The Top Midmarket IT Vendor Executives For 2016 (Part 1)

Midmarket Leaders

Each year, the Midsize Enterprise Summit team compiles a list of the most influential executives in the midmarket. These executives are the driving forces behind the sales, marketing and corporate strategies of technology suppliers and solution providers. The 2016 list was the largest compiled to date because of the midmarket’s growth rate and the opportunity to support customers with between 100-1,000 employees. The list features startups, entrepreneurs and executives who working inside large corporations. All of those on the list are recognized because they serve as evangelists for the needs of midmarket customers and understand how to serve these organizations—from the business side to the IT drivers. Each individual was chosen based on the strength of their application or were selected because of their prominent role in the midmarket.

Here, we present Part 1 of the Top Midmarket IT Vendor Executives For 2016. Be sure to also check out Part 2.

Jon Roskill, CEO Acumatica

Jon Roskill has 25 years of leadership experience in the software business. He joined Acumatica after a 20-year career at Microsoft. Roskill and his leadership team are quite vocal about Acumatica's commitment to what they call "the abandoned mid-market." While competitors move upstream to enterprise customers and in-house sales teams, Roskill has been adamant that the Acumatica channel-driven approach and unique, all-inclusive licensing model are key components to a robust and affordable ERP solution. In fiscal year 2015, this focus on the needs of small and medium-sized businesses resulted in 134 percent growth in the company's SaaS offerings and it welcomed its 2,000th customer.

James Farhat, CEO, ACTS

James Farhat is the CEO and founder and CEO of ACTS, a Florida-based IT consulting firm whose client roster includes Ricoh Business Systems, Cox Enterprises and Darden Restaurant. Being an SMB, ACTS understands the needs and challenges the midmarket faces. Not only is the company a midsize enterprise but it relies on others midmarket companies for its strategic growth. "Because we rely on our midmarket clients on testing new-to-the-market solutions they benefit from the technology and we benefit from the sales and marketing," Farhat said.

Shawn Akins, CIO, Akins IT

Shawn Akins and his team have sold more than $25 million of IT solutions to education and midsized organizations in Southern California. Akins has been recognized by CRN as one of the industry's fastest-growing companies and its eponymous leader has been nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year. Akins' business model focuses only on midsized businesses. Its growth rate of 40 percent per year comes strictly from the midmarket and midsized organizations. Akins has grown alongside many of its clients and is passionate about providing strategic IT planning and support for its customers so those organizations can focus on their core business.

Michael Crest, CEO, Arcserve

Mike Crest serves as Arcserve's CEO and was previously general manager of the Data Management business at CA Technologies. The company was spun off from the larger CA business as an independent entity. Crest has more than 20 years of IT industry experience specializing in sales and marketing. Arcserve is the market's first provider to unify backup and recovery for cloud, virtual and physical environments, with enterprise-grade capabilities wrapped into a single solution built for the midmarket. Arcserve provides a comprehensive, fully integrated platform, on premise or in the cloud, backed by unsurpassed support and expertise. Its Unified Data Protection product brings Fortune 500-level backup and recovery protection to the "Fortune five million," Crest said. Arcserve UDP, available on Arcserve's appliance or a customer's hardware, drives a full range of award-winning and highly efficient data protection capabilities through a web-based user console.

Andrew Cohen, Vice President, ATEL Communications

As ATEL Communications’ Vice President, Andrew Cohen has proven ability to get inside of an issue, adopt multiple perspectives, devise smart strategies, guide executive decision-making, and mobilize the right resources to drive achievement of mission-critical initiatives delivering excellence in challenging markets. For ATEL, UcaS and CasS and Managed Services are key technology targets in the next five years as midmarket accounts transition to the Cloud and Visualization of their hardware and software. ATEL’s core products and services include infrastructure, cabling and network implementation and design, cloud services, VoIP and hosted PBX, broadband, new media, software, enhanced applications and mobility.

