Published by Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Listen on Apple PodcastsSend us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Michal Jankech, Vice President of Enterprise, Small Business, and Managed Service Provider Segments at ESET. With 16 years at ESET, a first decade in product management, and a strategic advisory role shaping how the company evolves, Michal brings rare depth across both technical and commercial perspectives to a conversation about what actually builds durable partnerships. Michal opens with the story of how a decade in product management shaped his approach to partner strategy. Traveling with clients as a product manager showed him something that still holds: many cybersecurity decisions are partner-led, and the strongest relationships between vendors and technical partners are built engineer to engineer. That foundation now feeds his advisory work with the CEO on how to steer the company through change. In a matrix organization the size of ESET, influence beats authority, and driving transformation depends on relationships, belief, and a clear, consistent story everyone across the business is willing to carry. From there, the conversation turns to ESET's evolution ahead of its 40th anniversary. The company has been quietly using machine learning in detection long before it was called AI, and the current moment brings new relevance to that engineering-first heritage. Michal shares how perception matters as much as substance, and how the company is modernizing its communication to match what it delivers. He also gets into where data sovereignty is landing for European buyers today. As a fully European vendor with all core processing on the continent, ESET has turned a former disadvantage into a real differentiator. Michal closes with the pillars that hold the strongest partner relationships together: rock-solid technology, predictable commercials, a clear vision partners can invest in, and the constant work of listening. It's the foundation of trust that keeps ecosystems moving forward. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Scott Sacket, Senior Vice President of Partner Strategy at AvePoint. With 19 years at AvePoint and a background as a former managed service provider, Scott brings a rare blend of vendor and channel perspectives on how partnership programs and data governance are evolving in the AI era. Scott opens with the story of AvePoint's shift from direct-first to a channel-driven business, one that now sees 100% growth in partner-sourced bookings for multiple quarters. He then explains how AvePoint has redesigned its partner program, moving away from the traditional revenue-tiered model to a points-based system that recognizes the many ways partners create value. Certifications, product mix, team training breadth, co-marketing, pre-sales, technical support, and renewal rates all count alongside revenue. It's a program built around the idea that partners come in all shapes and sizes, and every large partner today started as a small one worth investing in. From there, the conversation turns to what's happening now in the market. Scott makes the case that AI has kicked off a governance gold rush for managed service providers. AvePoint has been doing data governance for 25 years, well before the term was popular, and the current AI moment is bringing new relevance to that expertise. He shares a striking gap: 75% of companies have already built or tested AI agents, and 70% have no governance plan in place. Every agent needs an owner and a governance framework, and the partners delivering that will be in the strongest position ahead. Scott closes with a mantra that fits the pace of the AI era: fail forward. Move fast, try things, focus on the partners and customers you serve, and remember that what's important today probably won't be in twelve months. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Kirsten MacGregor, Global Head of Managed Service Providers at Delinea. Coming to Delinea after nearly eight years building the managed service provider motion at Riverbed and a career spanning networking, digital experience, and identity security, Kirsten brings a sharp perspective on building a program that fits how these partners actually operate. Kirsten opens with a framework she has carried across her career: people, process, and platform. Platform architecture is not a technical detail, she explains, but the foundation of the whole service model. Cloud-native design matters because the operational efficiency managed service providers need has to be built in from the start. Process has to reflect that these providers carry real service accountability, so vendor support, enablement, and escalation paths have to be designed with that in mind. And the human aspect anchors everything. The people a vendor puts in front of partners are what turn a program into a genuine partnership. That framework is what Delinea now has the chance to build on from scratch. Because the company hasn't run a true managed service provider program before, Kirsten is designing the commercial structure, support tiers, enablement, and pricing around how these partners actually operate. She also reframes the shift from reseller to managed service provider as a move from margin-pressured product sales to outcome-based partnerships. Identity has become the primary attack surface for enterprises, and continuous delivery through MSPs is a natural fit for the deeper relationships that model creates. Kirsten closes on where the strongest managed service providers will land in the next three to five years: leading with outcomes, governing the full identity estate across human, machine, and AI, and treating zero standing privilege as the baseline. It's a moment worth building for. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Jason Henry, Vice President of MSP Platform Sales for the Americas at Hornetsecurity. With three decades of enterprise sales leadership behind him and a mandate to build the Americas partner business from scratch, Jason brings a fresh lens to where the channel opportunity really lives. Jason opens with the story of Hornetsecurity's new chapter. After being acquired by Proofpoint late last year, the company is now making the small-to-medium business and managed service provider space a true focus, and Jason is leading the Americas build. His first 90 days have centered on two things: the people and the partners. Deep listening sessions with top partners have surfaced honest feedback on what is working and where the biggest opportunities sit. Partners, Jason has found, are genuinely invested in the mission, and that shared excitement is one of the strongest foundations to build a channel-first business on. From there, the conversation turns to where the space is heading. Jason makes the case that AI will have an even bigger impact on the small-to-medium business market than the enterprise, because it lets small businesses do more with far fewer resources. That opens up a real evolution for managed service providers, who are moving from technology support into a business consultant role for the founders and CEOs they serve. The providers who lean into this shift, deliver agent-based services, and lead their customers through the transformation are the ones set to capture the biggest opportunity of the next few years. Jason closes on what he's carried through three decades of sales leadership. Believe in your people, build great teams, support them well, and build the next generation of leaders. That's how the businesses that last actually get built. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Christina Tubb, Americas Director of Regional Alliance Managers at Ping Identity. With a career spanning theoretical physics, private equity, consulting, and channel leadership across ten countries, Christina brings a wide-lens view of what it takes to build partnerships that connect vendors directly to end customers. Christina opens with a philosophy that runs counter to how many people think about channel: partnerships are a way to get closer to end users, not further from them. When partners handle the pieces they're built for, vendors get the room to focus on what customers actually need. That principle sharpens with a global lens. For a US multinational, the nuanced requirements of customers in every country and vertical are almost impossible to grasp without local partners who translate the market for you. Christina calls it thinking globally and acting locally, and nowhere does it land harder than in the channel. From there, the conversation moves into what Christina learned running channel in Asia. Markets without friction stop innovating, she says, and Asia's density and diversity is a crucible that forces builders to move faster. Bringing that lens to the Americas, she highlights just how much automation, adaptation, and intentionality matter even in a single large market. The conversation then turns to identity in the AI era. With deep fakes rising and traditional markers of recognition losing reliability, digital identity is heading toward verified trust, and channel partners are central to how that plays out on the ground. Christina closes on the mindset that has anchored her whole career: follow curiosity as your north star. It won't guarantee an illustrious career, but it will guarantee real enjoyment and growth, especially in a moment where the security industry is being redefined week by week. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Phylip Morgan, Senior Vice President of Marketplace and Channel Expansion at Pax8. A former managed service provider and 30-year channel veteran, Phylip is leading Pax8's work helping partners transform from managed service providers into managed intelligence providers. Phylip opens with the case for why the managed intelligence shift is a revolution, not an evolution. Borrowing Scott Chason's framing, he positions this as the same kind of cataclysmic change as steam, electricity, the PC, and the cloud, with AI delivering cognitive power the industry has never had before. The proof point is what's already happening: models are getting better, hallucinations are receding from the conversation, and practical use cases are stacking up. At the same time, Phylip is clear that partners have options, and there's still a real living to be made in break-fix and traditional managed services. From there, the conversation reframes the partner role as a trusted advisor evolving from technology advisor into business advisor, with managing intelligence risk and governance, risk, and compliance around digital agents as part of the new job description. Phylip shares a Welsh example of two managed service providers who decided their best play was to partner with a managed intelligence provider, which opens a discussion about partner ecosystems where everyone builds around their strengths. He also walks through two market shifts: the digital buyer who prefers apps to conversations, and the death of brand, where reputation and shared values matter more than the logo at the bottom of a website. Phylip closes with practical counsel for the partner community. Regret is a terrible thing, so take the time to look at the opportunity, do the research, and come to your own conclusions. As he puts it, lead with humanity and scale with AI. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Gene Kim, Vice President of Managed Service Providers at Absolute Security. With a career spent on both sides of the channel as a service provider and now leading Absolute's MSP motion, Gene brings a grounded view of what MSPs need to deliver real business continuity in an AI-driven world. Gene opens with the story of building Absolute's MSP motion from the ground up. The company has a long enterprise track record, with 40% of the Fortune 500, 80% of the top airlines, and nearly all of the largest state and local governments as customers, and its presence in the MSP community is now being built with the same intent. He walks through how Absolute's technology, embedded in the BIOS and firmware of more than 600 million devices from Dell, Lenovo, HP, and 25 other manufacturers, is already deployed in MSP fleets today. The opportunity is in activating that capability and showing MSPs how it strengthens their service delivery. From there, the conversation moves into where Absolute fits in the AI era and the shift toward managed intelligence providers. As MSPs add automation, orchestration, and chat layers across their stack, every one of those capabilities relies on the underlying tools being up and available. Absolute keeps the RMM, EDR, encryption, and backup tools resilient through automated self-healing, which Gene frames as a foundational layer for any MSP's AI strategy. He also reframes the customer conversation around business continuity, where the question is how quickly the business is back up. Gene closes on what he calls a winning formula for MSPs: pairing prevention with recovery and resilience to build differentiated, outcome-driven service offerings that capture new business and grow customer mind share. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Nihil Morjaria, Chief Revenue Officer at usecure. With almost eight years at the company across nearly every sales role and a background in psychology, Nihil brings a thoughtful perspective on what it takes to build a channel-first cybersecurity business where the human element matters as much as the technology. Nihil starts with the story of usecure's pivot to channel-first after more than three years of selling direct. The biggest commercial challenge was getting internal reps to embrace what looked like a margin hit in the short term, in exchange for something much bigger: scale through partners acting as outsourced sales functions. He frames the channel as a force multiplier where commission grows alongside the partner network, and shares how doing the groundwork to align reps before the shift was what made it stick. The right partners, he says, are the ones with supplementary resources who become active extensions of the team. From there the conversation gets into how Nihil's psychology background shapes everything from go-to-market messaging to product. usecure's expertise helps MSPs translate the abstract topic of human risk into real, tangible conversations with their customers. That same lens sits behind the launch of uHealth, a new piece of usecure's human risk intelligence program. By integrating with Entra to pull real signals around services people sign up for, MFA setup, and password reuse, uHealth turns isolated training scores into a tailored view of how each person actually behaves, with clear remediation steps MSPs can deliver as outcome-driven service. Nihil closes on the value of the channel as a community, where honest conversations about real challenges are what help everyone grow. As he puts it, it takes a village. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Thomas Christensen, Vice President of Partner Ecosystem NCEE at IBM. Thomas has 30 years in the industry across all three layers of the channel, as a reseller, in distribution, and as a vendor, and now leads IBM's partner ecosystem across 35 countries in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. That breadth of experience gives him a perspective on ecosystems that is hard to replicate. Thomas opens with what he considers the most valuable thing about having worked all three sides of the channel: you already know what the person across the table needs before they tell you. Having been a reseller, briefly in distribution, and for most of his career in the vendor space, he arrives at every conversation with an understanding of the other side's daily life, goals, and constraints. That understanding is what makes it possible to build win-win-win partnerships: a win for the client, a win for the partner, and a win for IBM. That philosophy shapes how IBM approaches its Partner Plus program and how Thomas thinks about equality in the ecosystem. When a seller believes they did all the work and the partner should receive less margin, they are being binary. A partner who receives fair margin today is the one who invests resources in learning your portfolio tomorrow and brings leads the day after. The program enforces that long-term thinking, even when individuals do not naturally default to it. Across 35 countries, Thomas finds more universality in what partners need than people expect. Trust, respect for how the other party's business works, and the simple question "how can I help your business grow?" transcend cultures and geographies. That is the foundation, and it is remarkably consistent. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Sam Valme, Channel Evangelism Director of Americas at AvePoint. Sam has spent 13 years at AvePoint moving through solution engineering, sales, partner program design, and MSP sales leadership, building the kind of institutional knowledge that made the channel evangelism role possible. This episode is about what that role actually is, and why it matters. Sam opens with the observation that drove the creation of his role: channel-first companies attend partner community events and understand intuitively how valuable those environments are, but no one makes it their full-time job. Everyone is focused on sales. Sam spent years making the internal case for awards ceremonies, road shows, and community activation events, always as a side activity. He eventually wrote the proposals, secured executive support, and the role became his own. What has he learned about building that community? Two things stand out. First, the community has to serve both the go-to-market side of a partner's house and the technical side. Decisions about technology adoption often sit with engineering teams. Any community that ignores that is missing the people who determine whether new solutions actually get implemented. Second, partners consume information differently. Some engage through LinkedIn groups, some through video, some through audio, some through newsletters. The answer is not to pick one and optimize for it, but to build for all of them and meet partners where they already are. Sam's measure of success, in year one and beyond, is influence: on pipeline, on revenue, and on new partner activation. Build it right, and the community becomes self-sustaining. That is the goal. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, host Rick van den Bosch sits down with Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, Senior Vice President of Global Programs, and Jason Gallo, Global Vice President of Partner Value Acceleration, both at Cisco. Together they walk through the design and launch of Cisco 360, the most significant overhaul of Cisco's partner program in more than two decades. The conversation opens with what made this the right moment to act. Cisco's existing program, despite being considered best-in-class, had been built up over 20 years through layers of additions and adjustments, and the complexity had become a genuine friction point for partners. Combine that with a market shifting toward lifecycle selling, an ecosystem that had diversified significantly, and AI changing both what customers need and how they buy, and the case for a new program built for agility became clear. Cisco 360 was designed to recognize both depth and breadth: partners who specialize in areas like security or AI, and partners who bring end-to-end value across the full Cisco portfolio. At the center of the program sits a Partner Value Index, a metric that defines partner value in terms of the outcomes delivered to customers. Building toward that metric required a genuine co-design process. Elisabeth and Jason describe how it grew from a small internal group of disruptive thinkers into a community of hundreds, with structured input from partners via the Partner Operations Advisory Board, open webinars, and a three-day working session in Dublin. The result was a program where partners felt genuinely heard, and a launch on January 25th that went remarkably smoothly. The work continues: advisor, developer, and distribution partner value indices are in development, Splunk integration is underway, and investment in the digital partner experience platform remains a central priority. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Faraz Siraj, Vice-President of Global Channels & Alliances at Fortra. With 30 years in technology, 16 of them focused entirely on the channel, and experience at Cisco, RSA, Code42, and now Fortra, Faraz brings a long-range perspective on what makes channel programs actually work. Faraz opens with a framework that has guided his career: the Four T's. Technology comes first, because nothing in the channel works without a strong product. Transparency follows, chosen deliberately over "trust" because Faraz sees transparency as the active ingredient, the commitment to sharing wins, setbacks, and the full journey with your partners. Third is 3 Times growth, a number he describes as realistic and achievable in cybersecurity, especially with a portfolio as broad as Fortra's. The fourth T is Together, reflecting his belief that no vendor can effectively serve the modern threat landscape alone. Fortra does not do services and advisory. Partners do. That relationship is not a gap in the model but the heart of it. On the process of building a channel program, Faraz is direct: it takes time. His benchmark is three years, with 18 months as the minimum before meaningful results appear. He compares it to a body transformation, requiring consistent effort, small wins measured along the way, and patience with a long-term goal. The red flag he watches for most is treating partners as fulfillment, bringing them in at the end of a deal to sign paperwork. Real partnership means joining the sales cycle from the beginning, understanding what the partner needs in return, and building a relationship that lasts beyond the transaction. The energy that keeps Faraz going after three decades in this business: winning together. One-to-many beats one-to-one every time. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Barry Russell, Senior Vice-President of Partnerships at Anaconda. Barry helped build AWS Marketplace from a two-pizza team into a global business, spent time at Microsoft and several data-space startups, and has spent just over a year at Anaconda translating that experience into how AI solutions reach enterprise customers at scale. Barry opens with the principle he carried directly out of AWS Marketplace: remove as much friction as possible between where the customer is and the outcome they are trying to reach. At Marketplace, that meant letting customers try software quickly before committing to a multi-year contract. In the AI era, he sees the same dynamic: enterprises want to deploy agents fast, prove they deliver the outcome, and move confidently into production. Anaconda ensures that the open-source components developers use to build AI applications are secure by default, so teams can move from experimentation to production without hitting security roadblocks along the way. What is actually breaking between POC and production comes down to two things: system dependencies that work in a dev environment often do not match what production needs, and CISO teams flagging vulnerability concerns in open-source components. Anaconda addresses both by ensuring the assets a team uses in experimentation carry into production unchanged, with ongoing visibility into vulnerabilities. Barry draws a practical distinction: it is completely fine to discover that an AI application needs a different model or some adjustment. What organizations cannot afford is releasing agents carrying underlying security vulnerabilities. Getting the foundation right from the start is what makes fast, confident iteration possible. With 95% of the Fortune 500 already using Anaconda for data science and machine learning, the company arrives at the AI moment as a trusted workflow layer, ready to help customers close the gap between experimentation and production at the pace the market demands. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Eltjo Hofstee, Global Sales Director at EasyDMARC. Eltjo joined nearly four years ago with a clear brief: build a scalable sales organization around a product with strong market fit. That journey has taken him deep into how MSPs grow, sell, and redefine the value they bring to end customers. Eltjo opens with a concept reshaping how EasyDMARC thinks about its partner program: the shift from managed service provider to managed intelligence provider. The idea, which Eltjo credits to Pax8, moves MSPs away from SLA-driven metrics toward a more proactive, data-informed advisory role. MSPs already sit on a significant amount of customer data, and using that data to get ahead of issues is what separates a vendor from a genuine partner. EasyDMARC's own program reflects this: the company now helps MSPs not just deploy DMARC, but find new customers and sell adjacent services. DMARC generates an XML report for every email sent from a protected domain, and those reports tend to reveal more than end users expect. Organizations that assume they are too small to be targeted routinely discover, once they set up DMARC, that their domain is being impersonated constantly. The data also surfaces shadow IT, such as a marketing tool sending emails from an unconfigured source. That ongoing visibility is what keeps EasyDMARC relevant after initial setup: MSPs can build a proactive early warning system that adds clear, measurable value to every end customer conversation. What ties it together is a shift in orientation: from fixing problems to anticipating them. That is where the MSP role finds its next level of relevance. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Remco van Dijk, Channel Leader for Northern Europe at Varonis. Remco joined Varonis to build the Northern European channel from the ground up. Remco opens with what the scale-up feeling inside a 20-year-old company actually looks like in practice. With no dedicated sales teams across Scandinavia and Finland when he arrived, the first task was building focus: fewer partners, deeper relationships, more business per partner. He explains how the right partner model depends on the product as much as the market. Varonis's data security platform suits a high-touch, co-sell approach. Interceptor, their email security solution, could support a distributor-led model with a far broader reseller base. His advice for any new channel leader: resist the urge to apply a familiar playbook. Start by listening, ask what partners need, and never be the “department of no” when a partner asks for something new. Cultural nuance shapes how that plays out across Northern Europe. In Sweden, partners often act as trusted advisors. If they haven't heard of Varonis, deals could stall before they start. The Netherlands runs more transactionally; Belgium leans on relationship and trust first. Remco's approach across all of them: think like a sales manager, treat your partners as your ears and eyes, and stay genuinely top of mind through consistent contact. Partners who work through a complete sales cycle together build something repeatable, and that depth is what separates a real channel program from a collection of one-off transactions. What holds it all together is simple: partnerships are human relationships first. The organizations that win in the channel show up consistently, navigate friction without panic, and invest genuinely in the people behind their partnerships. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Kris Blackmon, Director of Global Partner Marketing at AvePoint. Coming from channel journalism at The Var Guy and content leadership at Channel Futures before moving into her current role, Kris brings a perspective on partner marketing that's genuinely hard to find. Perspective that is built from years of watching the channel from every angle before stepping inside it. Kris opens by reframing what partner marketing actually is. Her remit at AvePoint spans enablement, the partner program, product marketing, and to-and-through execution. Her point is that you can't pull one lever in isolation. A strong campaign with a weak program behind it answers its own question. She also talks through how global strategy and regional field execution divide the work. Global sets direction and builds assets. Field teams localize, execute, and carry accountability for results in market. Sales alignment holds it all together. AvePoint's roadmap to 2030 gives that alignment a clear spine. The second half focuses on AvePoint's partner program redesign. The original tiered model rewarded revenue almost exclusively, a lagging indicator that told the team nothing about what actually built toward a sale. Eighteen months of design, piloting, and iteration produced a points-based program that rewards partners across certifications, co-marketing activity, lead generation, and more. Kris explains how clean data makes it possible to show partners concretely why deeper engagement leads to better outcomes for both sides, and why redesigning the partner portal UI was just as important as the program structure itself. The frontier she's most focused on: gaining real visibility into through-partner marketing activity before deal registration arrives. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Razvan Todor, VP Strategic Partnerships & Alliances – CSG at Bitdefender. Razvan brings a rare lens to channel work: a product leader who shifted from owning roadmaps to architecting ecosystems that protect users at population scale through telcos, ISPs, and insurance providers. Razvan starts with what it actually takes to move from millions of users to hundreds of millions: ecosystems, not sales acceleration. He draws a clean line between channel and strategic partnerships based on who owns the end customer. When Bitdefender owns the customer, it's channel; when the partner does, it becomes a strategic alliance where both companies co-create value inside the partner's portfolio. That shift changes the conversation entirely. The negotiation stops being about margin and becomes about direction, priorities, and where both organizations want to be three to five years from now. Scale also makes the product stronger. The more customers Bitdefender protects, the more threats it sees, and the faster it can cluster patterns like the California bridge toll scam that adapts its message by geography. Razvan also reframes the old debate between brand equity and partner-led distribution as two sides of the same success story. Strong brand makes signing new partners easier; big partners make the product sharper and lift recognition. The board-level question becomes how to maximize both together. On AI and deepfakes, Razvan is thoughtful: detecting that something is fake matters less than understanding the intent behind it. Cats dancing on Snoop Dogg and a fake Elon Musk stock tip are technically identical. The future of consumer cyber security is guaranteeing trust and authenticity. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Andy Yen, Director of Partner Marketing for Global System Integrators at ServiceNow. Drawing on seven years at ServiceNow across ISVs, hyperscalers, and now some of the world's largest consulting firms, Andy shares what makes high-stakes partnerships work, and why the human side of the job is becoming a bigger advantage, not a smaller one. Andy starts with what a global mindset really looks like in partner marketing. Each country has its own language, its own business culture, and the real opportunity comes from building genuine relationships market by market. He also shares how he adapts his communication style to each person, not just each persona, and why that human-first approach has helped him build trust with partners across regions. We also get into what makes a GSI partnership thrive. Andy describes how he builds joint value props where one plus one is greater than ten, creating the kind of stories that pull ServiceNow into deals alongside its partners. He shares how ServiceNow's industry GTM motion has opened up bigger conversations, with partners and account executives moving from product features to outcomes that resonate in the C-suite. The result is broader engagement, larger deals, and a more collaborative model across the ecosystem. Andy closes with a reminder that feels even more relevant in the AI era: authenticity is your greatest strength, and the best partnerships are still built on real human connection. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled , we sit down with Nevzat Bucioglu, Channel and Alliance Director for EMEA Central at Commvault. He leads the channel business across DACH and Poland and has been in IT since 1996, moving through inside sales, sales coaching, and pre-sales before stepping into the channel in 2013. His early years cold-calling at Dell still shape how he approaches partner relationships today. The conversation opens on the three lessons that defined Nevzat's first year in inside sales: sound like a human, mindset beats scripts, and activity drives results, but only the right activity. After a 5% first quarter at Dell, he threw out the scripts, started reading tone, and treated follow-ups as warmed leads rather than second cold calls. From there, Nevzat unpacks his "no BS" philosophy. Non-BS means telling a partner to sell the competitor when the fit is right, calling out when you're being used as a compliance quote, and replacing 50-page business plans with a single page. The ultimate form of respect is directness, and directness is what compounds trust over time. The second half moves into frameworks and AI. Nevzat still runs MEDDIC and still builds business cases, but argues the framework only yields quality information once the human connection is built. He closes on AI: a tool to scale creativity and human experiences, not to replace the story behind the pitch. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Erica Radcliff, Director of Partner and Ecosystem Growth Marketing at Vertiv, to explore what it really takes to activate partners at scale without losing relevance. With nearly two decades in the channel, Erica has worked across almost every facet of marketing, giving her a practical, end-to-end view of how partner engagement actually plays out in the real world. The conversation starts with a simple but often ignored truth: what marketers think is compelling rarely matches what partners actually want. Erica explains why keeping an open mind and constantly pressure-testing your assumptions is critical, especially as trends cycle in and out. From the surprising resurgence of tactile, creative campaigns to the steady decline of webinars, she shares what’s gaining traction and what’s quietly fading. We then get into one of the biggest challenges in partner marketing today: balancing scale with personalization. Erica breaks down how her team approaches this through segmented journeys rather than one-size-fits-all campaigns. Instead of over-engineering full customization, they build flexible frameworks and equip partners with ready-to-use assets they can adapt to their own customers. The result is a model that scales while still feeling relevant. The discussion also digs into partner activation. Strong products aren’t enough. Partners need clear direction, accessible resources, and a reason to engage. Erica highlights the importance of recruiting the right partners from the start, aligning on mutual value, and enabling them based on their actual capability and market focus. We also explore the difference between leading the market and chasing it. Erica argues that companies in the number one position often lose their creative edge, while challengers are forced to innovate. Her advice is clear: even if you’re leading, operate like you’re not. Finally, Erica reflects on the role of relationships in an increasingly data-driven world. AI and intent data can guide decisions, but they don’t replace trust. The channel still runs on human connection, and the teams that recognize that are the ones that win. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #c hannelpartners