Barracuda strengthens investment in partner experience, particularly for more technical SEs, with new hires, with more to come, as well as additional enablement resources.
ason Beal, VP, Worldwide Partner Ecosystems at Barracuda
Cybersecurity vendor Barracuda Networks has expanded the resources available to their channel partners. They have expanded the number of more senior channel management personnel. They have also added new resources for channel technical enablement.
For North American partners, the big news is the hire of Maria Martinez as VP of Channels, Americas and the promotion of Karen Ward to the new role of VP, MSP Sales, Americas. These complement hirings in the Asia Pacific region of Andy Lau as Director, Partner Ecosystems and Alliance for Asia Pacific & Japan, Makoto Suzuki as Regional Sales Director for Japan, and Paul Crighton as Regional Sales Director for Australia, New Zealand & the Pacific Islands.
“The onboarding of Maria into a dedicated channel leadership role is an incremental investment, as is the promotion of Karen Ward,” said Jason Beal, VP, Worldwide Partner Ecosystems at Barracuda. “With me coming on board, we took the opportunity to strengthen the organization and the head count for channels in North America.”
Beal also stressed that Barracuda is in active hiring mode on the channel front.
“We are also hiring, to add a ton of incremental channel resources,” Beal said. “For our global team I have two roles posted. One is Global Director, Partner Technical Enablement, and the other is Global Director, Partner Programs and Experience. One of the functions of the Global Director of Partner Technical Enablement is the technical enablement of our partners, to provide them with more technical training. The Partner Experience person will be responsible for the partner program and its innovations, and aim to drive engagement in our partner satisfaction.”
In addition, Barracuda is investing in XDR [extended detection and response] technology to help channel partners strengthen their security practices.
“We are putting our partners in a position to respond to inbound customer solutions with XDR,” Beal said. “Customers need help to address this.”
“The XDR is a combination of a product and a service,” Beal stated. “We hear from our Partner Advisory Board members, and that they are keeping their finger on the pulse of the market relative to XDR. The economics are in the partners’ favor. The bad guys have democratized their attacks, going after targets like local banks, so having best-in-class cyber defense is necessary in SME.”
Maria Martinez, VP of Channels, Americas, Barracuda
“We are also enhancing partner experience by putting into execution things which have been set up, through closer ties at the executive level, and the ability to engage more closely with new channel investments,” Martinez said.
“We need to win the hearts and minds of partner engineers first, which is why much of what we are doing here is aimed at providing more enablement for our partner engineer. We have five new roles we are onboarding for this channel – SEs whose sole focus is to work day-to-day in the field with partners to drive that technical enablement.”
Beal also noted that they are talking about the concept of partner agility in responding to needs of end customers.
“Some want to buy licenses, or OPEX, or go cloud first,” he said. “Some cases involve professional services, some managed services and some cases cloud enablers buying through a hyperscaler.
“Partners are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders,” Beal concluded. “They have a ton of work to protect customers from the bad guys. Partners need to choose their vendor partnerships and be available when they need support. We are investing significantly in the channel to provide them with that enablement and support.”