Joe Jacob, VP, U.S. Midmarket and DMR Sales, Avaya

Joe Jacob is Vice President of Avaya's U.S. Midmarket Sales Organization. In this role, Jacob is responsible for creating and executing Avaya's customer- focused go-to-market strategy for the midmarket. For midmarket businesses, Avaya offers scalable solutions that enable highly effective engagement among staff and customers—to help them stay ahead of competition. Among Jacob's accomplishments in the midmarket was his work with Breakthrough Urban Ministries, a nonprofit that takes on the complex challenges of homelessness and poverty, to implement a new network from the ground up and deploy an integrated voice system. Until recently, Breakthrough's good work was being hampered by an unreliable IT infrastructure and an antiquated phone system.

Justin Moore, CEO, Axcient

Justin Moore is a multi-time entrepreneur and recognized authority on cloud computing, SMB market strategy and entrepreneurship. As CEO, Moore drives Axcient’s exponential growth as the fastest-growing U.S. security and data protection company. The company has a three-year growth rate of of 3,116 percent, according to Inc. Magazine. With a track record of turning around the status quo in established markets, Moore was named one of the 2013 Silicon Valley 40 Under 40 by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Before Axcient, Moore founded MK Global, which provided an innovative approach to addressing the surplus of secondary-market telecommunications equipment after the dot-com collapse. He is also a venture partner at Thomvest Ventures, where he focuses on enterprise and SaaS investments.

Michael Hughes, SVP Worldwide Sales, Barracuda

As senior vice president of worldwide sales at Barracuda, Michael Hughes is responsible for the strategy, direction and execution of global sales and sales operations for the company's diverse product portfolio. According to Hughes, despite the size of midmarket customers,

they still have big IT problems to solve and concerns to alleviate that remain critical for their ability to conduct business. This is one of the reasons Barracuda has focused on making security and storage solutions that are easy to deploy, operate and support for the midmarket customer. Barracuda has continued to develop its channel to provide the necessary resources to partners who service and provide IT solutions to midmarket customers.

Kevin Goodman, Managing Director and Partner, BlueBridge Networks, LLC

As managing director and partner of BlueBridge Netwokrs, Kevin Goodman plays an active role in assisting SMB and enterprise organizations comply with current legislation and best practices around data center, cloud computing, business continuity and cybersecurity services Including HIPAA. Customers have come to rely on BlueBridge for maximum compliance protection and solutions including American Red Cross, GCA Services, Olympic Steel, DataTrak International, Rosetta, DealerTire, American Municipal Power, Cleveland State University, Cleveland Municipal School District, Hyland Software along with many other midmarket billion-dollar companies. BlueBridge's work is strong within healthcare, manufacturing, legal, IT, utilities, SLED and education and can therefore assist almost all of its midmarket customers move into a global market place.

Jennifer Brown, President, Brown Pear Solutions

As the leader of the Brown Pear Solutions team, Brown's main role is to cultivate a culture of customer obsession. Her background in disaster recovery and in e-commerce gives her a unique perspective on the power of technology for both risk management and customer experience. As technology changes our way of life at an unprecedented rate, she believes that one thing will stay constant through time--that humans will always need and seek trusted relationships. Brown Pear Solutions works with midmarket companies to transform technology from a cost center into a revenue driver as they face the competitive pressures of the digital age. Brown Pear offers solutions and services for creating differentiating customer experiences and for enhancing collaboration and productivity for a mobile workforce.

Marco La Vecchia, Vice President of Sales, Careworx

As VP of sales for Careworx, Marco La Vecchia is responsible for managed services and enterprise service desk sales across the U.S. and Canada. Recognized for his pragmatic, entrepreneurial spirit and strategic thinking, La Vecchia offers midmarket and enterprise customers and partners progressive business development experience gained from a variety of positions and industry sectors. This year, La Vecchia is focused on helping midmarket businesses resolve what he believes are the industry's biggest pain points—level 1 and level 2 help desk issues. La Vecchia was included on CRN's list of "100 People You Don't Know, But Should" and as a CRN Channel Chief.

