of sales teams, the adoption of new product releases, the introduction of profitability programs such as "More Deals, More Dollars" and the launch of lead referral programs.
Goals: Balent's key focus will be arming service providers with data management solutions and programs that give them greater services depth across a broader set of customers. Service providers will be able to offer a hybrid cloud model of on-premise and off-premise data management solutions. In addition, CA is zeroing in on profitable channel programs, playbooks, qualified leads and alignment of regional sales/technical teams to partners.
Director, IBMSales, Enterprise Computing Solutions
Arrow Electronics
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: In a year of slow IT spending recovery and dramatic change in the marketplace, Banc says she is proud to have driven double-digit, year--over-year growth across Arrow's IBM Services practice. Banc also led Arrow ECS' North American IBM group through a strategic business transformation, creating greater economies of scale and a more consistent support model.
Goals: Banc's goals are to expand current key areas to grow Arrow's overall portfolio of opportunities and focus on resources. Banc says she is committed to providing employees with enhanced tools to grow personally and professionally and participate in Arrow's success at a more engaged level.
Director, OracleGroup Services, Enterprise Computing Solutions
Arrow Electronics
Years in position: 8
Years in channel: 23
Highlights: Barkopoulos has been working to re-engineer Arrow ECS' North American Oracle group service unit by transforming processes, tools, resources and training offerings for resellers following last year's acquisition of Sun by Oracle. Barkopoulos helped manage the integration of Arrow ECS' Oracle and Sun businesses while continuing to achieve sales objectives. She also led an ECS-wide project to expand point-of-sale and contract-renewal services and help resellers maximize sales.
Goals: Barokopoulos is focused on completing the integration of legacy Oracle and Sun businesses into a unified organization and continuing to restructure the business model to drive growth for Arrow, Oracle and resellers. She also aims to further differentiate Arrow ECS through services offerings, including Arrow Fusion professional services, supplier services and services through the supplier-platform businesses. Her personal goal for next year, she says, is to mentor other women in the industry.
Vice President, U.S. SMB & Distribution
Microsoft
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: Bates brought together six different teams to create Microsoft's new SMB&D organization to deepen the focus on SMB opportunities. Microsoft trained 27,000 channel professionals through more than 500 instructor-led and Web-based training events. Bates helped develop new partner programs (VAR Champions Club and SMB Cloud Champions Club) to create new opportunities and engage with top-performing partners. She also worked with Microsoft's distribution and VAR partners to help them transition to the cloud.
Goals: Bates says it's an incredibly exciting for partners as Microsoft launches Office 365, bringing enterprise solutions to SMBs. She looks to advance its virtualization business, enabling partners to leverage the strength of the company's offerings, including the management capability in System Center. She will continue her involvement with social media, through Twitter, LinkedIn and her own blog, with SMBs about the value of using partners. She aims to maintain a diverse, high-performing organization that is accountable to partners.
Vice President, GTS Channels, Alliances, Midmarket
IBM
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Bell introduced a managed cloud services portfolio for IBM partners to resell (tier-one and distributors) and helped partners identify opportunities for complementary services offerings that extend client value and expand margin. She continued to strengthen services channels programs with a new top partner management system and new enablement and business development programs.
Goals: Bell aims to drive services partnership growth and market expansion with focused enablement and prioritized partner offerings. The goal is to integrate partners into the fabric of IBM's services business.
Vice President, Product Marketing, Cisco Solutions Group
Tech Data
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 11
Highlights: Beltz-Norrie helped launch Tech Data's dedicated Integrated Supply Chain Services division and managed the account of its No. 1 customer, for which Tech Data was named Distributor of the Year. The successful alignment with Cisco supported growth of 22% year over year and share gains in key segments and solution categories. Tech Data launched a Cisco Virtual Community site, Services Opportunity Portal and held a successful partner event.
Goals: Beltz-Norrie's focus for the next year is enabling partners to define, grow and expand their Cisco practice through innovative tools, targeted consultation, expansive training, marketing collateral and demand generation. As the solution offering around the Data Center expands and evolves, she says, Tech Data's value in the solutions distribution model will enable partners to capture the market opportunity.
Vice President, Managed Services, Cloud Computing
Ingram Micro
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 1
Highlights: In 2010, Ingram Micro expanded its services portfolio and made significant investments in partner training/education. The distributor also hosted the Cloud Summit and Seismic Partner Summit and launched the Ingram Micro Cloud. As a result of these efforts, Bergeron says, partners have moved up the value chain in the eyes of their clients and now sell resolutions and service vs. hardware. The emphasis of the sales is on the business value and resolution, she adds.
Goals: Bergeron's goals are to double the size of Ingram Micro's services business; introduce automation to offer greater efficiency to resellers and MSPs; and build a comprehensive portfolio of cloud services so that partners know they can come to Ingram Micro when they need to solve any business problems their customers may have.
CFO
IC Intracom
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 18
Highlights: Betts was instrumental in the company's successful transition from direct sales to a channel sales model. She authored and put into place a restructured logistics and support strategy-- revising how IC Intracom did everything from warehousing to finances to IT infrastructure. IC Intracom now finds itself in a position for exponential growth and profitability thanks largely to her efforts.
Goals: In 2011, Betts is focused on fine-tuning the company's restructured logistics to make the most of the channel sales model. She plans to do so by identifying and implementing efficiencies for cost containment in manufacturing, streamlining the supply chain and maximizing the capabilities of the company's operational support team. Also, she is responsible for overseeing the final implementation of SAP on an international scale.
Vice President, Controller
DLT Solutions
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 23
Highlights: Bintzler and senior management evaluated and implemented a custom financial system monitoring tool to integrate with the company's CRM. The company's CAGR for revenue stabilized at 19% and the CAGR for EBITDA reached 21%--as compared to the marketplace at 3% to 5% growth, or less. Her team has continually produced accurate monthly financial statements, gone through several different clean audits, along with increased compliance regulations.
Goals: Next year, the accounting workflow system is being upgraded to better manage productivity and workflow efficiency. Bintzler anticipates this conversion will provide more consistent reporting standards and electronic delivery information, and she continually looks for ways to automate the accounting department to provide accurate and timely information, reduce errors and increase productivity.
Manager, North American Channels, Alliances
Talend
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Talend enhanced and extended its channels programs, increasing indirect revenue by 200% from last year, according to Biskintaoui. The company also doubled the number of channels account managers to enhance services for its existing partner community and to handle the increased amount of new channel prospects. In addition, it established a flexible OEM and ISV program and expanded its partner base by at least 40%.
Goals: Biskintaoui aims to expand Talend's Preferred Partner base to respond to the increased demand for its software and services; strengthen partner training programs; and keep working on the channels program.
President, CEO
Barrister Global Services Network
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 3
Highlights: Barrister fulfilled its commitment to the state of Louisiana by delivering 100 new jobs in less than 18 months as outlined in its $1 million Community Block Development Grant for infrastructure improvements, says Bowers. The company saw top-line revenue growth of approximately 30% during the past fiscal year, the highest in almost 10 years. The company also completed a proprietary, automated invoicing platform to reduce costs and provide efficiency.
Goals: Bowers aims to continue Barrister's pursuit of large OEM contracts and federally positioned contracts and grow top-line revenue by a minimum of 20%. She also aims to increase help desk capabilities to grow that division and implement in-house hardware-driven efficiencies to lower overall costs to the company and customers. She will focus on continued automation of processes to drive consistent results.
Senior Director, Worldwide Channels, Alliance & Field Marketing
Riverbed Technology
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Bowley cites the expansion of Riverbed's solution offering for its partner community through the integration of two acquisitions--Global Protocols and CACE--as a key highlight. Also of note: the growth of Riverbed's partner program in Asia-Pacific, the launch of a program specifically dedicated to its service provider community, the launch of two-tier distribution in North America and the enrichment of the Riverbed Partner Network program with several profitability and enablement tools.
Goals: Bowley says enhancements coming to the Riverbed Partner Network include the ability for partners to specialize on new network performance management or storage products. Riverbed also will enhance its two-tier distribution program in EMEA and launch a new training program, partner portal, MDF portal and joint marketing tools.
CTO
ConnectWise
Years in position: 13
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: ConnectWise reached the 50,000-user mark, Brotherton says, and created additional APIs for ConnectWise's vendor community so that it can continue to provide solutions to partners in the channel.
Goals: ConnectWise aims to roll out more features to help partners grow their business and continue the expansion of integration options to build vendor relationships. It also plans to provide more mobile options including tablet formats.
Vice President, Services
Avnet Technology Solutions
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Brown accelerated the sale and growth of services through Avnet's IBM partner channel. She helped provide the enablement, skills and offerings needed to sell and deliver services, including Avnet's SolutionsPath Service, IBM maintenance services, after-market services and emerging service offerings such as cloud-based IT data solutions.
Goals: Brown's priority is to drive significant growth and enablement for partners in managed and cloud services.
Director, North American Channel, Enterprise Sales
ViewSonic
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Browne introduced a CRM initiative to better serve ViewSonic's growing and diverse channel partners. ViewSonic launched the industry's first dual-boot tablet and interactive projectors for collaborative, mobile classroom solutions. In addition, the company redesigned www.ViewSonic.com for easier navigation.
Goals: Browne touts upcoming products for education, medical, finance and enterprise and her goal is to communicate these products effectively to partners in the manner that best serves them--be it social media, Webinars, on-site trainings, advertising, Web site, etc. ViewSonic's partner portal, Finchclub.com, also will be updated, making it easier to access and navigate.
President
CT-Innovations
Years in position: 13
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: The high point of the year, according to Brussee, was partnering with Zultys. In addition to its key unified communications offering, Zultys shares the same company values as CT-Innovations and the partnership is built on a three-pronged win philosophy: customer, vendor and channel partner. It's not about products CT-Innovations thinks are "cool," it's about the customers' needs and wants, Brussee says.
Goals: In a word: growth, according to Brussee. She is focused on making CT-Innovations the premier provider of application-based products that enable customers to improve their businesses through increased efficiencies, improved communications, increased customer service levels and, ultimately, increased revenue.
Vice President, Channels
Gluster
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Budin helped build and launch channel strategies from the ground up: strategy, program and execution. She defined the right partner types, routes to market, contribution mix, partner profiles and readiness tools, go-to-market planning process and partner program framework. Gluster launched its channel program and signed up 50-plus partners
Goals: Budin aims to help scale the program internationally and domestically and continue to develop offerings that differentiate partners.
District Sales Manager
Trace3
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 14
Highlights: The most important highlight from 2010, says Bullwinkle, was watching a team of engineers and sales "superstars" she started to build in 2005 reach its goal of doubling revenue from 2009. A close second was becoming the largest partner in Colorado for Trace3's largest manufacturers.
Goals: 2011 will be about building on the strong foundation by finding more people with skills that complement what Trace3 does today, says Bullwinkle, addiing that the company is in part two of an evolution into a systems integrator and that has required each person to find new skills. Specifically, she notes, the Denver team for Trace3 is moving to build services that meet clients' needs and the end goal is to make them more successful in all their endeavors.
Federal Strategic Alliances Manager., HP Software
Hewlett-Packard
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 4
Highlights: Burgess has had a busy year building and nurturing the company's federal partner ecosystem. Beginning with less than a handful of partners, Burgess has leveraged 13 years of industry expertise and relationship management skills to build a federal channel that now encompasses more than 20 highly productive, strategic resellers and value partners that thave more than doubled revenue derived from the channel.
Goals: Burgess' mantra for the coming year is more of the same--she intends to continue generating strong quarterly revenue growth via partners and exceeding annual targets by increasing the sale of HP education/training and enterprise security products in the federal space; leveraging HP's most recent acquisitions to increase market share in security; and focusing on cloud technology opportunities.
Senior Director, Marketing
Zenith Infotech
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 4
Highlights: Zenith expanded its cloud product offering and support services last year, enabling partners to stay ahead of the curve and capture the highest margins possible. The company also introduced SmartStyle MirrorCloud, its business continuity solution, and conducted hundreds of "Cloud Revolution" educational roadshows. Zenith also added numerous training materials in audio, video and text formats to its partner portal.
Goals: This year, Burk says her efforts will be focused on increasing the number of Zenith partners who actively embrace cloud technology, especially the SmartStyle MirrorCloud private cloud solution. As a marketing director, she says, that may seem like an obvious sort of goal, but it is such a tremendous solution, that bringing partners on board also gives her a sense of personal satisfaction--sort of like helping someone solve a difficult problem.
Owner/President
CMIT Solutions of Erie
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 4
Highlights: CMIT Solutions of Erie saw top-line revenue growth of 50% over the past 12 months and more than doubled net income as well as becoming officially debt-free. Burnside says she is proud that these accomplishments were coupled with delivering superior service to clients, as measured by satisfaction surveys. CMIT Solutions of Erie had a very swift ramp-up as a new company in late 2007 and is now well-poised to deliver high-quality service while continuing to experience explosive growth, according to Burnside.
Goals: Burnside aims to continue to grow revenue at a minimum of 35%, add 12 new managed services clients, successfully launch a variety of cloud computing offerings, add two members to the technical staff, and maximize her participation in the Athena PowerLink mentoring program, where the focus will be on staff training and development, compensation packages and succession planning.
CEO
SeeGee Technologies
Years in position: 8
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Burton reveals her highlight in one word: growth. Growth in an economy full of uncertainties has been a true accomplishment, she says, adding that she feels fortunate SeeGee Technologies was prepared for the downturn.
Goals: Burton says the focus is on quality rather than quantity, but she does have expansion plans that include expanding outside the local area. But, she points out, she wants to work and play really well at home before taking the business on the road. Atlanta is where SeeGee started and will be its headquarters as it expands nationally, she says.
Owner, Chief Marketing Officer
CMIT Solutions of Denver
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Bush cites a record-breaking year for her company, with revenue up 15%. She continued as the Southwest Area representative on the Microsoft Small Business Specialist Advisory Board and will continue for a third term. CMIT Solutions of Denver attained Microsoft Gold Partner status in May 2010 and was recognized by CMIT Solutions corporate with the Top 10 Managed Services Award and Momentum Award.
Goals: Bush plans to enhance the processes in the marketing and sales arenas by continually documenting how strategies and tactics are implemented and how they need to be measured. She aims to have the business surpass 2010 revenue and benchmarks while expanding into new service areas.
COO
Heartland Technology Solutions
Years in position: 8
Years in channel: 25
Highlights: Before a tornado swept through the town of Joplin, Mo., in late May, Cage had noted Heartland's acquisition of another office in St. Joseph, Mo., being named co-president of the Ingram Micro VTN Ambassadors and starting a VTN Mastermind Peer Group as top accomplishments for the year. Since the tornado hit, Cage has been a visible presence in the channel community and in the community of Joplin in leading the change in fund-raising efforts and helping fellow VARs hit hard by the disaster.
Goals: Cage aims to begin to provide business intelligence to the sales and marketing group to improve sales through more targeted marketing to the company's own clients. She also aims to help the members of her VTN Mastermind group achieve their company goals.
