Barry Russell - The open-source foundation of every AI partnership

Sam Valme - The secret power of channel evangelism

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 [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer & Jason Gallo - Cisco 360 Partner Program Deep Dive

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 [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners

Faraz Siraj - The Golden Doodle Effect

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 [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners

Barry Russell - The open-source foundation of every AI partnership

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 [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners

Eltjo Hofstee - Unraveling the MSP to MIP journey

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 [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners