Larissa Crandall becomes Vice President of Global Channel and Alliances, the first time Veeam has brought these areas together globally under a single executive.
Larissa Crandall, Vice President of Global Channel and Alliances, Veeam
Veeam Software has appointed their first-ever Vice President of Global Channel and Alliances, with the hire of Larissa Crandall away from Gigamon, where she had held the same position for the last four years. Crandall takes the Veeam channel helm with certain things on her road map, such as better leveraging Veeam’s alliance partners, and more effectively integrating the partner networks across the globe which have been managed entirely locally until now. Yet at the same time, Crandall is emphasizing that the key theme of her leadership will emphasize continuity rather than change, that Veeam’s core model of being partner-driven will not change at all, and that the main focus will be providing more effective enablement to the partner ecosystem.
Unusually, for a company with a significant global presence, Veeam has not had either a global channel head or a global alliances leader previously. Kevin Rooney has been the most conspicuous channel executive, but his area of responsibility is North America, not global. Channel responsibilities in other areas came under the authority of the regional sales head for the geo.
“My role is a new one throughout the process, and my initial focus is to enhance our overall growth strategy,” Crandall told ChannelBuzz. “It’s not a situation where there are big things which have to be fixed. It’s more an issue of enhancing things and bringing everything together. It’s important though to bring it all together to ensure that there are no siloes, and that the appropriate leaders in each group all roll up to me.”
That process, Crandall emphasized, is just at its beginning.
“This is Day 10 for me at Veeam, and I’ve spent it with the GSI team, the alliance team, development, product marketing – all of it,” she said. “The channel ecosystem is evolving very quickly, and Veeam has done extremely well as a result.”
Crandall said that a focus of these talks has been on increasing Veeam’s enterprise presentation. Today, Veeam’s enterprise business is substantial, compared to its early days when they were primarily focused on the SMB segment. There is still room for expansion, however.
“We have already been in the Fortune 500 and Global 2000 for quite a while,” she stated. “But I came here because there are still more opportunities which can be obtained by putting an eye on them and spending more time on them. We have already built quite a diverse set of partners to go after this market, including GSIs, MSPs, and CSPs. But every region is different. Some have a higher percentage of GSIs. Some depend more on traditional resellers. My main job is to bring that all together.”
Crandall will also have a deep focus on better leveraging the Veeam alliances to increase both their enterprise and their midmarket business.
“What I will add is a greater focus on alliances,” she said. “That is a high priority for me. I’m about to go on the road and spend a lot of time with our core strategic partners, to discuss how we can co-sell together, both to midsize businesses and to enterprises.”
Looking ahead to 2023, Crandall said partners should not expect to see big changes in policies and programs.
“It’s definitely early on, but my leadership style is doing a lot of listening, and will respect what Veeam and its team has built,” she noted. “It’s more about enhancements and tweaks, and not an overhaul of the partner program. It comes down to enablement and how we can best help them as they evolve. My big priority is spending time with our existing base, and assuring them that I am not looking to disrupt things. Veeam is partner driven, and we are not looking to change that. We want to ensure them that Veeam will support them around protecting data.”