Vice President, Worldwide Partner Organization, Business Management & Operations
Cisco Systems
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Cisco's investments in change management came together to deliver results to partners, Cannon says. In addition to getting partners "on board" faster, the company rolled out My Cisco, simplifying business processes for partners by creating a personalized experience. Last year Cisco launched new products, architectural specializations and new promotions and rebates. The company also began streamlining systems and tools and established processes so that as business grows, complexity doesn't, says Cannon.
Goals: Cannon says teams across Cisco are working together to simplify the business, adding her top priority is to do whatever it takes to put the business on a cleaner, simpler plane so partners can reduce their opex when they choose Cisco as their partner.
Vice President, Global Alliances & Partners
Ciena
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 18
Highlights: BizConnect, Ciena's global partner program, realized double-digit growth over last year and Ciena successfully stabilized and rationalized the Nortel MEN and Ciena partner base. Caragol helped build business plans and placed a strong focus on a core set of partners in the ecosystem, including priority managed service, solution provider and alliances. This strategy has been effective thus far and she says she expects growth in 2011 to continue.
Goals: Caragol says Ciena plans to move from rationalizing and stabilizing the partner base to a very aggressive optimization and execution strategy with a focus set on global partners. Ciena upped the level of channel talent on the team and clearly defined roles for the global partner office. Caragol believes 2012 will yield positive results as Ciena gains leverage from partners, solutions training, Ciena Champions program improvements, and a new sales advocate initiative for partners.
Manager, North American & French Channels & Alliances
Egypi Technologies
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 3
Highlights: Carden was responsible for recruiting three new North American distribution channels and one French distributor, resulting in sales doubling in North America vs. the previous year. Through her organization and execution of global marketing activities (i.e., national road shows, marketing collateral creation, advertising and Web-centric marketing, etc.), Carden says she was able to recruit more than 150 new VARs for Epygi, while establishing brand awareness.
Goals: This year, Carden has her eye on more VAR recruitment and sales growth. She also aims to establish more VAR-centered programs, which help partners sell more complete and feature-rich solutions.
Director, Global GTM Channel
Polycom
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Cassidy gathered valuable feedback from channel partners on the strengths and challenge of doing business with Polycom thoughout the year, she says. Based on this feedback, on the one-year anniversary of the Polycom Choice Partner Program Cassidy launched the enhanced Choice Program for 2011 worldwide. The new program provides a simpler, more predictable and more profitable approach to programmatic benefits, she says, and aligns closely with Polycom's technology and UC- everywhere strategy. In addition, this year Cassidy refined Polycom's specialization programs to enable partners to increase their sales success and introduced a new online deal registration system and a partner satisfaction and engagement process.
Goals: Next year Cassidy hopes to develop even closer relationships with partners and continue to refine the Choice Partner Program on a global basis. Her goals are to strengthen Polycom's training programs to drive the partner base in technology and market specializations, increase leads to partners and develop new tools to increase business intelligence and visibility for them.
Vice President, Global Channel Marketing
CA Technologies
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: Two things jump out, Clayton Hine says: First, CA just completed its first global channel partner summit in five years with 130 partners from 98 different companies. Partners of all business models and technology areas came together to hear about CA's strategy and offer feedback. Second, CA continued to invest in creating new offerings and new programs for service providers, MSPs and solution providers that want to drive recurring services revenue and take advantage of the benefits of the cloud.
Goals: Clayton Hine aims to create a more connected partner ecosystem that rewards partners based on their business models and their strategic growth goals. CA will focus on targeted recruitment, enablement and engagement with strategic partners in all geographies and routes to market.
Global Operations, Communications Manager, Education Market Platforms Group
Intel
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 2
Highlights: The high points of the year include the launch of Intel-powered Classmate PC clamshell and convertible tablet platforms versions, the shipment of 3 million-plus Classmate PCs to date and the continued growth of a global ecosystem of Intel Learning Series Alliance members, which now numbers more than 350 companies. Clugage was instrumental in impacting more than 40,000 students and 1,000 teachers through the volunteer Intel Education Service Corps, which she founded in 2009 to enable Intel employees worldwide to support efforts deploying Classmate PCs in developing countries.
Goals: The coming year is key for the Intel Education Service Corps, as Intel continues to scale K-8 education solutions in both global volume and breadth of offerings. Clugage hopes to help chart and navigate a path to sustainable growth to advance education transformation globally. She also hopes to grow awareness of the solution to reach more children around the world with technology tools to help them build the 21st century skills to succeed in the global economy.
Vice President, General Manager, Inside Sales & SMB Division
EMC
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: EMC kicked off 2011 by unveiling the VNXe series unified storage systems, which enable partners to address the demand for SAN and NAS solutions in the SMB market with one easy solution, according to Connly. Along with VNXe, EMC launched an Authorized Reseller category that enables partners of any size to easily add the VNXe series into their product portfolio.
Goals: EMC has already said it believes the VNXe/VNX line will help it become No. 1 in the SMB market, says Connly. In the next year, she will focus on exceeding EMC's global channel partner recruitment goal, which will help the company be successful in its SMB endeavors.
Vice President, Global Marketing
Digium
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Digium launched on-demand sales and technical training and certification programs for Asterisk open-source integrators and Switchvox business phone system specialists, and 80% of Digium's partners have completed these requirements in less than a year, Conway says. The company also has seen rapid adoption of its certification program. In 2010, Digium had four consecutive quarters of double-digit growth for Switchvox in its North American channel. It also exceeded recruitment goals and now has approximately 1,300 partners in its partner program.
Goals: Digium plans to continue introducing new lead-generation programs to provide top-level partners with leads, according to Conway. The company is also adding online technical training for the Switchvox product line and remote online labs. Digium is introducing a content syndication program as well, which will enable partners to display updated content and images on their Web sites and will offer the ability to obtain co-branded PDFs of all materials. Digium also will roll out quarterly promotions and lead capture forms to help partners capture more leads.
President, COO
Zones
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 22
Highlights: Corley says the highlight of the year was watching the Zones team members deliver continued growth and an unparalleled level of commitment to clients and business partners--and watching the further development of Zones as a full service technology solutions provider.
Goals: Corley says her goals for next year are to support the development of a great team and deliver superior customer service and solutions to clients and business partners.
Channel Marketing Manager, U.S. IT Channel
Eaton
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Cornell was instrumental in recruiting 500-plus new Eaton partners and growing overall revenue from solution providers. She also launched an automated MDF program for Eaton partners and helped Eaton achieve a CRN Channel Champion award for Financial Factors in Power Protection and Management.
Goals: Cornell will continue her efforts to recruit partners, enable existing ones and design new program elements to help solution providers grow their business overall.
Senior Director, Global Channel Marketing
VMware
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Cox joined VMware in late August and focused on three tasks: building a global channel marketing strategy, building out a channel organization to achieve that strategy and developing the global channel marketing plan for 2011. Cox recruited a very seasoned channel marketing leadership team to help drive the company to the next level in this area.
Goals: Cox will build out partner-led demand generation for VMware's channel network. She aims to deliver marketing tools and a partner paid search program that will let partners double the number of leads they develop on their own. She is also moving to much more inventive ways of communication to and with partners via applications on mobile devices, guiding the team to increase training courses taken by partners with marketing programs to drive attendance.
Vice President, Worldwide Marketing
Riverbed Technology
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 25
Highlights: Crandall says partners gave her a to-do list when she joined Riverbed, and she delivered on them. First was to maintain a leadership position--she helped grow Riverbed's market share to 43% and maintained Gartner Magic Quadrant leader position. Second was to offer a compelling partner program--95%-plus revenue was sold through the channel in 2010, Riverbed received a CRN 5-Star Partner Program Award and a value-based distribution program as rolled out in the Americas. Third was to provide partners with cloud solutions--Riverbed introduced Cloud Steelhead & Whitewater for WAN & cloud storage acceleration.
Goals: Building on successes in 2010, Crandall says Riverbed will re-launch the brand and evolve its partner program, enabling partners to sell the full suite of Riverbed and partner solutions, offer more cloud-enabling technologies and complete the value-added distribution global rollout. She also plans to conduct a channel review to assess the effectiveness, efficiency and scale of the current channel strategy. Finally, she plans to boost channel enablement tools and planning and training programs, and launch a new partner portal.
Administrative Operations Director
Corporate Information Technologies
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Cruciana has worked to streamline the administrative operations of this $3 million VAR. She has reduced administrative (SG&A) costs by 39% while improving process efficiency under increasing workloads. This undertaking was also complemented with a total reorganization of the company's financial chart of accounts and the migration between accounting methods. Her efforts largely contributed to a 13-year-old VAR growing through the economic downturn.
Goals: Cruciana already has undertaken an initiative to begin working more closely with vendors and distribution partners to more closely align CIT's administrative and procurement functions to those used by key partners. Her incorporation of PHR-certified Human Relations procedures and personnel into the daily operations of the company has already demonstrated its benefits through reduced third-party consulting expenses and an overall improvement of internal management human capital.
Vice President, Worldwide Marketing, Data Management
CA Technologies
Years in position: 6 months
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Cunningham focused on driving increased awareness and demand-generation results for the CA ARCserve and CA ERwin brands while improving operational efficiencies, metrics and dashboard reporting, and boosting marketing ROI. A successful global CA ERwin r8 launch drove awareness, demand generation and an expanded social media presence. She also drove global efficiencies for campaign creative and localization efforts.
Goals: Cunningham will set her sights on accelerating the revenue, reputation and relevance for the CA ARCserve and CA ERwin brands, with an underlying focus on improving marketing operational excellence. She aims to drive marketing investment ROI and lead conversion rates to deliver market-share growth among SMB and growth enterprise customers, particularly migrating to cloud technologies. This includes boosting brand reputation and articulating CA's value proposition around hybrid data protection.
Vice President, North American Channel Sales
NCR
Years in position: 2 months
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Prior to joining NCR, Curry was instrumental in developing and launching a new partner program at Motorola Solutions in 2011, driving double-digit channel revenue growth, consistent field engagement, and record partner satisfaction two years in a row.
Goals: At NCR, Curry will work to grow partner revenue exponentially through a strong organizational support structure and by leveraging being consistent and unambiguous with field engagement and partner programs. In addition to refining the partner strategy for her team, she will work internally to drive channel initiatives within the product organizations, supply chain, and sales and support services.
Vice President, Field & Channel Marketing
SafeNet
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 8
Highlights: Damato worked this year to unify SafeNet's program and demonstrate a commitment to partners with the right mix of people, programs and tools that help educate, enable and drive new opportunities. As a result, SafeNet has seen increased revenue growth in the channel of nearly 20%, with improved tools and additional dedicated staff. Damato says she's proud of SafeNet's support of the channel this year, and the company has all been unified in its goal, which has been a big contributor to success.
Goals: SafeNet's focus in 2011 will be around connecting the company's solutions with the business growth plans of partners, supporting and driving new opportunities in areas that matter to them. Damato will create paths for partners that are matched to their evolving business models and customer demands--for example, SafeNet's cloud solutions will help partners solve challenges around data protection and compliance in virtualized environments. She will also take training, enablement and automation to the next level.
Owner, President
Central Data Systems
Years in position: 12
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Davidson drove growth in a beleaguered economy in Michigan and Ohio that exceeded growth rates since 2000. Central Data Systems acquired a collegial practice to expand reach into 10 added states and garner 20% more customer base. Davidson was elected to the Infor Council and the company was named Distributor Partner of the Year.
Goals: Davidson's goals are to sustain the company's momentum and meet the pent-up demand in Michigan and Ohio while continuing to drive highest levels of customer satisfaction.
President
Directions Training
Years in position: 20
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Directions Training had its largest billing year ever and grew the business to more than $5 million in revenue. Didier hired half of its work staff and added a new location in Washington, D.C. She also partnered the company with Bridge Communities to help homeless women and children in the cities it operates in.
Goals: Didier aims to continue to grow the business and has set a goal for the next three years to triple sales revenue.
Director, Channel Development
Spectra Logic
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Spectra Logic experienced 30% year-over-year growth in channel sales and doubled its first-quarter channel revenue from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2010. By targeting top partners with a focused approach, Spectra's overall partner recruiting and ramping process continues to grow by 10 percent year over year, with a larger increase expected in fiscal year 2011, says Doughty.
Goals: Doughty will roll out a territory expansion program that includes a full-scale marketing plan to increase the number of channel partners. She aims to further Spectra's partner enablement with a revamp of its partner enablement tools. Doughty's channel organization will continue to add innovative elements to the partner program and continue to provide personalized support.
Chief Revenue Officer
Payment Vision
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Payment Vision doubled revenue in less than seven months, revamped IT to support channel needs, created a customer service department to support after-sales, launched a partner program and retooled and automated a commission structure and reporting. Dressendofer built a plan with the CEO and internal and external expertise that included a new research and media arm for partners to use.
Goals: Dressendofer has singled out partnerships to fill product and distribution gaps as the most important goal for the year.
Worldwide Channel Sales Program Manager
F5 Networks
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Duong launched F5's Unity partner program globally and developed a new accreditation program for the channel. She launched new worldwide tiers and programs and worked with a third party to develop a methodology for channel account planning for F5's CAMs, something it has never had in the past. This will help manage partner relationships and become more strategic. Duong also helped manage and drive significant growth at F5's Partner Summits worldwide.
Goals: Duong says her priority is to expand F5's channel program--Unity--to the rest of the world. When F5 first launched Unity in July 2009 it was immediately a success with partners, she says, and her goal this year is to leverage that success to launch Unity worldwide.
Director, Public Sector Organization
Cisco Systems
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Duross' highlights include driving solutions and services based on architectures (Borderless Networks, Data Center/Virtualization, Collaboration/Video) into the marketplace with partners, an expanded focus on video and video-enabled solutions through the addition of Tandberg to the Cisco portfolio, and enabling Cisco partners (through training, programs and information sharing) to deliver it all profitably.
Goals: Duross aims to streamline the way partners can do business with Cisco in the public sector, enable them to successfully deliver the architectures, solutions and services public sector customers need to serve, communicate, educate and protect their citizens/constituents using the network.
Director, Inside Sales, HP, Enterprise Computing Solutions
Arrow Electronics
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: Edwards led the inside sales team for the HP line to achieve double-digit growth and realigned the service renewal team. In addition, she helped create an account development inside sales team to grow emerging-market resellers. Edwards accepted an additional role to create a common process for managing Arrow's pipeline, evaluating performance and facilitating cross-selling Arrow ECS inside sales teams.
Goals: Edwards cites people development and driving toward creating highly accountable teams as goals she works toward every day. She aims to grow emerging reseller accounts by 10% in 2011 and create a selling process to maximize the Arrow ECS cross-selling initiative. She also plans to focus on developing more of the employee engagement team's activities to support the community.
Director, ConnectWise Community
ConnectWise
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 14
Highlights: In 2010 ConnectWise passed a new milestone--a community of 50,000 users strong. Edwards says the Community charter is to continue to bring conduits for partners to connect, collaborate and grow and empower them to be successful. ConnectWise's annual IT Nation conference, held at the end of 2010, had 1,100 partners attending and 55 vendor partners bringing their technologies to MSPs.