Steve Hope, CEO, CIAN/A5.com

Stephen Hope, who has 25 years experience in the high-tech industry, serves as the leader of several IT companies including CIAN Center, Oasys, A5.com, Data Center Cloud Co. and A5 Power Solutions. Hope has spent his career investing in new businesses and expanding their service offerings every few years to diversify their offerings. Hope's goal is to consistently adapt to the ever-changing technology landscape. With a programming and systems engineering background, he values the midmarket for its technology reliance. Hope sees the midmarket striving to adopt technology as quickly and efficiently as possible. Providing hosted services allows his midmarket customers to adopt and trial new technology with lower risk, while supporting A5.com's mission.

Vernon Irvin, SVP Small and Midsize Business, CenturyLink

Vernon Irvin has more than 20 years of executive leadership experience in internet, telecom and media operations. Before he joined CenturyLink, Irvin led the midwest sales and marketing team at Time Warner Cable. CenturyLink is committed to delivering enterprise-class IT services that solve today's midmarket business challenges, he noted on his application. "We have a well-rounded set of IT services and network assets that have been developed with midmarket enterprise needs in mind," he stated. Irvin is well known and recognized for his rapid transformation work starting at Verisign Communication Services where he lead the communications and media division through a transformation and doubled revenue then at CenturyLink where he transformed the commercial acquisition sales organization. The midmarket/enterprise business segment continues to achieve an upward managed recurring revenue trajectory and is one the top performing sales organizations at CenturyLink year to date.

Ghasan Lababidi has been with Cisco since 2006, focusing on channel and end-user marketing. While Cisco conjures up the idea of enterprise networking, the midmarket continues to power economic growth, particularly in North America. " The midmarket space has increasing IT demands and even more limited resources than their enterprise siblings. Business is business, and those midsize companies are looking to grow their customer base, hire the best employees and simultaneously reduce their IT costs. Lababidi describes himself as an energetic and visionary marketing leader with a successful track record of mobilizing and inspiring his co-workers. Successful transformation in areas such as channel and end-user marketing is my forte. "I bring new perspectives to my work, which results in the identification of new business opportunities and value change transformation," he stated.

Steve Vicinanza, CEO, Cirrity

Steven Vicinanza is Cirrity's co-founder and CEO. Vicinanza has more than 30 years of experience building, managing and delivering IT services to enterprise customers. He is responsible for driving the company's business innovation and strategy. An experienced and accomplished entrepreneur, Vicinanza founded and built one of the industry's largest managed services providers prior to launching Cirrity, a leading channel-only cloud services

provider. The company is focused on helping partners and customers transform their business and drive increased profitability with a suite of secure, compliant cloud-based solutions that deliver recurring revenue, opportunities for add-on services and strong competitive differentiators. Many of the company's key partners focus on servicing midmarket customers.

Max Pruger, Chief Sales Officer, CloudJumper

Max Pruger runs CloudJumper’s sales operations and puts personal emphasis on managing the MSP channel for its WaaS solution. He was recently named a CRN Channel Chief. Founded in 2016, CloudJumper is a workspace as a service (WaaS) platform innovator for the agile business. It launches itself from the platform its sister company, nGenx built more than 16 years as a cloud pioneer, taking its new WaaS solution to a greater height with its concurrent user model. Many of the key personnel from nGenx have also made the transition to CloudJumper which built its concurrent WaaS model working with strategic partners such as Microsoft, Intuit, Google, IndependenceIT, Artisan Infrastructure, and others.

James Fields, President, Concept Technology Inc.

James Fields is president of Concept Technology Inc., a managed IT service provider for small and mid-sized businesses. Spotting the need for outsourced IT services in the Nashville market, James founded Concept Technology in 2003 with just one engineer. Today, the award-winning company is one of the top IT companies in Middle Tennessee. Concept Technology provides IT outsourcing and consulting, proactive network maintenance and security, innovative cloud computing, reliable data backup and recovery, and help desk services to small and mid-sized businesses throughout Middle Tennessee. According to Fields, Concept Technology's three best qualities—and the things that make them unique in the marketplace—are superior talent, dedication to clients' best interests and local relationships.

