FireMon is 100% channel but is still looking for more good partners, including ones in Canada, where they want to expand their operations.
Nicole Stavroff, VP of Worldwide Channels, FireMon
Network security firm FireMon is expanding the diversity of their portfolio, and to help drive that strategy among the channel partners who are their sole route to market, they have named. Nicole Stavroff as their new VP of Worldwide Channels.
Stavroff’s linear predecessor in the role was Andrew Warren, the distribution veteran who left FireMon for OpenText last fall, leaving the channel head role technically vacant until Stavroff’s appointment earlier this month.
“Since Andrew left, Brian Keets, our CRO and Jody Brazil, our CEO, all stepped in, and it helped that the channel was already in our DNA since we were 100% channel,” Stavroff said.
Stavroff came to FireMon from startup Security Scorecard.
“Early in my career I started in Oracle, EMC, then 13 years at NetApp, she said. “I had never done a startup to that point. Then I went to SD-WAN vendor CloudGenix, which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks. After that, I spent four years at Security Scorecard, which is a security rating company, with very disruptive technology. It was born from the two founders, who were CISOs, trying to understand risk posture with a key client. It’s vertically agnostic, and it’s a horizontal play, so it deals with issues which make it easy to breach and cause trouble in networks.”
The FireMon Ignite Partner Program was recently redesigned, and contains the three standard metallic tiers – Authorized, Gold, and Platinum – with each tier delivering country-specific support for all routes to market. The program includes resellers, distributors, and MSPs across a global network of strategic partners.
“We have partners that span from national resellers across the board to top regional partners to cities in specific geos,” Stavroff said. “We have this same pattern in EMEA and LATAM that we do in North America. Our alliance partners, which include Fortinet, Tenable, Zscaler, and Palo Alto Networks, are also a critically important part of our Go-to-Market strategy.”
Some parts of the program continue to be updated, with a priority list in place going forward.
“We just updated and released a new partner portal,” Stavroff said. “We have great relationships with our top partners in all the geos. Are there gaps, where we would like more of them? Yes. We also don’t have an official MDF program today, and that’s a necessity. Our enablement could also be better, and alliances make us stronger because they make us stickier. Other things need to be continually updated and refreshed.”
Stavroff is also working on strengthening FireMon’s presence in Canada.
“Canada is very important to us,” she said. “It’s an area though that we need to focus on more so that we can grow. We just participated for the second year in the Calgary Stampede. We also need to grow additional partners in Canada, although the ones that we do have there are good.”
There are presently no residential FireMon staff in Canada, although Stavroff said that will eventually be necessary for growth in the market.
“Today, our Canadian market presence from the company is based in the US, although we know that in the longer run, we will need more of a physical presence in Canada,” she indicated.
Given that Stavroff just took the reins at FireMon, plans to upgrade are at a preliminary point.
“The longer that I’m here, the more things will crystalize,” she said. “My number one priority right now is to get out and meet with all of our partners, and talk with them to get their perspective on what is working and what is not. Putting together a strong ‘better together’ story with our Alliance partners is also a priority. We also need to demonstrate that while we started in NSPM [Network Security Policy Management] and we are still strong there, we are integrating other things in.”
One of these is FireMon Asset Manager, a complete retooling of their Lumeta real time network visibility solution that was launched last fault.
“We are adding functionality to become more holistic, and not just an NSPM provider,” Stavroff said.