Goals: Edwards hopes to accomplish continued consistency. While ConnectWise Community is certainly excited about the successes, Edwards says that the real success comes from nurturing, caring and feeding of that Community, on a committed, consistent basis.
Senior Vice President, Global Alliances & Channels
Saba
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: In the past year Saba relaunched its global Saba Partner Program, enhancing enablement, certification and go-to-market programs, says Ellison. Saba also launched "Partner Connections," with almost 400 members in the first six months, allowing partners access to the most up-to-date tools along with the ability to collaborate with Saba resources and each other in realtime. Saba doubled its performing reseller channel and added four new global strategic partners.
Goals: Ellison says Saba will continue to add value to and extend its reseller community while expanding its co-sell, ISV and OEM relationships. The company's plan is to double the partner ecosystem over the next 12 months to support its growth and the evolving requirements of customers around the world. She will continue to invest in partner enablement while increasing the emphasis on demand generation and go-to-market activities with and through the channel.
Vice President, Strategy Development & Execution
Avnet Technology Solutions
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Enright led a team in the due diligence and integration process for Avnet's acquisition of Bell Micro and Tallard, which expanded Avnet's presence in Latin America. The company onboarded 600-plus new employees and now has a $1 billion business in 30-plus countries in Latin America. Enright and her team managed Avnet's executive councils for top suppliers to shape both Avnet and suppliers' programs, and Enright helped to develop a strategic consultative program to enable VARs to successfully sell data center solutions.
Goals: Enright's first goal is to continue to improve Avnet's approach in training and enable the organization to efficiently work with business. Second is to enhance Avnet's executive advisory councils to create more synergies and opportunities among VARs, suppliers and Avnet to drive tangible financial results. Third is to establish a formal mentoring/coaching program for high-potential future female leaders.
Vice President, Partners & Alliances, North America
CA Technologies
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Over the past year, Erickson's role expanded considerably when she took over the sales and technical teams supporting the managed services and solution providers as well as alliances. In this role, Erickson created and launched the Managed Service Provider Program where she developed new pricing, contracts and go-to-market sales methodologies to capitalize on a new route to market in North America and Western Europe.
Goals: Erickson wants to ensure she creates and executes programs that maximize impact on business models. She will enhance the sales pipeline by utilizing alliances in transformational projects with leading system integrators, enhancing relationships with cloud service providers, and continuing to grow the CA business with solution providers through domain expertise.
CEO
MCAD Technologies
Years in position: 17
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: Evans has been in the industry for 18 years and is still the only female-owned Dessualt SolidWorks reseller worldwide. MCAD started selling the full line of SolidWorks products in Washington and Oregon this year and signed a partnership with Objet Geometries to sell its full line of 3-D printers.
Goals: With the opportunity to now sell the full line of SolidWorks products, Evans is looking to establish a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest for MCAD as the complete engineering solution provider. MCAD is also working to be one of the top resellers for Objet Geometries in North America. Evans wants to maintain her recognition as one of the Top 100 Women-Owned Companies in Colorado.
Director, Channels
Telx
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 18
Highlights: Fahey recruited, enabled, engaged and retained more than 50 channel partners including three Master agents nationwide. She also assumed responsibility for international alliances, including training and onboarding. Her primary focus was marketing and awareness of Telx's channel partner program.
Goals: Fahey's focus is now on performance and development of the existing channel partner base via support and ongoing training. She is tasked with increasing awareness within the partner base and their subagents of Telx and its differentiators. Her goal is to create an ecosystem of partners with complementary technologies and services. Lastly, she plans to increase the number of partners that contribute to revenue goals on a monthly basis.
Vice President, Customer Success & Marketing
Intronis
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 1
Highlights: Intronis launched its inaugural Spring Release Luncheon series in multiple cities across the U.S. as a way to engage live with partners and train them on the company's new spring release, according to Ferrari. Intronis received multiple channel awards and launched the customer success "onboarding program," which focuses on partner enablement. In addition, Intornis' growth in the channel over the past 12 months has been almost 100%.
Goals: In the coming year Ferrari hopes to focus even more on partner enablement programs, provide comprehensive marketing and training material for MSPs for them to drive more business, and raise channel and end-user awareness of the value of cloud-based backup.
Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Sales
Advanced Micro Devices
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 19
Highlights: This year marks the one-year anniversary of AMD extending the AMD Fusion Partner Program to its commercial partners, and it has already increased its Elite commercial channel partners by more than 60%. Another highlight for Flaig was seeing the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor-power Dell PowerEdge R815 named to CRN's Best Products of 2010 list.
Goals: Later this year, AMD will launch its 16-core Interlagos processor, and Flaig says the company is extremely excited about what this product will bring to channel partners and customers. With that in mind, she aims to expand AMD's channel program among Select level commercial partners to help build awareness and generate demand, sales and technology support, and provide them with a source for expanding product portfolios with high-performance AMD solutions.
Vice President, U.S. Partner Group
Microsoft
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 21
Highlights: This year, Microsoft relaunched the Microsoft Partner Network, equipping partners with training, resources and support. With partner feedback, Microsoft designed the program to help customers quickly and easily identify partners with specific skill sets to meet their needs. Flinders also integrated ways partners can thrive using cloud services to build and maintain the trust and loyalty of customers.
Goals: Flinders' goal is to lead Microsoft's existing U.S partner ecosystem, regardless of partner type, to embrace Microsoft online offerings and lead with cloud. Flinders says the company strives to provide customers with greater power of choice in deployment methods, creating increased opportunities for our partners and leaving more dollars for partner services.
CEO
WhiteHat Security
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 6
Highlights: 2010 saw Fohn build upon WhiteHat Security's transition from direct to channel sales with the inclusion of stronger channel partners. When Fohn chose to establish relationships with the best security VARs, the company saw 184% growth in channel bookings in 2010. Her success with new channel partnerships has led to adoption from companies like FICO, which want to have security advantages over competitors. The strength of the new model has positioned the company to expand in 2011, she says.
Goals: Fohn is growing WhiteHat Security into a complete Web security company that will offer customers end-to-end security solutions. She's leading the company through a series of growth activities that will allow it to significantly increase product offerings and geometrically increase revenue.
Vice President, Marketing
DynTek Services
Years in position: 8
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Ford's accomplishments includes growth in EBITDA and net income; being awarded McAfee GHE Partner of the Year, Citrix Learning Center of the Year and being named to to the CRN Tech Elite 250 List.
Goals: In the channel, every year is about working harder on partnerships, Ford says, to see continued growth in terms of revenue as well as in joint marketing programs. The coming year will see a much heavier focus on marketing automation and tools as a way to help manage the lead-to-sales conversion, and Ford is looking at new, innovative marketing programs to shake up the norm. Ford says she has been fortunate to work closely with partner marketing organizations from Dell, McAfee, Microsoft, Citrix and more to generate almost 100 marketing events and campaigns.
CEO
Capstone Information Technologies
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Even though Rochester, N.Y., is not a growing economy, Fowler says, Capstone managed to increase profits and managed services revenue by more than 50%. She added a record number of new managed services clients in 2010 and continues to aggressively market the company, saying she refuses to let the economy dictate her company goals. Fowler has reinvented her service offerings and added more value and invested in customer service as well.
Goals: Fowler aims to increase monthly recurring revenue by 100%. The goal is so that the monthly recurring revenue pays all the company expenses so that anything extra is profit every month, she says.
CEO
Single-Sourcing Solutions
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 3
Highlights: Business is always in a state of flux, and this past year was no exception, says Fraley. While Single-Sourcing Solutions began the year planning one thing, quite a different thing occurred as the months progressed. The company began to see a real need to focus in a different direction to meet customer demands.
Goals: As Fraley has adjusted the sails to meet customer demand, she hopes to take this opportunity to solidify the envisioning of Single-Sourcing Solutions as it moves forward.
Co-founder, Chairman, CEO
PC Connection
Years in position: 29
Years in channel: 29
Highlights: PC Connection's strategy to generate top-line growth while improving bottom-line profitability resulted in a 35% increase in sales productivity and a record 26% increase in sales year over year. This enabled the company to take market share and strengthen its position as an industry leader, according to Gallup. In response to the growing importance of data analytics, Gallup invested in its Master Data Management system, enabling PC Connections to more completely predict and satisfy the technology needs of customers.
Goals: Gallup aims to achieve long-term goals by planning and executing strategies that promote sustainable growth and ensure top customer service. To more closely integrate with its customers, the company acquired ValCom Technology, a leading provider of infrastructure management solutions and on-site managed services. Gallup is expanding services offerings through this acquisition and will leverage the resources of the organization.
Senior Director, Components Business Unit
Ingram Micro
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Garcia led the development and launch of Ingram Micro's Experience Center, supporting Cisco data center and collaboration technologies and implemented Cisco's Telepresence solution within the Santa Ana, Calif., and Buffalo, N.Y., offices. She was instrumental in the creation of the Cisco Order Management Team launched in October 2010 and was appointed to lead Ingram Micro's Components Business Unit in 2011. Garcia also hosted a System ArchiTECHS Invitational in March 2011 highlighting cloud computing and services.
Goals: Garcia plans to continue to provide a strong value proposition to resellers and vendors in support of the System ArchiTECHS community. She will help provide valuable insight and information to system builders to aid in portfolio diversification and business growth. She also will work with vendors within the Components Business Unit to influence finished goods sales and improve Ingram Micro's Components global footprint by leading a team of peers in each of the Ingram Micro regions.
President, CEO
Knowledge Information Solutions
Years in position: 10
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Knowledge Information Solutions delivered custom technology consulting turnkey solutions, enabling customer organizations to focus on their core business operations, says Giordano. KIS Secure Data Center provided hosting and NOC support services to government and commercial customers. The company also expanded business development workflow process, implemented new technology including enhancements in software that enabled customized service and customer support.
Goals: Giordano's goals include driving innovation for IT process modeling and delivery for management applications. She aims to leverage virtualization, offering solutions designed to provide control, assurance and secure solutions that optimize hybrid/private/virtual infrastructure and will expand best-of-breed technologies.
President, CEO
The Ergonomic Group
Years in position: 27
Years in channel: 27
Highlights: Over the course of the past year, many events occurred within the industry causing The Ergonomic Croup to further invest with major server, networking and software vendors, Girards says. She watched as many vendors created cloud computing strategies and helped to further educate customers around the different server architecture, networking and software infrastructures.
Goals: The Ergonomic Group will continue to assist customers' focus on innovation rather than technology. Girards' goal is to help customers devote more of their IT budget to innovation for core business needs and spend less on operations and maintenance. Cloud computing promises to be a fundamental transition for customers, she says. The Ergonomic Group would like to grow its corporate footprint in the channel path going forward.
Vice President, Global Partner Enablement
Hitachi Data Systems
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 23
Highlights: Gonsalves helped deliver the enhanced Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program; provided partners with more business building advantages through more advance training offerings; and orchestrated the launch of the Virtual Storage Platform in late fall 2010.
Goals: Gonsalves' focus this year will be leadership over initiatives including a global marketing bureau with turnkey campaigns and content syndication for partners; the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program; expanding the outreach and enablement of other strategic business model partners and their efforts to support all addressable market segments.
Senior Director, EMEA Partners & Enterprise
Ciena
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: In the past year, Ciena's channel partner program, BizConnect, has seen significant overall business growth as well as a wealth of net new partner wins. The partner program has also successfully and fully integrated the Nortel MEN business, Graydon says. In addition, Ciena has acquired top talent into the program, which has been another key component to overall success.
Goals: In the next year Graydon would like to drive significant net new partner wins. She'd also like to see Ciena continue to build a high-performance team comprised of Ciena employees and an ecosystem of integrated established partnerships.
Vice President, Global Channel Strategy, Operations
Juniper
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 23
Highlights: Grothjan's team recently launched a worldwide partner network, enabling global customer support through a network of partners. The team also supported the integration of five company/product acquisitions into Juniper programs and processes, resulting in the development of a channel integration playbook. In addition, Grothjan enhanced systems and tools to drive ease of business and launched a config-to-order capability through distribution.
Goals: Grothjan says Juniper has always considered distribution to be a critical component of channel success. Looking ahead, she will refine strategy and program development to further leverage distribution partners and drive even greater results for channel partners.
CEO
Avankia
Years in position: 9
Years in channel: 9
Highlights: Gupta led the successful launch that grew its software product, called, TargetRecruit--an on-demand recruiting software and applicant tracking solution--to a global level.
Goals: Gupta has set her sights on continuing to grow Avankia Services as well as the market segment for TargetRecruit.
CEO
Edge Solutions
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 3
Highlights: Haley increased company sales 600% year over year from 2009 to 2010, implemented new human resources department and policies and earned the "Fastest Growing Private Company in Atlanta" award.
Goals: Haley aims to continue sales growth, double technical consultant staff and implement a formal employee satisfaction and recognition program.
Americas Channel Program Manager
McAfee
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 8
Highlights: Over the past year, Harabis has been able to be a part of what she calls an "overhaul" to the McAfee channel program--implementing technical enablement programs, focusing on ease of doing business and enhancing partner communication.
Goals: This year Harabis aims to engage more with the channel community and work with them to develop programs and processes that work for them.
Channel Relations Manager
Syspro
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Hargove developed Syspro's "7 Pillars Strategy" for VAR success. She also helped the company achieve 20% growth in channel and led an intense channel partner recruitment program.
Goals: Hargrove will work on developing a comprehensive channel partner portal and is aiming for partner channel growth of 30%.
Vice President, Marketing
Carousel Industries
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: In the past year, Harman led the Carousel marketing team to complete the rebranding of Carousel Industries, launched a corporate Web site, a company blog, and a social media identity and campaign. As a result of these efforts, Carousel increased its corporate Web site visitors by 130% over the previous year. In addition, along with her marketing team, Harman implemented a highly successful lead nurturing and marketing automation system for the company.
Goals: Harman plans to launch several vertical marketing initiatives for Carousel. Another important initiative is to grow business within Carousel's existing client base through an ongoing campaign to educate customers on its full suite of services. Finally, Harman will lead her marketing team to remain focused on the continued rebranding of Carousel from a reseller of voice solutions to a full-service systems integrator and managed services company.
Senior Director, Global Channel Marketing
Blue Coat Systems
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: Hayes grew the incremental partner pipeline by 20% year over year through partner marketing promotions, campaigns and programs. She recruited 150 new WAN optimization partners globally, implemented global MDF automation via Salesforce.com to provide better tracking and visibility in MDF spend, increased partner awareness with bi-weekly "Earning by Learning" and technical training sessions and drove consistent messaging and enablement programs for partners.
Goals: Hayes' goals include focusing on channel go-to-market to support growth in key customer segments and solutions, building and expanding Blue Coat's WAN optimization channel, extending its midmarket channel, increasing cross-selling and incremental contribution through enablement, driving cloud to the existing base and recruiting new channels, and promoting brand awareness.