Brian Morin, SVP, WW Sales and Marketing, Condusiv Technologies

Brian Morin, Condusiv's senior vice president of global sales and marketing, is responsible for the company's corporate marketing vision by driving demand and awareness worldwide. Efforts over the last year led to growing adoption of the company's V-locity I/O reduction software. The solution has amassed more than 2,000 new virtualized customers looking to accelerate their virtual environment with a 100 percent software approach. Condusiv's I/O reduction software is tailored for midmarket organizations that need to improve I/O performance without the high cost or disruption of adding new hardware. Morin's application notes the company has published 15 case studies on its website that are all midmarket companies who saw a doubling in performance using V-locity I/O reduction software. Among those customers are Christus Health, one of the largest health systems in Texas, Bell Mobility and ASL Marketing.

Rob Rae, Vice President of Business Development, Datto Inc.

As Vice President of Business Development at Datto, Rob Rae brings more than 25 years of sales and B2B experience to the "unicorn" company. Rae oversees various parts of the business such as marketing, global sales and all partner engagement programs. A great

portion of his time is spent on the road representing Datto at industry events and meeting with partners on a global scale. Throughout his career, Rae has been focused on helping managed service providers, VARs, and solution providers grow their businesses and bring products to market. In 2015, Rob was recognized among CRN's Top Midmarket Vendor Executives, named a CRN Channel Chief and recognized by other organizations for his work in the indirect sales channel. Rae worked for Compaq which was acquired by HP and Level Platforms which is now part of AVG.

David Matthiesen, Director of Sales, Strategic Accounts, Americas, DeviceLock Inc.

Before launching DeviceLock's USA entity in 2008 and joining DeviceLock's Americas' distributor AdvancedForce in 2005, David Matthiesen was co-founder of Avatier Corp., a leading identity and access management company, where he was the top revenue producer for six years and served many other strategic management roles. He was the featured executive in CIO Review's Top 20 Most Promising Enterprise Security Companies of 2015 and was recognized by the Midsize Enterprise Summit's Top Midmarket Executives list as well. Matthiesen explains, "DeviceLock has found that midmarket enterprises are our "sweet spot" when it comes to our sales approaches and success. Midmarket enterprises tend to be more focused, nimble, and decisive in IT than large enterprises, and they are certainly less bureaucratic in terms of vetting, approving, purchasing, implementing, and maintaining solutions like ours so that the ROI takes place quicker and is more sustaining."

David Graffia, VP, Sales, dinCloud

David Graffia, president of sales at dinCloud, brings more than 20 years' experience in the IT sales and consulting. Graffia has served on numerous advisory councils, and is a member of the Technology Executives Club, IT Leaders Circle, and IT Marketing Institute. dinCloud offers hosted workspaces, which include hosted virtual desktops, application publishing and cloud infrastructure. dinCloud's offerings help midmarket companies integrate their existing infrastructure securely in the cloud, enabling them to rapidly deploy and manage applications with ease. According to Graffia, larger enterprise firms have the resources and tools needed to scale and stay compliant. However, midmarket organizations are challenged by not having the capital to invest and acquire the right tools and resources, much less implement and maintain them. It is crucial that we continue to cater towards the midmarket because we can bridge the gap from the current state to future state, he stated.

Josh James, CEO, Domo

Serial entrepreneur and startup aficionado Josh James is the founder and CEO of Domo, a cloud-based business optimization company valued at $2 billion. James founded Domo in 2010 to help CEOs, executives and other managers change the way they do business by better understanding their organization's vast amount of data and obtaining value from the tens of billions of dollars spent on traditional business intelligence systems. Before founding Domo, James was the CEO of Omniture which he co-founded in 1996, took public in 2006 and sold to Adobe in 2009. From 2006-2009, he was the youngest CEO of a publicly traded company. One of a small number of entrepreneurs that have both founded and led multiple billion-dollar organizations, James has enabled Domo to be recognized as one of World Economic Forum's 2015 Technology Pioneers while being personally recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.

