McAfee Names Dickison New Channel Chief

McAfee on Thursday said it named David Dickison, who previously ran the Santa Clara, Calif.-based security vendor's antivirus field-sales force, as senior vice president of North American channels. A nine-year McAfee veteran, Dickison spent the last five years in a sales vice president capacity and the previous four as a regional director supporting network and systems solutions products.

Dickison has played an important role in helping McAfee revitalize its channel image and improve its relationships with VAR partners, said Jim Lewandowski, executive vice president of North American sales.

Besides developing McAfee's deal registration program, Dickison helped create channel rebates and implement channel lead-distribution initiatives and led the charge to give McAfee channel partners exclusive access to customers with 1,000 seats or less.

"We have no salespeople who touch any of those customers," Lewandowski said.

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Dickison said he doesn't see any reason to alter the channel program that McAfee has in place. "The plan is to embrace the program that has been developed and build on opportunities to provide improved tools to enable solution providers and focus on the SMB market," he said.

Jim Hindy, CEO of Entre BTG, a Norcross, Ga.-based security solution provider, has worked with Dickison and said he brings a keen understanding of the channel.

"The channel-centric approach has truly been ingrained into their sales force, and I'm confident [Dickison] will continue to maintain that focus and listen to partners," Hindy said.

Although departed channel chief Dave Roberts played a key role in building McAfee's channel program, Lewandowski said it's important to note that Dickison will oversee a broad team of employees who will work with partners to ensure that the program is functioning properly.

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