President, CEO
Computer Software Innovations
Years in position: 21
Years in channel: 22
Highlights: Hedrick began Computer Software Innovations' cloud services initiative while continuing to grow the technology solutions and financial management applications segments of the business. The company remained profitable during the ongoing economic downturn, she notes.
Goals: Hedrick plans to continue to grow all three segments of the business. Her primary goal is to work with the management team to define the corporate vision and put the processes in place to achieve goals.
Vice President, U.S./Canada Channels Distribution, Worldwide Partner Organization
Cisco Systems
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Hens launched multiple Distributor Solution Centers based on Cisco Architectures; accelerated growth in key commercial and small-business segments; and built a strong foundation for future data center growth.
Goals: Hens aims to continue to grow the business by executing on Cisco's data center architectural vision and continue to focus on leadership and mentoring initiatives.
President
Ideal System Solutions
Years in position: 14
Years in channel: 14
Highlights: Hernandez expanded the organization with the acquisition of another technology organization called CVT Technologies Inc., Plymouth, Minn. She also expanded the corporate headquarters to larger offices in Minnetonka, Minn., and purchased a building with expanded offices in northern Minnesota. Ideal System Solutions received several national and local awards including: HUBZone Small Business of the Year Award by the Department of Energy and, CRN's 2011 VAR500 list and 2010's Power Women of the Channel.
Goals: Hernandez will continue to enhance Ideal System Solutions' managed and professional services offerings and grow its unified communications and technology areas. She also will continue to search for small and disadvantaged technology partners.
Director, Marketing
Technology Integration Group
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: TIG had a record year in 2010 with a record number of vendors working with TIG in its marketing program. Hicks helped lead a rebranding process in marketing to good results. TIG also has an increased focus on PR and social media marketing to communicate with customers and vendors.
Goals: Hicks aims to create stronger partnerships with vendors and increase electronic marketing campaigns and social media presence.
Vice President, Vendor Management
Ingram Micro
Years in position: 11
Years in channel: 30
Highlights: In 2010, Honore served as the global Microsoft liaison for Ingram Micro and played a substantial role in the development and execution of its data center strategy. Honore's team helped onboard many of Ingram Micro's vendors into its new Advanced Computing Division and supported its strategic SaaS/cloud initiative by assisting the team with vendor introductions and identifying solution opportunities and supporting cloud models that are natural extensions of the licensing model.
Goals: As the global Microsoft liaison, Honore would like to build the worldwide Microsoft business by leveraging and developing global best practices. Her team is also accelerating its efforts around pro-AV/digital signage and document imaging to encourage greater VAR adoption and attract additional vendors that partners want to do business with. Honore will also continue to support Ingram Micro's strategic SaaS/Cloud initiative and help grow this business.
Worldside Marketing Director, Document Imaging, Kodak Business Solutions & Services Group
Eastman Kodak
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Horn notes several key announcements, including new scanners, software and solutions, to meet customer needs. The company enhanced existing solutions and integrated and rebranded products added to the portfolio from the acquisition of the Bowe Bell+Howell Scanner Division. Horn communicated frequently with channel partners about the growing expansion of products and solutions.
Goals: Kodak will continue to listen to customers and channel partners to understand goals, needs and how solutions can help improve their transition to a digitally powered workplace, says Horn. It will continue to showcase solutions and services that help businesses capture and make sense of the flood of information/data that the marketplace and technology generates and communicate key trends in document capture, she says.
Director, Worldwide Channel Programs, Operations
Guidance Software
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 19
Highlights: Within 90 days of joining the Guidance Software team, Houssiere launched and implemented Guidance Software's new Guidance Global Partner Program, which enables solution providers worldwide to resell and/or service the EnCase Enterprise product segment, yielding highly profitable partners.
Goals: Houssiere lists several goals for the year: strengthen Guidance Software's partner relationships by listening for ways the company can enhance overall partner profitability; host Guidance Software's premiere worldwide partner conference; build a dynamic/collaborative Partner Portal with a global experience that makes it easier for partners to leverage and engage with company sales and marketing campaign tools; and build process automation and efficiencies.
President
Certified Nets
Years in position: 15
Years in channel: ,15
Highlights: In 2010 Certified Nets began to offer fixed price programs for its client base as well as Certified Care Complete, a program that includes all-you-can-eat services and hardware and software refreshes as needed, says Howes. All engineers achieved a new vendor certification to stay current and keep technical skills sharp.
Goals: Howes plans to continue revenue and profit growth and financial stability and strengthening technical resources.
Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales
GFI Software
Years in position: 6 months
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: While GFI Software continues to strengthen its SMB solution portfolio, it is laying the groundwork to expand its partner base throughout the U.S. and Canada, according to Hume. GFI's business is 100 percent channel in EMEA, and working with partners is deeply rooted in its go-to-market philosophy. GFI is poised to introduce itself to the broader North American channel, letting partners know about the company's value proposition in the SMB market, says Hume.
Goals: Hume says this next year will be all about the channel and her teams. GFI knows that partners are critical to growth, and it wants to recruit more of them. GFI has solid partner programs in place, she says, and will work to harmonize those across all business units to ensure doing business with the company is easy and profitable. GFI will invest in partners through training, marketing and end-to-end lead generation and will remain committed to their long-term success, Hume says.
Channel Marketing Manager
ESET
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 14
Highlights: Jaquess helped drive substantial growth within what ESET identifies as Strategic Accounts--large, national accounts that make up a healthy percentage of the channel family at ESET. Jaquess helped fuel ESET's continuing explosive growth in business security software sales.
Goals: Jaquess plans to increase ESET's security software market share by working with the existing channel community, taking the relationship to the next level. In particular, she is working with ESET's Strategic Accounts division to target and build programs and promotions that engage specific business functions and industries..
Senior Manager, Star Partner Marketing
NetApp
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Jennett enhanced NetApp's marketing strategy by analyzing partners' needs and deepening NetApp's participation and support in partners' go-to-marketing model.
Goals: Jennett aims to continue to build out more channel marketing strategies.
Director, Worldwide Channel Operations
BMC Software
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 9
Highlights: Johansen gained a seat at the BMC leadership table last year. BMC rolled out SaaS solutions and a certification program and added Salesforce.com as a strategic resell Partner, selling the Remedy on Force solution. In addition, BMC expanded its go-to-market strategy by signing on a distributor in the U.S. focusing on select BMC products and brought back its Elite Partner Summit, delivered every six months.
Goals: In support of its overall sales alignment, BMC will be passing BMC Remedy on Force leads via Salesforce PRM to certified partners, Johansen says. Rules of engagement and a governance process will be rolled out. Elite ESM Partners will be assigned a corporate account manager focusing on SMB accounts for both Americas and EMEA. A focus for 2011 is to collaborate with an outside vendor to restructure and rebrand the partner program.
Director, Global Programs, Technical Services
Arrow Electronics
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Johnson implemented CopyExact across Brazil, China, Israel and Guadalajara while also maintaining relationships with tier-one clients.
Goals: Johnson aims to get Arrow's CopyExact facilities up to 100% production and sign up five or more tier-one companies.
General Manager, Channel Platforms & Strategy Division
Intel
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 14
Highlights: The launch of Intel's second-generation Core CPU in desktop and mobile markets was key, Johntson Holthaus says. Intel also introduced the Intel Desktop Core K SKU products developed specifically for the channel's integration and overclocking marketing and launched the Think Mini ITX and Mini ITX industry
Goals: Johnston Holthaus says she would like to see the continued growth of the overall channel and increased channel competitiveness in specific niche markets where players can differentiate and grow their margins. She plans to help accelerate growth for Intel SSDs, tablets and wireless products as All-In-One and Ultrabook drive new usage models in desktop and mobile.
Vice President, Channels & Alliances
Seeburger
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Jones recently joined Seeburger, where she is responsible for reseller, ISV and solution provider partners as well as the global partner program/infrastructure. She calls the past 12 months an incredible foray into the cloud where channel opportunities abound.
Goals: Jones says she intends to significantly grow Seeburger's channel business and learn a lot along the way from the people she works with. She also plans to beef up her channel blog.
Julie Jutras
Director, Strategic Alliances
Compuware
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: The year marked the first OEM by the Cisco Data Center Business Unit in application performance management. Compuware and Cisco Unified Computing Systems sales teams are working together to sell this solution to their global customer base, Jutras says. Also of note was the completion of a Compuware and Accenture Formal Alliance, allowing Compuware Gomez products to be resold globally by Accenture. Jutras overachieved Cisco and Accenture alliance targets by 300%.
Goals: Jutras will lead the global Cisco Unified Computing System and Compuware go-to-market, enabling 400-plus sales teams and 250 Cisco UCS ATP Partners to sell the joint solution. She aims to achieve 100% of joint revenue targets globally.
Senior Director, Global Partner Strategy
VMware
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Kapase worked closely with VMware's solution provider and service provider partners to better understand how to help them build trusted successful business relationships to move joint customers to a hybrid cloud solution.
Goals: Kapase aims to launch a partner-to-partner program where it's easy for partners to connect and build relationships to get customers to the cloud, including ISVs who have built their SaaS-based offering on VMware, to OEMs with cloud offerings, to channel partners of tier-one apps such as SAP who want to partner with a VMware virtualization expert.
CEO
PKA Technologies
Years in position: 9
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: PKA exceeded its growth targets across all product and solution sets last year, says Katz. In addition, PKA become a Red Hat Advanced Partner, was HP Enterprise Authorized in the Mid-Atlantic, and was certified as a Woman-Owned Business by the State of New York and City of New York. Katz says the company continued to design, order, install and manage clients' IT infrastructure.
Goals: Katz will continue to grow PKA organically and through acquisition and will focus on new technical disciplines and territory expansion in 2011. Katz wants to provide leadership to her team by giving employees her best so they are inspired to succeed and accomplish their objectives.
Chief Product Officer, Vice President, U.S. Business Development, GMO
GlobalSign
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Kee led the product development strategy and implementation of GlobalSign's channel-ready client digital certificate offering, eanbling resellers and partners to offer trusted digital credentials to individuals and entities required from secure e-commerce transactions. Kee introduced three main product types, including PersonalSign, DocumentSign and CodeSigning, equipping resellers with an easy way to register, provision and manage digital IDs ordered on behalf of their customers.
Goals: Kee plans to offer resellers more options on how to leverage digital certificates to support the number of PKI-enabled applications ranging from secure network authentication to secure document exchange. She also aims to extend strong authentication solutions to secure mobile network device access to corporate networks and give resellers an automated method to provision and manage digital certificates on smartphones such as BlackBerry and iPhones.
VP, Channel Strategy, Solution Partners Organization, Americas
Hewlett-Packard
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Kelley was recently promoted to this broader role at HP. Here highlights in her previous role include the March 1, 2011, launch of HP SMB Central, a new initiative that provides HP partners with a one-stop shop for direct access information on products and solutions across the entire HP portfolio, as the key accomplishment. Also, in September 2010 HP introduced the expansion of SMB Elite, designed to help SMB partners deliver a superior SMB customer experience. In June 2010, HP added six members to its SMB Advisory Council.
Goals: Kelly plans to continue driving partner growth and HP channel leadership.
Senior Director, WW Marketing
M86 Security
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 11
Highlights: Kim-Isgitt evaluated and defined a new channel marketing strategy and program to enhance the channel partner Web site and user experience, including Web presence refresh, portal evaluation, and digital strategy for both recruitment and enablement.
Goals: Among Kim-Isgitt's priorities are to build a better online digital experience among vendor, channel partners and end customers in an automated system--providing more relevant and usable content to increase channel partner engagement and transactions.
Vice President, Sales
Drobo (Data Robotics)
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Drobo had a year of growth, according to King, expanding its channel into Latin America and expanding its SMB channel. The company signed some critical partners and is seeing strong growth in business products, which is important because it launched its business in the prosumer space. The company's end users have brought it up into the business space and King says Drobo is now getting a lot of attention.
Goals: Drobo is new to the business product arena, and King says there is a lot of growth planned for this year in the SMB space. The challenge will be pushing its message to current partners and growing its share of wallet in the SMB arena, according to King. Drobo plans to do this by putting the right sales teams in the right places to focus on those customers.
Vice President, Channel Sales
Fortinet
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Krause signed more than 400 new partners in the Americas to fill in coverage in specific territories and vertical markets; increased Americas channel revenue by 20% year over year; added new channel programs; and continued to focus on feedback from the Fortinet Partner Council, which is comprised of 15 key VAR members who provide valuable field input. Based on the council's feedback, Fortinet modeled its support and programs to meet partners' needs. Fortinet also launched the "Trade up and Trade in" program.
Goals: Today's go-to-market strategy is changing, according to Krause, and Fortinet will continue to have product offerings, solutions and channel programs for partners to sell in the new markets. Cloud offerings and managed solutions are continuing to drive the market and it is important to not only have solid security products but also channel programs to support our partners, she says.
Director, Global Channel Marketing
Brocade
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: This past year, Brocade made significant investments to enable channel partners to capitalize on emerging technology trends, including virtualization, Ethernet fabric and cloud. These investments include the availability of several new certifications so that qualified partners are recognized and rewarded for expertise in emerging networking technologies. Brocade also launched a professional services and support program to provide higher-margin revenue opportunities for channel partners.
Goals: "One size fits all" doesn't apply in the channel world, so Kritzer's goal this year is to build highly differentiated programs that recognize the value each partner brings to its customers. Through enhanced flexible segmentation initiatives, Brocade hopes to treat channel partners more individually, while preserving the program's integrity and efficiency.
Vice President, State, Local Government, Higher Education
NetApp
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Kunkle led growth in higher education as most universities saw budget declines. NetApp garners the majority of its revenue in this space via channel partners, making SLED one of the highest channel-leveraged NetApp businesses with multiple pathways to market, says Kunkle. In addition, Kunkle created campus events for female students to learn about IT careers.
Goals: Kunkle has made strategic investments in SLED and hopes the coming year will see even bigger growth and expanded market share. She plans to develop a grant program where NetApp will provide equipment to struggling K-12 districts, colleges and universities that are being hurt by the current fiscal challenges.
President
CMIT Solutions of Stamford
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 25
Highlights: Kuppersmith says she is proud that the company held steady and supported clients through a difficult economic time. CMIT Solutions of Stamford assisted clients in tightening their IT expenditures and rode through the inevitable problems that weren't budgeted for.
Goals: Kuppersmith hopes to increase revenue and profits while growing the company's staff and client base. CMIT Solutions of Stamford will continue to be the IT department and IT advisers for its current clientele, she says.
Director, Channel Sales
RingCentral
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 9
Highlights: Since joining RingCentral in the summer of 2010, Lam built and launched a highly successful channel program. RingCentral now provides one of the fastest-growing and most profitable partner opportunities for the channel to sell and build services around its cloud-based phone system for SMBs, according to Lam. RingCentral has signed and onboarded more than 400 channel partners so far, growing channel sales revenue by more than 500%.
Goals: Lam's focus for the upcoming year is to expand the channel program to 1,000-plus partners. She will also look to launch new programs to address other channel segments such as telecom agents and value-added distributors Lastly, RingCentral will deliver new partner enablement tools (including CRM, co-branded service portals, co-marketing and certification) to bring more channel-friendly systems and processes to partners.