Mihir Shah, CEO, Drobo

As the CEO of Drobo, Mihir Shah and his team have grown revenue 50 percent sequentially, quarter over quarter. Shah also serves on the board of Enact Systems Inc., a leading vertical SaaS company focused on the renewable energy industry. Before joining Drobo, he held senior positions at BlueFin Technologies, Brocade and IBM. Shah has completed over 50 acquisitions and investments in his career that total more than $5 billion in value. Drobo caters its business to midmarket consumers such as "prosumers" and small businesses that seek enterprise-quality storage devices without the enterprise industrial price. Issues such as data security and storage space are no longer just the concern of large corporations, Shah stated. Rather, these data storage problems are concerns that everyone has in both their personal and professional life. Shah explains that while Drobo was engineered with the most sophisticated and advanced technology, it has designed the product so that those without tech experience could still easily use it.

Curtiz Gangi, Sales VP, Midmarket and US Channels, Data Center, Eaton

Curtiz Gangi, Eaton's Sales VP, midmarket and US channels, data center, has 24 years of experience in the power quality, technology and data center business. This team is responsible for growing Eaton's business with midmarket and enterprise CIOs and CTOs and the company's channel partners. Gangi stated that 50 percent of the world's power-management consumption occurs within the midmarket which is consuming more than $123 billion in IT. He expects the midmarket to undergo significant changes in the next several years as it acquires new technologies at a faster rate than the enterprise market. These changes have affected the needs of our customers in this segment, and thus our value within their businesses, he said in his application. Stand-alone solutions no longer fit this market. Eaton recognizes and understands how customers now use converged infrastructure, virtualization, cloud and managed services and it has aligned its solutions, capabilities, and competencies to support the new platforms.

Joe Cowan, CEO, Epicor Software Corp

Joe Cowan brings more than 20 years of executive management experience in the software and technology industry to Epicor Software Corp. The vast majority of Epicor's global customers are companies ranging from $50 million to $500 million in revenue. This exclusive focus on the midmarket has driven Epicor's growth to $900 million in annual revenues, cementing its place as one of the industry's largest ERP vendors. Cowan stated in his application he has a passion for product quality, leading and inspiring people and is a big proponent of "servant leadership" where individuals are called to serve, not to be served. "You have to earn the respect of people. This is the most fundamental rule in business," Cowan stated. On building a solid management team: Cowan says he believes in surrounding himself with "A players" who take ownership and are problem solvers and in whom he has confidence in their ability to deliver. Last but not least, Cowan is very principled in areas of faith and family.

Mark Adams, VP, Channels and Corporate Development, eSentire

With more than 25 years of experience in the information technology and financial services industries, Mark Adams leads the corporate development and channel partnership programs at eSentire. Adams has previously held analyst and portfolio management roles at several investment management funds in addition to time spent focusing on M&A, investment banking and corporate development. eSentire has built its global go-to-market strategy and service portfolio around midsized organizations and the channel partners who support them. Cybercriminals have shifted their attention to small and midsized organizations, which now represent more than 70 percent of cyber-attacks. These adversaries know midsized firms possess valuable information that they can profit from, and are aware that many organizations may not have the skilled resources in-house to monitor and manage security operations on a 24x7 basis.

Gerald Choung, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, ESET

With experience at key fortune 500 technology companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Qualcomm, Gerald Choung brings 20 years of experience to his current role. His strategic business acumen is bolstered with a strong analytical and sales leadership background, with proven hands-on execution results in partner channel development, enterprise software sales and sales operations. The midmarket is a significant part of ESET's customer base. ESET's service, Rip and Replace, is an example of how the company prioritizes midmarket companies. All materials are designed with the midmarket in mind, acknowledging that they don't often have seasoned security experts on staff. One of the hardest parts of installing new security solutions is removing what you have in place and installing the new, updated product, Choung stated.

