SD-WAN Specialist Aryaka Continues Hiring Spree, Taps Olen Scott As Channel Chief

SD-WAN specialist Aryaka has brought on experienced channel leader Olen Scott to spearhead its global partner program.

Scott will lead Aryaka's global channel efforts as the company doubles down on expanding its footprint and going after SD-WAN opportunities through its growing partner ecosystem. More specifically, Scott told CRN that he wants to double Aryaka's partner program production and squarely position Aryaka as the undisputed partner choice for managed SD-WAN.

"It’s not an outlandish goal when you consider a high [compound annual growth rate] CAGR and a multi-billion-dollar global addressable market," he said.

Scott also said that partners will have the opportunity to help him re-engineer or make changes to the company's existing channel program. "The mistake too many providers make is not listening to the partners. We won’t do that."

[Related: Aryaka CEO Matt Carter On Making SD-WAN A 'Win-Win' For The Channel]

Aryaka is on a hiring spree. In January, the San Mateo, Calif.-based company brought on Karen Freitag as chief revenue officer, Michelle Owczarzak as chief transformation officer, and Shashi Kiran as the company's new chief marketing officer to help Aryaka scale to the next level of growth.

Aryaka In September appointed Matt Carter as CEO. He formerly was president and CEO of networking and communications provider Inteliquent. The company also brought on enterprise software veteran Deepak Kumar as senior vice president of customer success in December.

The global channel program and strategic partnerships are a top priority for Aryaka. Scott in his new role will zero-in on Aryaka's channel organization by scaling and enhancing the structure of the partner program, improving partner enablement, and overseeing recruitment, according to the company. As a first priority, Scott wants to evangelize and educate partners on the "huge" SD-WAN opportunity that exists in the market today.

"Every partner should be educating and readying themselves to sell simplicity with managed offerings," he said. "It’s the killer solution that’s going to make all other IT spend work better."

Scott plans on using his channel experience to talk with and listen to partners on what they need to sell more managed SD-WAN solutions.

"The formula I’ve found to be highly effective in the past is to let the partners guide me. The partner community knows I’ll be looking for their collective input on what we are doing great and what improvements they’d like to see," he said.

Prior to his latest appointment with Aryaka, Scott served as senior vice president of sales and business development at Purple Communications. Before coming to Purple, Scott lead Windstream Communications' channel efforts as senior vice president of indirect channel, and also served as telecom service provider EarthLink's channel chief for two years before the company was acquired by Windstream in 2016.