CFO
Direct Tech Group
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 4
Highlights: Direct Tech Group increased revenue from $7 million in 2009 to $14 million in 2010, according to Langley.
Goals: Langley says the goal is to increase revenue from $14 million to $20 million as well as maintain strong margins.
MSSI Vice President, Global Channel Strategy, Programs, Governance
Motorola Solutions
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Larimer launched several new channel promotions, resulting in 29% year-over-year order growth and 22% year-over-year revenue growth in 2010. Motorola also designed a new technology solution to make it easier for partners to drive competitive trade-in sales and invested in new sales resources around end-user sales through partners.
Goals: The key focus for Larimer's team is the rollout of its next- generation partner program, PartnerEmpower. She will focus on investments in training, a new partner portal and other tools as it builds on the best of the old company and maintains its channel-centricity as Motorola Solutions is born, she says. The channel is a key asset and driver for customer satisfaction and growth for the new company, according to Larimer.
Vice President, Channel Sales
NEC Display Solutions
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: Larson's largest achievement was promoting and building upon core programs that align with the company's key vertical markets. She developed the best-in-class business propositions for the channel, which focused on gaining share and growing NEC's customer base. Lastly, she grew NEC's key vertical markets, which include education, SMB, corporate, medical, quick service restaurants (QSR), retail, transportation, cinema, house of worship, and rental/staging.
Goals: Larson hopes to bring a refined focus to the NEC education, QSR, retail, healthcare, SMB, graphics and cinema key vertical markets. She will implement new strategies to grow NEC's customer base, while increasing current reseller depth, reseller base and end-user sales. She will also identify further target customers and help focus marketing spend on the key large format display and projector product categories.
Manager, International Sales
Lifeboat Distribution
Years in position: 15
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: Lifeboat launched a new office in the Netherlands at the beginning of the year. Layton says it was a wonderful experience traveling to Europe and training the team and driving Lifeboat's Pan-European model into the channel.
Goals: Lifeboat is a relationship-driven company and Layton just returned from another trip to Europe where she meets with many of the company's key partners. She hopes to do even more traveling to meet with customers next year, believing that the company's personal touch is one of its greatest strengths and a keystone to its success.
President, CEO
SHI International
Years in position: 22
Years in channel: 22
Highlights: A key accomplishment for Lee was growing SHI's revenue by 25% to finish at $3 billion for 2010. She also hired the talent and deployed the technology that became SHI's Cloud Solutions offering. In addition, SHI opened offices outside London and Paris and explored expansion into additional countries. Lee is continuing SHI's expansion into the midmarket and public sector spaces to complement its legacy Fortune 500 clients as well, and completed year three of SHI's five-year plan to upgrade internal tools and systems with zero disruption to the customers.
Goals: Lee plans to continue to diversify SHI's business with steady expansion into international markets and professional services offerings.
Managing Dir.
NWN
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 6
Highlights: This year marked a change, Linder says, as she began working in earnest on NWN's SNAP to School Meals solution. That means making sure school districts and states have the ability to enroll every deserving child in free meals at school and nutritional support at home. This project is a win-win-win-win, she says. First and foremost, hungry children eat. Secondly, school districts get needed state support for teaching vulnerable children. States get the ability to support their citizens. And NWN makes a fair profit.
Goals: Linder says she got "hooked" in Montgomery County, Md., and again in Baltimore City. Because NWN's team was there, more than 500 children got to eat. She wants to grow that number.
CEO
Ruckus Wireless
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 3
Highlights: Lo has a list of accomplishments: Since January 2010, Ruckus has doubled the size of its channel, adding 1,381 new channel and distribution partners in 45 countries. Ruckus has seen sales rise at a CAGR of 88% over the past five years. Driving this growth is strong demand in education, hospitality and health care for more stable, reliable wireless connectivity due to the flood of mobile devices in the enterprise, Lo says. In December 2010, Gartner said Ruckus had the largest growth of any enterprise WLAN supplier for the second straight quarter.
Goals: In 2011, Lo says the goal is to double the Ruckus Big Dog channel partners and take channel business past $100 million. Since early 2011 Ruckus has added 600-plus new VARs and now has more than 2,500 solution partners in its global network. Ruckus also wants to be known as the only pure-play wireless supplier, Lo says, and it is looking to extend its channel successes to the health care, retail and warehousing markets, where it is already seeing stronger demand.
Director, Partner Enablement
VMware
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: In 2010, VMware trained, accredited and certified more than 150,000 VMware partners, according to Lonergan. VMware also expanded education offerings through Partner University and offered free in-person training sessions with SolutionTrack and Technical Express programs designed to educate the company's sales and technical presales audiences. VMware made a hefty investment in localizing a large number of programs in nine languages to accommodate regional requirements as well.
Goals: VMware will be launching more competency programs for its channel partners, Longeran says, rolling out more certifications and developing new programs to enable the company's channel around the launch of products and solutions.
Director, Worldwide Channel Marketing
ShoreTel
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: ShoreTel redesigned and launched a differentiated, highly profitable worldwide channel program, initiated a new two-tier distribution strategy and achieved CRN's 5-Star Partner Program Guide award for the second year in a row, Lorenz notes.
Goals: Lorenz plans for continued aggressive revenue growth through strategic partner recruiting and continued investment in partner satisfaction through its Brilliantly Simple Partner Programs, which provide increased profit margins and business profitability.
Senior Director, U.S. Marketing
Trend Micro
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 11
Highlights: Lozano points to the new Trend Micro On-Demand Marketing portal, which allows partners to customize, co-brand and execute campaigns as well as generate and track leads, as a key accomplishment. This is an effort to support existing partners in their marketing and selling efforts, she says.
Goals: Lozano is spearheading an effort to recruit partners and continue to support existing, loyal partners; create an ongoing alignment between her entire marketing organization; and continue to support her team's professional development.
Area Vice President
Dimension Data Canada
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Specific to Dimension Data's business in Canada, the company grew the employee base by 50%. Dimension Data also extended its efforts in its social responsibility program, increasing participation.
Goals: Lucas is focused on expanding the employee base by another 50% and continuing to gain market share. She also looks forward to involvement in more community events.
Vice President, Sales
Fujitsu Computer Products of America
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 25
Highlights: Fujitsu experienced 17% growth over the past five years, resulting in more than17% CAGR in channel sales. This is through a streamlined distribution and partner channel, dispelling the myth that to grow, one needs more distributors and resellers, Lutjens says, adding that what it's really about is the right partners. Lutjens also kicked off a multiyear service offering in 2010 that resulted in an increase in attach rate at POS. Fujitus has been able to demonstrate that service, post warranty, can be sold through a two-tier channel successfully, she says.
Goals: Lutjens has three main priorities: launch AIIM's new Capture Certification program to its partner base and be first to market with these efforts to empower partners with best practice knowledge about capture and information management; incentivize the channel by turning the point-based catalog reward system into an AMEX reloadable card, which greatly extends the purchasing power for participants; offer a trade-in program that will give partners a way to re-engage with their end users.
President, CEO
Managed Maintenance Inc. (MMI)
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: MMI has managed to not only traverse yet another year in a rough economy, but has remained profitable--acquiring new customers while retaining existing ones, Lux-Boim says. MMI has brought on new employees and customers, deployed new offerings, grown its numbers and increased branding awareness.
Goals: Lux-Boim and her management team have set out to expand the company's reach into new markets, all while succeeding in hitting aggressive customer acquisition and revenue goals. Team building will be paramount, she says, as the only way to achieve said goals is if they are all operating in unison. Lux-Boim will also setting aside time on her calendar weekly to coach and mentor the women on her leadership team, hoping to see their faces next year in the 2012 Women of the Channel.
Manager, Channel Marketing & Programs
APC by Schneider Electric
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Mahoney and her team introduced the APC Rewards Program, allowing partners to receive incentives for their APC sales through a three-step automated online process. The program gives partners the ability to convert their points into credit through distribution to be used toward their next APC purchase. Mahoney also focused on providing partners with sales and marketing tools, including the online marketing center, giving partners access to customizable demand-generation templates.
Goals: Mahoney is focused on continuing to develop the partner program to ensure profitability for partners. Whether through enhancements, promotions or development of new programs, boosting the bottom line of partners is her key initiative.
Senior Director, Channel Sales, Data Management
CA Technologies
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Malone aligned all LAR and Distribution teams to the new CA Technologies Data Management POD sales structure to allow maximized resources. She also helped create an enhanced channel-centric sales methodology, which was launched at the Data Management Annual Kickoff. In addition, Malone developed sales tools to encourage better alignment with partner sales reps and Data Management sales reps and revamped the Data Management quarterly business review and annual business plan templates.
Goals: Malone aims to deliver revenue and share growth through partners that sell, service and build on CA's technologies. She aims to better align partner sales reps and CA sales reps and make it easier for channel partners to do business with CA. She also plans to give partners enhanced scorecards to gauge their performance against the greater partner base and will increase CA's investment in and execution of end-user lead-generation activities.
Vice President, Global Sales, Marketing
Overland Storage
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Since launching phase two of Overland's FastTrack Partner Program in January 2011, Mansolf has integrated deal registration with automated approvals and tracking into the partner portal and generated more than 1,000 leads for partners. The adoption rate of the FastTrack Partner Program has significantly exceeded expectations, she says. Overland has increased its active partner users of the secure portal ten-fold and significantly increased branded sales in all regions of the world in the past year.
Goals: Partners today are more knowledgeable and have more choices than ever, according to Mansolf, yet the basic principle of business still applies: partners do business with companies that understand their needs and deliver on their promises. Mansolf's goal this year is to continue building partner-led, customer-centric resource and lead-generation programs that will enable partners to accelerate their sales cycles and increase profitability.
Senior Director, Business Development
SAP Americas
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 25
Highlights: Maslen's first challenge when joining SAP was to help restructure the channel team to better serve the needs of partners. Since then, she has worked to develop and carry out many programs designed to improve the experience of employees, customers and partners. One program provided financial skills training to employees, while another presented a simple and efficient financing application for customers. SAP also introduced two programs that improve cash flow for partners.
Goals: Over the next year, Maslen will continue developing programs that put SAP at the forefront of delivering value to the channel: opening new markets and simplifying processes.
Director, Channel Operations
Aruba Networks
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: McConaugy cites four key accomplishments: enhancing the PartnerEdge Program to reward partners that deliver greater value and offer growth initiatives for top-tier partners; organizing and hosting the inaugural Americas Partner Summit, attended by 200-plus channel partners; the PartnerEdge program being recognized with a CRN 5-Star award; and increasing Aruba's partner community by 20% and average revenue per partner by more than 30% in the past year.
Goals: McConaughy will continue to develop programs, training and tools that better enable partners and reward committed partners that provide value throughout the sales cycle. She will also expand offerings and tools to enable lead generation and collaboration with partners.
Director, Channel Sales
i365, A SeagateCompany
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 11
Highlights: McKeon transformed the channel program by implementing an enforceable deal registration program, a regionalized SE/sales training circuit and the simplification of contracts to make it easier for partners to do business with i365. These efforts have resulted in a more active partner base with a goal of 75% of business through channel partners by year-end, according to McKeon.
Goals: McKeon aims to transition i365's channel business to a distribution model swhile imultaneously launching a government program and cloud-connected MSP initiative. Her team will focus on increasing the number of partner-led opportunities and doubling recruitment efforts to continue to the momentum created in 2010.
Channel Marketing Manager
ESET
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: 2010 was a year of innovation and relationship building within the ESET channels, says McMenomy. ESET successfully launched a mobile app and Mac products and with those strong products and her support team, McMenomy says she was able to turn her focus to a deeper understanding of the channel's local market conditions.
Goals: McMenomy will focus on educational programs that bring added value to ESET's customers and make approachable the often intimidating topic of cybersecurity. By demystifying the nature of Internet threats and making clear, actionable steps to personal security, she says ESET will emerge in 2011 as a thought leader in the category.
Debbie Medal
Senior Director, Marketing, Worldwide Channel Programs
NetApp
Years in position: 12
Years in channel: 27
Highlights: Medal highlights strengthened communication using an integrated marketing model; the extension of NetApp's partner ecosystem with the recently enhanced NetApp Partner Program, including the launch of the NetApp Partner Program for service providers; and the launch of a Virtual Partner Environment designed to create a unique, online and interactive experience.
Goals: Medal aims to continue refining the execution strategy of channel partner communications for NetApp worldwide aligned to different partner pathways and will initiate executive thought leadership programs with global and pathway teams to ensure NetApp maintains a competitive edge within all target audiences.
Vice President, TSD Marketing
Synnex
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: Mensch points to the introduction of Synnex's CloudSolv strategy for partners as a key accomplishment in addition to a mobile application development practice that lets partners leverage Synnex's skills in the mobility space. In the past three months of the year, Mensch took on branding of the Technology Solutions Division (TSD) as the marketing lead.
Goals: Mensch will focus on the development of Synnex TSD offerings through line-of-business expansion and solutions.
President
Ener Systems
Years in position: 13
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Ener Systems' 2010 sales increased 50% over 2009 sales, and the company maintained Associate Level Intel Channel Membership. Miller also started www.businesstechnologyminute.com, a monthly video blog for business owners who want to learn more about using technology in their business.
Goals: Miller says her goal is to double profit numbers by 2012; she wants want Ener Systems to be recognized for being the best at customer service by meeting and exceeding all of its customers' expectations.
Director, Sales, U.S. & Canada
Kerio Technologies
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: As Kerio's Latin American director of sales, Miller focused on channel development for the region, especially in Brazil. During her tenure, she doubled sales by restructuring the organization to better align with focus markets, signed a new distributor and doubled the number of active Kerio resellers. In early 2011, Miller was promoted to director of sales, U.S. and Canada. One of her tasks was to sign a distribution agreement with Synnex, which will further Kerio's reach into the SMB space.
Goals: In the next year, it's crucial to develop Kerio's relationship with Synnex to further its U.S. and Canadian channel reach, according to Miller. Also, Kerio has reorganized its field sales team to narrow its focus and will concentrate on deepening relationships with partners. Kerio also launched a partner program this year and Miller expects to increase its active channel community by 50%. Lastly, Kerio introduced two products this year and Miller says her goal is educate partners on these offerings.
VP, Global Channel
IronKey
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: IronKey had a record first-quarter 2011, Mitchell says, with 94% growth year over year. The company also launched enterprise value-add distribution partnerships to reach into the enterprise and increased sales growth from Elite National partners. Its Elite Partner Program in 2011 now includes deal registration that provides up to 15 margin points, renewal protection and a new solution targeted at banking service providers. Mitchell also was named a 2011 CRN Channel Chief.
Goals: Mitchell aims to increase sales growth through IronKey's channels; develop alternative routes to market with new types of partners such as banking service providers; expand partner presence in Latin America and Asia-Pacific; and develop key strategic alliance partnerships that could scale the business globally.
Director, Global Partner Marketing
Siemens PLM Software
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Moorefield developed and launched a global partner and channel manager marketing training program. She also designed a mobile strategy for partners, including social media outlets and smart device applications. She improved and streamlined global partner and channel manager communication as well.
Goals: Moorefield aims to more effectively utilize social media and ensure that all partner materials are available via smart device applications. She also will continue partner marketing training via channel manager/partner interactive workshops facilitated by Everything Channel.
Vice President, Sales, Marketing
Whaleback Systems
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 9
Highlights: Mueller launched an updated Crystal Blue channel program and designed it to expand current reseller partnerships across the U.S. Enhancements include a more robust feature set, new flexible quote tools designed for both unlimited and "a la carte" usage plans to match customer needs, and new marketing programs, including solution-based vertical market programs designed to drive lead generation and increase reference selling.
Goals: Mueller hopes to increase Whaleback's channel revenue by 22%, grow inbound lead generation by 35% through new marketing programs and deploy a new territory-by-territory rollout strategy for repeatable growth.
Senior Director, Distribution, Alliances
Autodesk
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 18
Highlights: Muir's big accomplishment this year was the launch of the Channel Development Team, which prioritizes development programs/projects, ensuring that they take advantage of Autodesk's best practices, incorporate feedback and enable scalability. The CDT also rolled out a pilot that enabled broad changes to the AutoCAD+ program, allowing customers to purchase through their preferred channel with total solution sourcing through one partner.
Goals: Muir is sponsoring an effort to provide a Worldwide Volume Channel Framework to enable other geographies to tap into the power of volume channels. Her group continues to leverage multiple avenues available through the channel. Current projects include a pilot to enable presales technical support for highly specialized products offered through distribution as well as a channel-executed end-user demand-generation program designed to drive business to VARs and volume channel partners.
President
Radiant Resources
Years in position: 17
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Even in a difficult market, Radiant's goal has always been expansion. In the past year, Naughton has taken stock of partners and moved to strengthen alliances with organizations that contribute to the company's success. She refocused on areas of expertise and invested in technical resources to increase Radiant's value proposition to customers and prospects. Rather than contract marketing efforts, she bet that continuing to devote time and money to strong programs would drive growth, and it has, she says.
Goals: More than ever, Naughton believes that the industry can benefit from capable, robust regional solution providers. Her goal is to expand Radiant's position as a regional expert and strengthen alliances with the key partners that can help build its expertise. She continues to push for certifications and drive the value proposition of Radiant's technical knowledge and industry experience. Nurturing the company's managed services and cloud offerings gives Radiant another opportunity for expansion, she says.
Founder, CEO
Serus
Years in position: 10
Years in channel: 5
Highlights: Serus was recognized by the major companies in the semiconductor and high-tech verticals as the leading supplier of enterprise software to address the challenges associated with outsourced manufacturing and by the financial community as a "Company to Watch." Serus also added six highly recognized major semiconductor manufacturers to its list of customers.
Goals: Navar looks at 2012 as an exciting opportunity as Serus has built the ecosystem of the suppliers customers can connect to and start deriving immediate benefits from. Serus has gained invaluable experience in developing Intelligent Operations Management solutions for major Fortune 500 companies, according to Navar. Serus has allowed these customers full visibility into their entire value chain with the ability to see and manage risk and drive new efficiencies.
Vice President, Vendor Management, Technology Infrastructure Solutions Group
Avnet Technology Solutions
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 25
Highlights: With her team, Neal developed and directed enablement and demand generation campaigns customized for each supplier's key initiatives. This drove storage, networking and security sales growth. The technical training programs resulted in more than 400 reseller partner reps becoming certified to sell supplier solutions. The demand generation programs also helped Avnet drive more end-user opportunities to reseller partners, says Neal.
Goals: Neal aims to optimize Avnet's ability to align and deliver to reseller partners the enablement, tools and demand generation programs they need. She also plans to strengthen Avnet's position as a solution distributor by leveraging its vertical focus expertise to help reseller partners benefit from high-growth market opportunities.
Vice President, Experience & Programs
SAP Americas
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 22
Highlights: Neubrech says she joined SAP's North American SME sales region to be part of a transformation initiative that would accelerate the growth of SAP's partner ecosystem. Her focus was to improve the customer and partner experience through simplification, predictability and transparency of the partner programs, policies and daily operational activities. In early 2010, Neubrech's team led the full redesign and launch of the new PartnerNet channel program and rollout of a PRM system.
Goals: Neubrech and her team's mission for is to provide partners and employees with a channel program experience that is perceived as being channel friendly and easy to engage. She plans to create programs that are designed for partner and employee benefit and backed by policies that provide smart governance; supported by processes that are easy and streamlined; and launched with comprehensive communication and training.
CFO
Novacoast
Years in position: 8
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Newlon says the key accomplishment in 2010 was a 30% growth in revenue from 2009.
Goals: She aims to help put Novacoast on a path to continue to grow revenue and acquire one or two companies during 2011.
Senior Director, Cloud Channel Strategy
Microsoft
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: Realizing a need for new "born on the cloud" partners to be recognized as specialists, O'Hara launched Cloud Essentials & Cloud Accelerate--giving partners additional benefits and branding to customers. She also built a cloud ecosystem of more than 30,000 Cloud Advisor Partners globally and trained more than 100,000 partner individuals. O'Hara founded and ran the Cloud Services Advisory Council for Microsoft to shape the future channel strategy for Online Services and Windows Azure.
Goals: O'Hara aims to demonstrate cloud profitability for existing on-premise partners. It will be critical to deliver the right tools, guidance and capabilities to help partners build profitable cloud practices, she says. For Microsoft's existing cloud channel, O'Hara will focus on accelerating growth through demand generation, P2P initiatives, incentives and benefits.
Vice President, Channel Sales
Panasonic Solutions Company
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: O'Neil lists the merging of four divisions of Panasonic, each running their channel business differently, to move to one channel partner program. The company also was able to grow the sales of partners and increase partner count overall. In addition, 100% of direct dealers moved to distribution, equating to 98% of total Panasonic Solutions Company business.
Goals: This year's plan is to continue to enhance the program structure, O'Neil says, including a new incentive program and increased automation of program elements. She also wants to improve the ease of doing business for partners.
President, Healthcare Division
Sage
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 30
Highlights: Over the past year, Otter-Nickerson says she is most proud of being able to build a strong leadership team to increase company performance and position Sage as a leading solution provider for physicians and small-business owners. She is also proud of the company's response to market need and beginning the development of a more robust channel for the healthcare division.
Goals: Otter-Nickerson says she will continue the work from the past year in building the channel, increasing market share and creating more brand awareness so that the Sage Healthcare Division accelerates its overall strategy. Her goal is to increase channel contribution to 35% to 50% of division sales over the next year; increase market share; and remaind dedicated to the channel to ensure Sage's physician clients can deliver the highest quality of care to their patients.
Senior Vice President, Global Partner Sales
NetApp
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 27
Highlights: Parrish lists 47% year-over-year growth in two-tier distribution business; 60% year-over-year growth in global systems integrator business; and the fact that more than 75% of NetApp business is now done through indirect partners as key high points. She also notes a host of CRN awards including CRN Channel Chief, Top 25 Sales Leader, Top 100 Women in the Channel and Storage Superstar. NetApp also swept every category in the U.S. 2011 Channel Champions competition.
Goals: Parrish says she would like to see more NetApp partners participating in the public cloud opportunity, adding that the company has a terrific program for those partners that don't have a core competency in cloud services. She'd like to see more of them working with hosting and service providers to participate in this market. This will be a key focus area in 2011.
Senior Sales Manager
ATEN
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 19
Highlights: Person launched an initiative to promote existing data center hardware solutions in new applications that go beyond the data center.
Goals: In the near future, Person plans to launch ATEN's professional A/V solution line and penetrate the government vertical with a new set of products focused on military and government solutions.
Director, Channel Programs
StorageCraft Technology
Years in position: 3 months
Years in channel: 14
Highlights: A big change and highlight for Petriello was joining the team at StorageCraft as its director of channel programs. Transitioning to a new career chapter is always challenging, she says, but it has already yielded some rewarding opportunities to succeed with an innovative, growing company.
Goals: Petriello says she is looking forward to developing a more in-depth partner program for StorageCraft. This company is dedicated to supporting partners in the channel, and she is excited to find new ways to strengthen these relationships.
Director, Field Sales
Synnex
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: Petty is in charge of the U.S. field sales organization, customer acquisition and HP field account executives for the distributor.
Goals: Moving from a director of software product management position into a running the U.S. field sales team, Petty looks to increase the breadth of customers within Synnex and strengthen vendor relationships.
Group Vice President, Worldwide Alliance & Channels
Oracle
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 23
Highlights: Philpott developed a new team in Oracle called "Partner Services," a 200-man in-house team based in several worldwide locations. She also designed and rolled out OPN Specialized, calling it the most advanced evolution of the Oracle Partner Program in 10 years to meet the needs of customers, partners and Oracle executives.
Goals: Philpott's goals are to support the majority of partners to become specialized in their chosen focus, increase the number of active and revenue producing/influencing partners and boost partner satisfaction.
Northeast Region Director
Absolute Software
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 32
Highlights: Joining a company that does more than 90% of its business through the channel, Piehler says she has been able to re-engage and work with OEMs and solution providers, delivering security and life-cycle management solutions and mobile device management solutions to end-user customers.
Goals: Absolute Software is experiencing double-digit growth and is bringing new products and services to market that will enable the channel to offer new solutions around life-cycle management, secure drive and mobile devices, Piehler says.
Manager, Channel Marketing Communications, Solution Partners Organication
Hewlett-Packard
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Pointer leads HP's Executive Connections initiative, which she developed in 2008 as an executive partner engagement strategy designed to connect partners and their customers with HP's CEO and top executive leaders. As a result of her efforts, HP conducted 25 Executive Connections engagements in fiscal year 2010, reaching a total of 104 partners and 397customers.
Goals: Pointer hopes to continue building and expanding Executive Connections to help HP executives, partners and customers develop deeper relationships and drive business results. The program's three main goals will remain the same in fiscal year 2011: connect partners and their customers with HP's top executive leaders; collaborate through effective meeting formats; and create opportunities for business growth.
Senior Director, North American Channel Sales
Brocade
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 22
Highlights: A few of Potratz's highlights from the past year include growing Brocade's North American channel revenue by 78% year over year; doubling the percentage of Brocade business through the channel; and increasing the number of certified Elite and Premier partners by 22%.
Goals: For this year Potratz is focused on growing Brocade's channel revenue by 50%; doubling its channel utilization by the field; expanding the partnership between Brocade field and distribution; instituting several channel-only businesses; and deepening the sales and technical expertise of her team to assist in building a greater partner pipeline.
Vice President, Channel Marketing, Data Management
CA Technologies
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 22
Highlights: Purvis led the development of a new Global Partner Product Training Model and created new territory plan, partner plan and quarterly business review materials, boosting consistency in planning, forecasting, pipeline and sales execution. She also managed MDF and numerous third-party vendors and designed a new Partner Intelligence Newsletter.
Goals: Purvis will lead the launch of the enhanced Global Partner Program including an improved Partner Relationship Management system through salesforce.com. This major program enhancement will include several new or enhanced benefits to make it easier for partners to do business with CA, Purvis says. On tap for CA are new services offerings and a major new product release as well. Purvis also aims to expand the Partner Opportunity Management system and improve the lead delegation process based on tier level.
Director, Global Channel Marketing
Dell
Years in position: 19 months
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Global Commercial Channels business at Dell increased nearly $1.8 billion last year. Ranganathan and her team drove marketing campaigns and communications efforts that played a part in that success, she says. Ranganathan established and led a Global Channel Marketing Communications team including branding, global campaigns, agency management and social media, which she says has been key to changing the perception of Dell as a channel-friendly company. Ranganathan also led an integrated global launch of Dell's evolved Partner Program.
Goals: Ranganathan's priorities for next year are to continue the growth of Dell's business through channel marketing processes, teams and campaigns. She aims to continue to build a robust global channel marketing team that is a true partner to Dell's overall channel success, she says.
Senior Partner Business Manager
VMware
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Rapp notes these accomplishments for last year: being named second-quarter 2010 Partner Business Manager of the Quarter as well as a member of the 2010 President's Club.
Goals: Rapp plans to increase revenue in S&B by 30% duringthe 2012 fiscal year. She also intends to continue to expand and streamline VMware's "Top Gun" training program to help increase territory revenue and will implement new ways to train partners and educate them about VMware and its products.
Senior Vice PresidentVP, Corporate Sales & Support, Americas
Kaspersky Lab
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Kaspersky attained 7.5% of global market share, double since 2008; saw 38% year-over-year growth in corporate sales; and attained five quarters in a row of quarter-over-quarter growth. This is the 13th consecutive year of 100% channel growth globally. Reynolds was named a CRN Channel Chief for the second year in a row and Kaspersky was the Overall Winner on CRN's Annual Report Card for the third year in a row. For the fourth consecutive year, Kasperksy earned a 5-Star rating in CRN's 2011 Partner Program Guide.
Goals: Reynolds is always looking for new ways to aid partners' profitability. She will continue to improve conversations with channel partners by hiring the right people, presenting new renewal tools, and updating methods of education, she says. Kaspersky is delivering new products later this year for enterprise and midmarket customers, which means new business for partners. At its roots, Reynolds says, Kaspersky remains committed to its partners and will continue to be a 100% channel sales organization.
Director, Channel Marketing Programs, Imaging & Printing Group
Hewlett-Packard
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Reynolds helped launch IPG Supplies Credit, which counts the revenue from the sale of HP imaging and printing supplies from all HP Authorized Partners and Supplies Authorized Distributors in determining PartnerOne membership levels, and helped roll out Office Printing Solutions Elite to help partners capitalize on the rise of the managed print service model.
Goals: Reynolds will continue to focus on making imaging and printing a strategic imperative at HP.
Vice President, Marketing
Diskeeper
Years in position: 11
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Richcreek provided 1,000-plus copies of Diskeeper software free to resellers and launched two roducts to make the day-to-day lives of resellers easier and more productive: Diskeeper 2011, which increases performance, reliability, longevity and energy efficiency of reseller customer systems, and V-locity 2, for virtualization resellers to help them keep their customer systems optimized since fragmentation is multiplied in host/guest systems.
Goals: Diskeeper plans to provide additional products to answer the demands of customers in key technology areas and help resellers be more profitable. According to Richcreek, the products include a Diskeeper product for SANs, V-locity 3.0 and a full service managed service offering. Richcreek says she will focus on the needs of her core reseller base while growing that base with additional aligned resellers and complete the revamp of its channel partner Web site.
Senior Director, Marketing Communications, Field Marketing
D-Link
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Roddy is keen on being part of an organization that is actively redefining itself and has acted as a co-architect of that process alongside an internal group of sales and marketing leaders galvanized toward the same goal. She highlights working with D-Link's channel team on enhancing its VIP Partner Program, making D-Link even easier to do business with, as a key turning point for the company.
