In the span of five days in May, six people were appointed to spearhead their respective company’s “Americas” or global channels and alliances. This flurry of activity prompted inquiring minds to ask, “Why so much activity in such a short time period?” The leaders receiving these new positions include: • Noah Drake, president, Americas for Telstra • Kathy Gibbs, vice president, partners & alliances for NeoSystems • Jorge Reis, chief strategy officer for Vertek • Dee Berger, president of North American business for Insight Enterprises • Stephanie Freeze, head of global alliances for Volt Active Data • Kelly Hartman, senior vice president of channel and alliances for JFrog Ltd. To understand the bustle of appointments, we attempted to contact each – with mixed results – to take a closer look. Telstra Recognizes Industry’s Speed Drake is now responsible for leading Telstra’s future direction within the Americas. He will oversee all sales and business operations and work with the partner community. “I’ve always loved the saying, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far go together.’ It’s also a perfect tagline for our relationship with the channel partner community,” Drake explained. “One critical lesson we learned during the pandemic is the value of partnerships that extend to every corner of the world.” The “feet on the street,” he continued, enabled Telstra to stay in close contact with global customers. As president, Americas for Telstra, Drake said it is important as a telecom and infrastructure provider to connect continents to stay in tune to the future direction of the industry. “Customers are looking at transforming their networks to enable on-going flexibility and adaptability,” Drake explained. “We’re seeing significant ongoing demand for digital access to services across every sector – from health care, banking and retail to manufacturing, energy and education. “We support transforming the enterprise using all our resources – subsea, terrestrial, satellite and cloud – providing connectivity to deliver content, data and IP,” he continued. In terms of geographic footprint, Drake said Telstra looks to complement its position within Asia by extending its reach into places such as Latin America. And choosing the right partner for this can be a challenge. Quickening Cadence At NeoSystems, Gibbs said her new role is “to bring in new partners and to accelerate the company’s relationship cadence. “Overall, I believe that more companies are realizing that they must have a solid partner strategy. We are entertaining conversations with many different approaches on how to partner. These can include reciprocal referral partnering, resellers, partner-to-partner relationships – meaning that we may share offerings and need the support of each other.” NeoSystems focuses on government contracting so, geographically, it concentrates on Washington D.C., San Diego and Huntsville, Ala., Gibbs said. “However, we are seeing that the pandemic is bringing change to the model,” said Gibbs. “Relationships were built person-to-person with a lot of travel. The new model is that we do business remotely, which lets us reach more locations and have increased partner Channel Activity Shakes Up Channel Focused on Americas By Bruce Christian Telstra’s Noah Drake 52 CHANNELV ISION | JULY - AUGUST 2022 ©20 Am **So INTERNATIONAL AGENTS
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTg4Njc=