Bob Gault, EVP of Worldwide Sales, Channels and Services, Extreme Networks

Bob Gault is responsible for shaping Extreme Networks' worldwide sales, channel and services organizations as a core element of the company's growth and innovation strategy. Gault has more than 27 years of experience in sales and marketing with service providers and partners. According to Gault, the midmarket represents immense opportunity for progress and change as customers across all verticals tackle challenges from mobility at the network's edge, all the way to the cloud. Pressured by time, IT budgets and limited personnel, the expectation to deliver great user experiences as well as a resilient and reliable wired and wireless network is high for midmarket organizations. Therefore, they need cutting-edge solutions that help them easily manage their network while satisfying the needs of users in order to meet these expectations, he stated.

Joseph Sykora, VP Americas Channels and Enhanced Technologies and Andy Travers, SVP Sales, U.S., Canada, Fortinet

Fortinet's sales and channel leader are included in this entry because of their partnership and commitment to the midmarket. Joe Sykora (pictured), a serial entrepreneur, was previously was the CEO of Fortress Network Security which he founded in 2001. He speaks at industry conferences and events on such topcis as network security, wireless security, mobility and remote access and encrypted messaging solutions.Travers is a seasoned sales leader with more than 25 years of experience building, leading, and inspiring world-class sales teams for a number of leading IT companies. "I excel at coming into selling environments that are struggling and assessing where the obstacles or gaps are, creating and instilling a new vision, and leading teams through the change required," he states on his public profile.

Sean Mares, Vice President, Enterprise Sales & Operations, Global Technology Resources

Sean Mares is the vice president of enterprise sales and operations at GTRI. Mares brings more than 20 years of technical sales, partner management and sales team management experience from leading companies including NetApp and Longview. GTRI has built a team that has extensive knowledge in four core areas that speak directly to the midmarket,cloud, mobile, analytics and security. As part of its services, the GTRI team conducts an assessment of the customer's environment and a gap analysis to uncover the business requirements in order to build tailored technology solutions that address business challenges. "The people that make up the GTRI midmarket team have the knowledge to strategically consult with our clients to plan technology investments, implement complex infrastructures and build global enterprise architectures," Mares application stated.

Kelly Murphy, Founder & Chief Evangelist, HyperGrid

As a serial entrepreneur with a track record of bringing disruptive technologies to market, Kelly Murphy brings 15 years of CEO experience with disruptive venture-backed software companies. In 1998, almost a decade before the cloud became popular, Murphy founded Marrakech, the first software company that offered on-demand procurement and supply chain systems to some of the world’s largest retailers, consumer food producers, packaging companies and utilities. After selling Marrakech in 2007, he turned his sights onto what was his largest obstacle in growing his previous business,storage. In 2009, Murphy joined HyperGrid— a pioneer of software-defined storage that is set to disrupt the traditional storage industry. Currently, he serves on HyperGrid's board and is also the chief evangelist. Originally from Canada, Murphy obtained a computer science degree from Michigan Technological University, played Division I hockey and was the seventh pick of the New York Islanders in the 1984 entry draft.

Tom Fabiano, CEO, Group9 Communications

With 15 years of human resources, sales, and telecommunications experience, Tom Fabiano brings a global reach and an unparalleled personal network to Group9 Communications. His ability to connect clients to the best, most proven talent and decision makers in the communications industry is his greatest strength. Fabiano's background includes working for one of the first VoIP providers in the world, Go2Call, two Pan-European, and one global Carrier. He has worked with the most recognized names in the business. According to Fabiano, "The midmarket is undergoing a huge transformation in technology currently as midsize companies change out their infrastructure to meet today's demand for analytics, performance, and granularity." Group9 Communications has established great relationships with these business owners because they can see the value with all the savings and benefits Group9 provides them, while taking all the pain away of dealing with the carriers."