Goals: Roddy says she is looking forward to D-Link's business-class networking solutions no longer being a surprise to the solution provider channel, quoting D-Link President Nick Tidd: "We're not just the $99 router company." 2010 was a year of education, she says, and this year and next D-Link will continue establishing its presence in the small and midsize business markets.
Corporate Administration Director
CharTec
Years in position: 16
Years in channel: 3
Highlights: CharTec grew by 2,300% in 2010 and Rogers was directly involved with the evolution of marketing and branding CharTec's products, memberships and services. Accomplishments for 2010 included leading the marketing team in the launch of the CharTec BDR, resulting in global product awareness. Rogers' team assisted in increasing membership awareness for CharTec to create a partner base of 620 in 2010 from approximately 200 in 2009.
Goals: In 2011, CharTec is completing the development of a 10,000-square-foot facility dedicated to MSP training and product experience. Rogers' goals include continuing to attract the right partners for CharTec and assisting the team in training and content development for the best partner experience possible. CharTec aims to grow its partner base to more than 1,000 members in 2011 and will release two new products.
Executive Vice President
PC Mall
Years in position: 11
Years in channel: 31
Highlights: PC Mall made large investments for long-term growth, including the launch of a new small-business networking portal, a new call center, an acquisition in the service world, a health-care division--all balanced while continuing to achieve growth and profitability, Rogers says. PC Mall was able to capitalize on the recovery in the market to have leading growth with top five manufacturers, as well as making solid progress in solution areas. The company also launched an initiative around five solution practices.
Goals: Rogers lays out the goals: sustain PC Mall's success in balancing out its strong transactional business with more solution-oriented business, as well as growing its baseline of services, and grow the management team so that they can be the foundation for the next 10 years of growth.
CEO
The Launch Pad
Years in position: 19
Years in channel: 23
Highlights: Rosoff says the most exciting highlight was the rollout of The Launch Pad's national franchising efforts, which has been in the works for the past 20 months. The second was the redesign and refinement of the company's managed IT services delivery model, designed to reduce client technology spending. What evolved from this vision, she says, was the RevITup VirtualGreen Office series, which focused on sustainable profitability with technology.
Goals: 2011 and 2012 are focused on new franchisees and the development and refinement of the first managed IT services franchise, Rosoff says. Through the RevITup Business Care series, which is designed to provide technology-as-a-service, franchisees will be able to reach small and midsize businesses throughout the U.S, according to Rosoff. The concept is to provide technology like a utility, where the infrastructure just works and the focus is completely on driving solutions that drive revenue for clients.
Vice Presdient, Global Channel Sales
SGI
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 6
Highlights: SGI's Channel Network Program enjoyed multiple successes this past year, starting with business growth of more than 30%, according to Ryan. This new business came from all geographies, including the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Japan. All product lines expanded, most significantly the storage solutions, she says, adding that SGI's partners are achieving exceptional profit from the company's differentiated products. Finally, SGI's Channel Network Program won CRN's 5-Star rating for a second consecutive year.
Goals: Ryan intends for SGI to become the premier manufacturer for its leading value-added-resellers--the fastest-growing supply partner and the most profitable partner. This past year, SGI recruited many premier VARs that are growing, acquiring and developing significant service organizations in federal and commercial markets.
Director, Operations
HTG Peer Groups
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Sacco increased brand awareness and channel visibility of HTG Peer Groups, executed two 500-plus person multiday events and contributed to the ongoing development of the HTG growth strategy. Sacco also was instrumental in the rollout of the latest HTG offering, Hands That Give, the IT industry's first member-led emergency response system modeled after the American Red Cross.
Goals: For HTG Peer Groups, there will be a continued focus on quality vs. quantity in further cementing its 1-4-250 strategy, Sacco says. The focus will be on equipping its 250 member companies to be the "go-to" source of the IT industry. This includes a heightened focus on providing top-notch content, accountability and execution. The Hands that Give program will be put into action and make a difference in the personal and professional lives of HTG members in need, she says.
Vice President, Business Development
Trace3
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 6
Highlights: Salty points to Trace3's successful rebranding into an IT systems integrator with an emphasis on consulting, technology and outsourcing expertise as the overall key accomplishment. Also critical was going from $120 million to $200 million in revenue and doubling headcount, all while maintaining a unique and incredible culture, she says.
Goals: Trace3 will continue to expand its services portfolio in a way that differentiates it in the industry, according to Salty, specifically launching a training center with the goal of enabling and promoting clients, a new division she launched in 2010. She aims to increase the overall intelligence of clients' IT organizations and continue to help them solve their problems so that they can focus on strategy and growth.
Vice President, Channels, North America
APC by Schneider Electric
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 14
Highlights: Sbar is focused on ensuring it is easy for partners to conduct business with APC while driving improved partner revenue growth and profitability. With today's need for increased energy efficiency, Sbar and her team were dedicated to enabling partners with the opportunity to expand their portfolios to include APC's power and cooling solutions for the data center.
Goals: Sbar will make sure her initiatives are closely tied to driving partner engagement, profitability and satisfaction. She also will continue to enable partners with the opportunity to expand their portfolios and leverage the APC and Schneider Electric solution offerings.
Vice President, Marketing
DLT Solutions
Years in position: 10
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: With Schaefer driving her team, 2010 saw more than 3,000 marketing activities, resulting in more than 3.6 million customer touches and 75,000 proactive leads. DLT experienced more than 20% growth in sales revenue to $789 million, much faster than the government IT market.
Goals: Schaefer aims to increase lead and revenue generation by directing a customer-centric approach of "peer-to-peer" marketing. She will use social media to create connections with DLT's customers, aimed at developing original content that not only positions DLT's senior management and engineering personnel as thought leaders but also connects with customers on a peer-to-peer level. Schaefer's team will work closely with internal groups to integrate this approach to provide better guidance and education to the customer base.
VP, Bus. Solutions Group
Verizon Wireless
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 10
Highlights: Schijns worked on the next generation of wireless solutions, innovating next-gen channel programs and bringing new M2M solutions to market. She also joined the CompTIA board and launched a green certification program. Schijns received awards for Channels and M2M solutions, including CRN Channel Chief, CRN Top 25 Channel Sales Leader and Top Women of Technology.
Goals: Schijns says she is going back to her channel roots and ensuring that Verizon Wireless embraces and leverages the strength of channels to create unique and intelligent mobile solutions. She plans to create a best-in-class program to help customers drive profitability and productivity with ecosystem solutions. She also will spearhead new benefits for channel partners, develop M2M solutions that deliver ROI and study how technology can address and resolve top 10 stressors for mobile workers and employers.
Senior Vice President, General Manager, ERP Solutions
Sage
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 4
Highlights: Schultz delivered 38% margin increase and returned Sage ERP portfolio to more than 30% new customer growth. She consolidated autonomous ERP P&Ls and teams into one market-facing portfolio strategy and diversified ERP revenue into cloud-based connected services. Schultz also grew average revenue per customer by 5% via renewal rate improvements and strategic services cross-sell, and improved partner confidence more than 50% via regular communications and follow-through.
Goals: A key goal is to double Sage's connected/cloud services footprint via a combination of diversifying product, channel and pricing models, Schultz says. The company needs to build on momentum while recognize the changing market. The growing adoption of Web-enabled solutions and connected services compels it to look at how to diversify and extend its on-premise solutions into the cloud. In addition, Schultz says she must find new ways to monetize customers and reward channel partners.
Director, Purchasing
D&H Distributing
Years in position: 13
Years in channel: 21
Highlights: Shank is proud that D&H closed out its 2011 fiscal year with double-digit sales growth year-over-year. In fact, she says, D&H saw 21% growth from independent VARs mostly in the SMB sector. The team was able to work with its vendor partners to evaluate product sales performance, reducing slower-moving inventory by double digits, and replacing those items with higher-velocity stock. D&H also participated in several successful Android-based and other mobility launches.
Goals: Shank says she will contribute to several key initiatives for D&H's fiscal year 2012, designed to ensure that the company continues to evolve in ways that support the channel and produce the same healthy, double-digit growth as this year. If implemented successfully, she says, the initiatives will create a new bar of excellence for D&H's Purchasing Department.
Vice President, Marketing
Bluewolf
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Bluewolf is one of America's fastest growing companies, says Sklar, and recognized as one of New York's Best Places to Work-- highlighting its unique culture. Sklar helped grow revenue by 54% in a down economy.
Goals: Sklar plans to continue Bluewolf's trajectory of growth with offerings that support innovation with cloud solutions and use of social media for the enterprise. She aims to boost the company's enterprise footprint by helping organizations move into the 21st century through what it calls Agile Business Transformation.
General Manager, Microsoft Partner Network, Worldside Partner Group
Microsoft
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Slocum Bennani landed the last major changes for the launch of the Microsoft Partner Network with net neutral to positive partner satisfaction impacts. As part of this, she launched and landed a unified subscription for partners around Microsoft's cloud offerings (Cloud Essentials). She continued to oversee global partner launch excellence for market introductions of Lync, Office 365, Intune and SBS 2011.
Goals: Slocum Bennani will focus on extending the partnership road map out from a 12-month horizon based on technology road maps and invest in helping traditional partners transition their business to embed cloud offerings as a core practice area. She is looking more deeply at the end-to-end experience Microsoft offers partners programmatically and innovating on that to help them connect more easily and effectively with the company. She also will continue to help transfer sales and marketing skills and offerings to partners to help them win.
Senior Director, Partner Programs
Symantec
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Designed and launched the Enhanced Symantec Partner Program; relaunched the opportunity registration program for the partner community; and created new partner rules of engagement, which set the baseline for how Symantec does business with its partners.
Goals: In the next year, Smith's focus is on ensuring our partners are successfully migrated to the Symantec Partner Program and that they are seeing business returns on their investment in Symantec. Symantec will continue to be very focused on SMB and has aggressive growth plans for its cloud (SaaS) business. The company will be working closely with partners to enable them to capitalize on cloud opportunities with Symantec solutions across all market segments, she says.
SVP, U.S. and Canada
Westcon Group
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 24
Highlights: Since this is a new role for Smurthwaite-Murphy, she spent much of the time analyzing the business and aligning its strategy. When she was promoted, her mandate was to bring the success she had as vice president and general manager of Westcon Canada to her new role. In addition to its global footprint, Smurthaite-Murphy says, what differentiates Westcon is the strong partner relationships at every level. During the past year, Westcon has made great strides building on this strength by bolstering its sales team and expanding strategic vendor relationships.
Goals: Westcon is focusing on several core areas over the next year, including expanding its sales team, rolling out new vendors and enhancing channel enablement services. Together, Smurthwaite-Murphy says, these will further position Westcon as a premier value-added distributor of unified communications, infrastructure, data center and security solutions.
Vice President, Worldwide Alliances & Channels Programs & Communications
Oracle
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 8
Highlights: In 2010, Oracle launched Diamond level and Advanced Specialization in the OPN Specialized program, allowing partners to be recognized for their deep expertise, according to Smyers. The company also grew specialized partners by more than 500% and launched 20 new specializations with supporting enablement resources. Lastly, it transformed the OPN partner portal into a self-service resource through the use of Web 2.0 technologies and increased its traffic by 40%.
Goals: With responsibilities for Oracle's partner program, communications, and strategy, Smyers seeks to deliver valued resources that improve partner profitability and satisfaction. She will continue to gain feedback from partners through surveys and social media to tailor the program and add new features as required. In the coming year, Oracle plans to offer new tools and specializations.
Director, North American Strategic Accounts, Enterprise Computing Solutions
Arrow Electronics
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: Somerville-Gonzalez created, launched and now leads Arrow ECS' strategic accounts program to increase Arrow ECS' market share and gross profits by strengthening relationships with resellers that purchase multiple supplier lines through Arrow ECS. The team provides a holistic view of Arrow's offerings and empowers partners to drive data center transformation, she says.
Goals: Somerville-Gonzalez plans to continue delivering both growth and market share to Arrow ECS and resellers in its strategic accounts program by doubling the size of her North American team and adding more resellers into the program.
Senior Manager, Partner Marketing, Enterprise Servers Storage & Networking, Americas
Hewlett-Packard
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: On Nov. 1, HP fully integrated the expanded portfolio of enterprise business solutions into the PartnerOne Program, says Spence. This takes advantage of HP's expanded networking and storage portfolios and increases the engagement with the HP software offering. HP also launched the Marketing2Marketing Forum right after the Americas Partner Conference in Las Vegas in March 2011. The M2M Forum brought HP marketing and partner marketing executives together to develop channel growth strategies and programs.
Goals: Spence plans to continue driving partner growth and HP channel leadership for HP's ESSN businesses. She will continue to oversee the strategic development of the PartnerOne Program for ESSN and work across the company's business units to enable sales growth. PartnerOne will be the key to reward partners for selling across HP's portfolio and drive sales growth in key market segments supporting HP's goals for market leadership, she says.
Channel Sales Manager
NetApp
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Last year was all about growth through the channel, Sperling says. The channel grew more than 35% and NetApp achieved more than 85% of the business being done through the channel.
Goals: Next year is all about assisting partners with cross-training their technical engineers for the significant opportunity in the data center, according to Sperling. NetApp has have offered to take their highly trained networking engineers and systems engineers and provide them with eight weeks of in-depth storage and virtualization training.
Vice President, Worldwide Channels
Brocade
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Spicek continued her focus on enhancing Alliance Partner Network (APN) program elements that support Brocade's overall channel strategy, which sees building out partner skills and education as a core principle. This will include significant updates to the APN program to empower the channel to increase expertise in new technology areas, such as cloud and convergence technologies and the transition to a skill-based rather than revenue-based program model.
Goals: For next year, Spicek has these priorities: further enhancement of the APN program to include elements around the concept of "Flexible Segmentation" to allow partners the flexibility to choose their own path, such as establishing additional certifications; and active solicitation of partner feedback to give business partners what they need to be successful in times of transformation.
Jan Spring
Vice President, Channel Development
eFolder
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 19
Highlights: eFolder was involved in 26 channel conferences and maintained 25% per quarter growth in partners, storage and revenue, Spring says. EFolder also introduced a new SaaS- HaaS offering. The company again was named one of the top 20 Cloud Storage vendors by CRN.
Goals: Spring's goal is to increase growth and give partners the very best channel vendor experience.
CEO
Davenport Group
Years in position: 9
Years in channel: 9
Highlights: St. Charles lists CRN's Top 100 Most Power Women of the Channel award, the Compellent Partner Advisory Council and being a member of Everything Channel's Value Added Channel Advisory Board as key highlights.
Goals: St. Charles says her goal is year-over-year strategic growth of 20% to increase customer footprint and revenue while maintaining Davenport's high standards of customer satisfaction. Balancing this rapid growth with a continued emphasis on strong customer relationships will continue to be her overarching objective for the next 18 months. Her driving focus is on the long-term relationship and not the transaction.
Director, Partner Experience
McAfee
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: St. John follows a "Listen, Learn and Deliver" philosophy with McAfee's partner ecosystem. At the McAfee Global Partner Summit this past year partners said that they needed McAfee's help to migrate to a managed services business model. In response, McAfee will be launching a new Service Provider Program category this year and highlighting partner capabilities via new Partner Specializations.
