Partnerships Unraveled

Hosted by Partnerships Unraveled

Business Marketing

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Episodes

247

Latest episode

Jul 2026

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EN-US

About the show

The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.

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60 recent

July 21, 202617 min

Pax8 Roadshow Special - Scott Sacket

Send us Fan MailIn this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Scott Sacket, Senior Vice President of Partner Strategy at AvePoint. With 19 years at AvePoint and a background as a former managed service provider, Scott brings a rare blend of vendor and channel perspectives on how partnership programs and data governance are evolving in the AI era.Scott opens with the story of AvePoint's shift from direct-first to a channel-driven business, one that now sees 100% growth in partner-sourced bookings for multiple quarters. He then explains how AvePoint has redesigned its partner program, moving away from the traditional revenue-tiered model to a points-based system that recognizes the many ways partners create value. Certifications, product mix, team training breadth, co-marketing, pre-sales, technical support, and renewal rates all count alongside revenue. It's a program built around the idea that partners come in all shapes and sizes, and every large partner today started as a small one worth investing in.From there, the conversation turns to what's happening now in the market. Scott makes the case that AI has kicked off a governance gold rush for managed service providers. AvePoint has been doing data governance for 25 years, well before the term was popular, and the current AI moment is bringing new relevance to that expertise. He shares a striking gap: 75% of companies have already built or tested AI agents, and 70% have no governance plan in place. Every agent needs an owner and a governance framework, and the partners delivering that will be in the strongest position ahead.Scott closes with a mantra that fits the pace of the AI era: fail forward. Move fast, try things, focus on the partners and customers you serve, and remember that what's important today probably won't be in twelve months._________________________Learn more about Channext 👇https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #channelpartners

July 14, 202624 min

Kirsten MacGregor - From Product to Partnership: Delinea's MSP bet

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Kirsten MacGregor, Global Head of Managed Service Providers at Delinea. Coming to Delinea after nearly eight years building the managed service provider motion at Riverbed and a career spanning networking, digital experience, and identity security, Kirsten brings a sharp perspective on building a program that fits how these partners actually operate.Kirsten opens with a framework she has carried across her career: people, process, and platform. Platform architecture is not a technical detail, she explains, but the foundation of the whole service model. Cloud-native design matters because the operational efficiency managed service providers need has to be built in from the start. Process has to reflect that these providers carry real service accountability, so vendor support, enablement, and escalation paths have to be designed with that in mind. And the human aspect anchors everything. The people a vendor puts in front of partners are what turn a program into a genuine partnership.That framework is what Delinea now has the chance to build on from scratch. Because the company hasn't run a true managed service provider program before, Kirsten is designing the commercial structure, support tiers, enablement, and pricing around how these partners actually operate. She also reframes the shift from reseller to managed service provider as a move from margin-pressured product sales to outcome-based partnerships. Identity has become the primary attack surface for enterprises, and continuous delivery through MSPs is a natural fit for the deeper relationships that model creates.Kirsten closes on where the strongest managed service providers will land in the next three to five years: leading with outcomes, governing the full identity estate across human, machine, and AI, and treating zero standing privilege as the baseline. It's a moment worth building for._________________________Learn more about Channext 👇https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #channelpartners