Brandon Kirby, Vice President, Technology & Business Development, Halo

Brandon Kirby is a senior sales and business development executive with more than 17 years' experience leading sales groups and developing new business for industry-leading companies such as Fiserv and Epicor. Leading Halo's North American effort for the last

eight years, Kirby has overseen many of the company's largest and most successful client implementations. Kirby is a certified Microsoft Professional in Business Intelligence, and has been named to Microsoft Dynamics Top 100 most Influential People. Halo delivers self-service supply chain analytics that limits the burden on IT. Its tools simplify multi-source data integration, data governance, and security to ensure customers get accurate data from a single source– eliminating report chaos. Halo is available as an on-premise or Web-based software.

Alessandra Brambilla, VP, WW Channel GTM and SMB, HP Enterprise

Alessandra Brambilla is responsible for overall coordination, sales and business results of the channel go-to-market for HP Enterprise and its global SMB strategy. She brings to the role more than 20 years of experience, a deep expertise around the value and the volume business models and her strong understanding of the various sales cycles tied to key customer segments. Brambilla has served in a wide range of channel roles during her tenure at HP prior to the split of the company into two organizations. Her role is at the forefront of HPE's strategy to serve midsize customers via its partner network. Her top goals for this year were to migrate partners to cloud solutions, increase partners' customer satisfaction ratings and increase the amount of net new accounts coming through partners. Her business philosophy can be summed up in this statement she made to CRN: "Define a clear and strong value proposition and then align the full organization alongside it, making sure you have clear strategies, focused assets and simplified execution."

Michael Yancheson, Global MSSP Sales, HP Enterprise Software

Michael Yancheson has been in the IT industry for 20 years. 19 of which have been serving a wide range of customers' needs with hardware, software, and services. His experience in direct sales, channel, and service providers spans from the smallest implementations to the largest networks. He has a passion for delivering immediate value to his customers as seen through the first firewall appliances, the adoption of UTM/NGFW, and now the creation of HPE's Managed Security programs. HP Enterprise Security has been successful in the largest organizations globally. They continue to be a large source of business. However, as Yancheson points out, "We are revamping all of our products to be delivered via SaaS, MSSP, or OPEX models to ensure every need of the MME is addressed in procurement, ongoing simplification of solutions, and financial/operational delivery. "

Jed Ayres, CEO, North America, IGEL Technology

As President and CEO of IGEL North America, Ayres is responsible for leading the marketing and sales teams in building stronger relationships within the North American IT channel. Ayes is also developing new tools and resources to help drive the success of IGEL's customers. The midmarket is an important and strategic focus for IGEL. For example, Ayres cited that the midmarket's sales cycles tend to be shorter than those of enterprise-level organizations, which helps to smooth out revenue cycles. Moving forward, IGEL's channel partners are, and will remain, an integral part of the company's strategy to reach midmarket organizations. In the coming months, IGEL is planning to increase its investment in the development of new and innovative marketing programs that will enable channel partners in North America to increase their margins and drive more sales within this growing market segment.

Donald Deshaies, EVP Sales, IndependenceIT

Donald Deshaies encompasses a history of senior leadership and accomplishment in growing and supporting the partner channels. Prior to IndependenceIT he managed channel strategy for Sage and Microsoft. Deshaies oversees sales operations for IndependenceIT, including the channel programs and strategy as the company grows in response to increasing demand for cloud-based IT solutions. Deshaise describes the midmarket this way, "The midmarket is one of the fastest growing segments for cloud-based services and solutions. Because of the slow economic recovery since 2008, midmarket organizations have remained cautious in terms of IT spending. However, that has not limited the necessity for these organizations to become more mobile, efficient, and productive."

Melissa Treier, Vice President, Product Sales North America, Information Builders

Melissa Treier is responsible for driving product sales success for Information Builders. Information Builders provides software and services that transform data into business value. Treier states, "We are a midmarket company ourselves. We easily related to the issues and needs of companies that we consider our peers. Information Builders in 2016 released three new versions of its industry-leading WebFocus business intelligence platform to help organizations of all sizes easily gain the power of BI and analytics that best suits their user base and experience. The reason IB brings these three tiers of product to market is to make it easier for midmarket and other organizations to buy the right level of software to accomplish the right analytics and BI missions that they have."