Goals: St. John says she will look to continually enhance the partner experience with McAfee. Building stronger, broader, trusting relationships with partners is key to mutual success. Partners also need to be made aware of the tremendous growth of McAfee in recent years. To drive familiarity of the broad McAfee security portfolio of endpoint, network and cloud solutions will allow them to make more informed recommendations to their customers, she says.
President
Matrix Integration
Years in position: 32
Years in channel: 31
Highlights: Stallings points to three: the establishment of an Advisory Board to bring family and executive leadership together to strategize on growing the business; the completion of family and leadership assessments that revealed strengths that could be leveraged personally and professionally; and the training of staff facilitators so that Matrix employees can consistently be trained in leadership through people skills.
Goals: Stallings aims to complete training on Matrix's recent CRM implementation for both sales and service; fast-track the business in managed services to better serve those in need of these services; and hire a Chief Technologist to help educate businesses on where technology is going and where Matrix can help them get where they want to go.
Director, Marketing, Channel Programs
Verio
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Stone continued to grow the viaVerio partner program by enabling partners to thrive and succeed in business with the right tools and programs.
Goals: Stone details her top five priorities as listening to partners; continue growing the viaVerio partner program, by not only adding new partners, but by adding the right partners; delivering programs to quickly onboard new partners with less investment on their end; energizing the existing viaVerio program by delivering new tools, programs and incentives to help partners drive ROI more quickly and easily; and building on Verio's ongoing social media efforts to better engage and communicate with partners.
Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Xirrus
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Tabor's highlights as she just joined Xirrus include developing a channel strategy, which transformed Xirrus from a direct sales organization to a blended direct and channel business; participating in the regional expansion in Asia-Pacific Japan to take traction to meet significant demands; and not only directing the channel strategy but also opening key geographies for Xirrus in EMEA.
Goals: Tabor's goal is to make Xirrus the fastest-growing wireless company in the world and she plans to scale Xirrus' business by continuing to build a profitable channel model that is not only rewarding to Xirrus but to partners. Ultimately, the goal is to establish Xirrus as the best company for partners to work with in the wireless networking market. The company's global strategy also includes entry into the Chinese market and expanding further in EMEA.
Director, Channel Marketing
SugarCRM
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 16
Highlights: For Testa, the highlights include a 2011 Channel Chief Award for Jeff Campbell, the holding of 2011's SugarCon Annual Customer and Partner Conference, the recruitment and signing of 100 new resellers in 2010 as well as record-breaking revenue growth.
Goals: Testa's goals include a 100% fully enabled channel, a training and certification program launch, prepackaged co-marketing programs, a doubling of overall company revenue, and for SugarCRM's top 20 partners to experience 200% growth.
Director, Channel Development, Enterprise Networks Division
Adtran
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: Over the past few years, Adtran partners have been asking for help in providing improved enablement. Thomas developed Absolutely Adtran, a deal registration bonus for all-Adtran opportunities valued at $100,000-plus, and drove the launch of Big Deal for Small Businesses to ensure Adtran addressed the "small" in SMB. In 2010, the programs contributed to greater recognition of the fact that the company could deliver a complete solution for unified communications.
Goals: Adtran is again answering requests from partners to improve their productivity, and Thomas has been a key advocate of partner enablement--spearheading an initiative that introduces resources that prepare partners to better compete in today's changing world. This year she will focus on developing management tools that allow Adtran to track the progress of its partners throughout their life cycle as an Adtran partner.
Vice President, Marketing
DMD Data Systems
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 3
Highlights: DMD Data Systems is proud to have been recognized with many awards in the past year, including the CRN Fast Growth 100, Inc. 5000, KY Pacesetter Award and the Commerce Lexington Small Business of the Year, says Thompson. The latter award advanced DMD founder and president Dave Sevigny for consideration and selection by the Small Business Administration as the 2011 Kentucky Small Business Person of the Year. The recognitions have been incredibly motivating for the team, Thompson says.
Goals: Next year's goal is to continue to grow DMD Data Systems, especially the midmarket segment and new services offerings. The awards received gave DMD Data Systems some deserved publicity and Thompson hopes to capitalize on that. There are goals for expanding on the company's social media efforts and Web presence and most importantly, she says, DMD Data Systems wants to spread its green IT message--that upgrading to energy-efficient systems not only is the right thing to do, but provides good ROI.
Vice President, Worldwide Partner Marketing
Juniper
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: This longtime Cisco executive shocked the tech industry by moving to Juniper Networks in January 2011. Prior to the move, Tierney led strategic partner marketing initiatives for the 13,000 partners in Cisco's global partner community.
Goals: Juniper's products are creating innovation disruptions in the marketplace, says Tierney, and the company is going to help partners capitalize on that momentum by building a new vision for partner marketing and making substantial investments in co-marketing. These investments will be focused on three areas: helping partners differentiate themselves, helping partners drive demand, and becoming partners' trusted marketing advisor.
Director, Marketing, Vendor Relations
Wayside Technology Group
Years in position: 11
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: The highlight of Turner's year was being able to customize some dynamic and revenue-generating programs for the distribution business and benefiting vendor partners as well. Working with vendors to ease their channel issues and promoting their products in innovative and creative ways is a great way to show value, she says.
Goals: Next year Turner says she hopes to open up new relationships with key solution partners.
Vice President, Americas Channel Sales
Blue Coat Systems
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 15
Highlights: Usewicz's accomplishments include the introduction of a WAN Designation Fast Start Program, which offers a subset of partner benefits including qualified leads, MDF, evaluation gear, evaluation and presales support. She also notes the launch of enablement tools that allow partners an efficient way to get ramped up on selling a Blue Coat Solution and the rollout of segmentation on Blue Coat certifications to better fit the partner's strength and focus. Certification areas include Security, Visibility, Acceleration.
Goals: Four key focus areas for Usewicz are to increase incremental contribution from the channel through partner enablement and managing through a defined scorecard process; build and expand its WAN optimization channel; drive the cloud to the existing partner base and recruit a new MSSP channel; and focus on the midmarket channel, allowing Authorized partners to deliver incremental revenue.
Vice President, Global Sector
Technology Integration Group
Years in position: New position
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Vasilion notes that Technology Integration Group had a record year as the public sector sales surpassed the commercial portion of the company.
Goals: Vasilion's priorities for next year include pursing additional contract vehicles and adding strategic social economic businesses to the company's portfolio of partners, both of which will drive incremental business.
Senior Director, Global Ecosystem, Partner Marketing
SAP
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 7
Highlights: Venkat led a full-scale rollout of demand generation enablement for SAP's system integrator and ISV partners globally; instituted a self-serve online campaign builder for partners with complete campaign kits; and rolled out marketing expert training sessions. With these marketing enablers, Venkat says, smaller partners have a level playing field to build a strong pipeline to grow their business, while creating a scalable platform to increase partner revenue contribution to SAP.
Goals: The year's focus will be to continue driving quality pipeline creation for SAP and partners via SAP's e-channel lead-generation infrastructure and programs.
President
Phalanx Technology Group
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 19
Highlights: Vicari says being able to grow Phalanx Technology Group's business and add new employees during difficult economic times was certainly the top accomplishment.
Goals: Vicari plans to continue to grow the business by developing and growing within Phalanx Technology Group's Fortune 500 client list.
Renewals Director
Astaro
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 9
Highlights: In 2010 Vignone took over the renewal team at Astaro and helped the channel understand the value of and how to capitalize on renewal business. Leading the renewal team, she was able to improve Astaro's customer renewal rate to 75%, creating more revenue for partners in the Americas region. She did this by creating a new renewal notification and communication process for both partners and end users and a customer satisfaction plan for end users.
Goals: In 2011 Vignone hopes to increase the renewal rate and strengthen the renewals team's relationship with partners and their end users. She will continue to evolve the customer relationship program to increase customer satisfaction and thus the rate of renewal business.
Co-founder, CEO
iChanneX
Years in position: 7
Years in channel: 1
Highlights: The health-care industry is in great need of secure yet easy and affordable IT and it is filled with small-medium-size healthcare providers and servicers, says Vohariwatt. These entities are providers in multiple and complex disciplines yet they all need the solutions to enable them to collaborate seamlessly to provide quality care for the patients. In the past year, Vohariwatt says, iChanneX has done just that, creating cloud solutions that can be ready overnight and at the right price point.
Goals: Vohariwatt hopes to help making California a TeleHealth Model for the nation. To do this, she plans to foster strong relationships, build infrastructure and develop sales tools to support and expand iChanneX's channel partners. With its strategic partner teams, the company will be able bring itsACO4Cloud (Cloud for Accountable Care Organizations) to even the smallest providers or practices across California, Vohariwatt says.
Director, Worldwide Channels Deveopment, Cisco Capital
Cisco
Years in position: 6
Years in channel: 11
Highlights: Von Seggern led the build-out of Cisco Capital's extended terms financing program coverage from 20 to more than 142 countries. Over the past year, more than half of Cisco's channel orders utilized extended terms. Her team led the development of a variety of innovative channel partner initiatives including special finance offerings and is credited with creating a robust training curriculum and comprehensive financing portal for channel partners.
Goals: Von Seggern's priorities include helping channel partners navigate the current economic climate. Her team is now developing Cisco Capital's marketing and support programs to create channel capacity for Cisco and help customers acquire the Cisco products and services they need both today and in the future. This includes the extended terms financing program, credit lines and payment terms that provide partners with improved payment terms beyond Cisco's standard 30-day term.
Director, Channel Marketing Programs, Imaging & Printing Group, Americas
Hewlett-Packard
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 12
Highlights: In addition to many other accomplishments for 2010, Waida implemented four collaborative partners for managed print services for the channel, which helps VARs get into managed print without big investments.
Goals: Waida will leverage the strengths of partners' services capabilities for incremental revenue streams with hardware, supplies and services.
Vice President, North American Ecosystem, Channels Marketing
SAP Americas
Years in position: 4 months
Years in channel: 4 months
Highlights: With 10 years at SAP, Weber's top accomplishments in her new position include delivering a successful Channel Partner Summit to help partners drive business transformation; standardizing pipeline building workshops; and delivering volume online pay-per-responder programs aligned to industry benchmarks. In addition, Weber oversaw the third-quarter launch of volume telemarketing services, line-of-business and industry programs, and a Marketing Service Bureau to improve enablement and ROI analysis.
Goals: Weber will focus on building a high-ROI marketing engine with channel partners. She also plans to develop door-opener strategies for mobility, in-memory and cloud computing as well as boost partner recruitment programs to grow the OEM and SaaS partner base.
Vice President, Sales, Canada
Softchoice
Years in position: 4
Years in channel: 17
Highlights: Wengle furthered the solutions business and led Softchoice's Canadian arm to generate $537 million in revenue. She continued to build a network of local solution providers and independent contractors to support customers, increasing relevance in the Canadian market. She continued to build on and align her sales team to a very successful integrated marketing program, which in 2010 attracted more than 3,300 attendees. Softchoice grew 14% from 2009 to 2010.
Goals: Wengle is zeroing in on increasing the number of customer engagements involving professional services by more than three-fold and ensuring her team builds on the success of Softchoice's events marketing programs, leveraging these events to showcase Softchoice's expertise with emerging technology solutions with customers, and attract new customers.
Director, Product Marketing
Insight Direct
Years in position: 1
Years in channel: 4
Highlights: White has been working with partners to think strategically about how to increase ROI for their channel investments. Insight is evolving to respond to the changing needs and White has helped develop and implement these plans. In addition to providing supply chain and e-commerce capabilities, Insight Direct is collaborating with partners to create go-to-market solutions that address the business needs of clients while driving growth for Insight and its partners.
Goals: White will work with a team that capitalizes on Insight's capabilities to grow market share in its categories, i.e., the data center. White says her engineering background, coupled with her relationship-building skills, will enable her to drive the business forward.
Channels Manager, EMEA
Pentaho
Years in position: 2
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Under Wijeyakumar's leadership last year, EMEA channel revenue grew by 284% and the number of EMEA partners doubled. Pentaho also elevated the level of partners producing revenue on a concurrent basis. The company also entered into and launched partner programs in many new markets in Western Europe and held 114 events with EMEA partners.
Goals: Wijeyakumar says she Pentaho is seriously launching in the Middle East and Africa this year, building on success it has had already working on a giant treasury project in South Africa. She's also working in countries like Morocco and Tunisia, where the presidents have just launched open-source initiatives. Pentaho just finished events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, where it recorded its highest attendance to date. These immediately led to two proof-of-concept deals and 40 meeting requests, she says.
Vice President, Customer, Solutions Marketing
Ingram Micro
Years in position: 5
Years in channel: 13
Highlights: Wilcox helped lead innovative marketing programs aimed at helping VARs acquire the marketing skills and branding necessary to build up customer acquisition activities, drive greater demand and show competitive differentiation. These programs helped VARs stay connected with customers and recruit new ones. The team also developed an innovative Small Business program and hosted a number of partner-focused events, boot camps and virtual training in 2010.
Goals: Wilcox aims to build out Ingram Micro's Small Business initiative and support its health-care efforts . She also plans to create and refine marketing programs and resources that represent best-in-class performance and ROI for vendor partners and drive results for resellers. In addition, she plans to generate greater awareness of the capabilities/services within Ingram Micro's Marketing Services Agency.
Director, North American Channel Marketing & Programs
Dell
Years in position: 3
Years in channel: 3
Highlights: Last year Dell's channel business saw year-over-year double-digit revenue growth, and the acquisition of Compellent added new solutions and programs to the storage line. Wilson made program changes based on partners' needs--offering strong field support and greater opportunities returns for developing skills around Dell solutions.
Goals: Wilson's focus is helping partners profit from their expertise. The program has evolved to three levels of partnership: Registered Partners; Preferred Partners, which have completed certification requirements in one or more areas and are recognized as the experts in Dell key offerings; and Premier Partners, which have demonstrated the highest level of commitment to Dell solutions.
President, CEO
Integrated Telemanagement Services
Years in position: 10
Years in channel: 18
Highlights: The addition of new cloud services and obtaining renewable growth targets through growing partner and sales channel relationships were they key highlights for Woods and ITS. She also noted optimizing product offerings and adding additional SMB-valued products as top accomplishments.
Goals: Woods has her eye on growth for ITS and exceeding operating plan goals.
Victoria Zona
Channel Sales Director
Raritan
Years in position: 12
Years in channel: 20
Highlights: Zona enhanced Raritan's partner program to better serve VARs as it transitions from a hardware vendor to one that sells both hardware and software solutions. She improved the education available to them and increased joint marketing. Zona also formalized and expanded Raritan's Network of ecosystem vendor partners, enabling her to set up a series of educational seminars to help VARs and end users understand the importance of energy efficiency in data centers.
Goals: Zona aims to boost Raritan's brand recognition in the Power and DCIM space. She will create educational seminars VARs can attend to become more proficient in selling energy management solutions and refine the partner program to ensure it provides the proper sales tools, collaborative marketing, training and sales engagement. Zona also will expand Raritan's thought-leadership position by revamping its trade show and event strategy.