July 7, 202629 min

Jason Henry - The channel opportunity nobody talks about

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Jason Henry, Vice President of MSP Platform Sales for the Americas at Hornetsecurity. With three decades of enterprise sales leadership behind him and a mandate to build the Americas partner business from scratch, Jason brings a fresh lens to where the channel opportunity really lives.Jason opens with the story of Hornetsecurity's new chapter. After being acquired by Proofpoint late last year, the company is now making the small-to-medium business and managed service provider space a true focus, and Jason is leading the Americas build. His first 90 days have centered on two things: the people and the partners. Deep listening sessions with top partners have surfaced honest feedback on what is working and where the biggest opportunities sit. Partners, Jason has found, are genuinely invested in the mission, and that shared excitement is one of the strongest foundations to build a channel-first business on.From there, the conversation turns to where the space is heading. Jason makes the case that AI will have an even bigger impact on the small-to-medium business market than the enterprise, because it lets small businesses do more with far fewer resources. That opens up a real evolution for managed service providers, who are moving from technology support into a business consultant role for the founders and CEOs they serve. The providers who lean into this shift, deliver agent-based services, and lead their customers through the transformation are the ones set to capture the biggest opportunity of the next few years.Jason closes on what he's carried through three decades of sales leadership. Believe in your people, build great teams, support them well, and build the next generation of leaders. That's how the businesses that last actually get built._________________________Learn more about Channext 👇https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #channelpartners

July 2, 202625 min

Christina Tubb - The channel partner as your local bodyguard

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Christina Tubb, Americas Director of Regional Alliance Managers at Ping Identity. With a career spanning theoretical physics, private equity, consulting, and channel leadership across ten countries, Christina brings a wide-lens view of what it takes to build partnerships that connect vendors directly to end customers.Christina opens with a philosophy that runs counter to how many people think about channel: partnerships are a way to get closer to end users, not further from them. When partners handle the pieces they're built for, vendors get the room to focus on what customers actually need. That principle sharpens with a global lens. For a US multinational, the nuanced requirements of customers in every country and vertical are almost impossible to grasp without local partners who translate the market for you. Christina calls it thinking globally and acting locally, and nowhere does it land harder than in the channel.From there, the conversation moves into what Christina learned running channel in Asia. Markets without friction stop innovating, she says, and Asia's density and diversity is a crucible that forces builders to move faster. Bringing that lens to the Americas, she highlights just how much automation, adaptation, and intentionality matter even in a single large market. The conversation then turns to identity in the AI era. With deep fakes rising and traditional markers of recognition losing reliability, digital identity is heading toward verified trust, and channel partners are central to how that plays out on the ground.Christina closes on the mindset that has anchored her whole career: follow curiosity as your north star. It won't guarantee an illustrious career, but it will guarantee real enjoyment and growth, especially in a moment where the security industry is being redefined week by week._________________________Learn more about Channext 👇https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #channelpartners

June 30, 202620 min

Pax8 Roadshow Special - Phylip Morgan

Send us Fan MailIn this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Phylip Morgan, Senior Vice President of Marketplace and Channel Expansion at Pax8. A former managed service provider and 30-year channel veteran, Phylip is leading Pax8's work helping partners transform from managed service providers into managed intelligence providers.Phylip opens with the case for why the managed intelligence shift is a revolution, not an evolution. Borrowing Scott Chason's framing, he positions this as the same kind of cataclysmic change as steam, electricity, the PC, and the cloud, with AI delivering cognitive power the industry has never had before. The proof point is what's already happening: models are getting better, hallucinations are receding from the conversation, and practical use cases are stacking up. At the same time, Phylip is clear that partners have options, and there's still a real living to be made in break-fix and traditional managed services.From there, the conversation reframes the partner role as a trusted advisor evolving from technology advisor into business advisor, with managing intelligence risk and governance, risk, and compliance around digital agents as part of the new job description. Phylip shares a Welsh example of two managed service providers who decided their best play was to partner with a managed intelligence provider, which opens a discussion about partner ecosystems where everyone builds around their strengths. He also walks through two market shifts: the digital buyer who prefers apps to conversations, and the death of brand, where reputation and shared values matter more than the logo at the bottom of a website.Phylip closes with practical counsel for the partner community. Regret is a terrible thing, so take the time to look at the opportunity, do the research, and come to your own conclusions. As he puts it, lead with humanity and scale with AI._________________________Learn more about Channext 👇https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #channelpartners

June 25, 202611 min

Pax8 Roadshow Special - Gene Kim

Send us Fan MailIn this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Gene Kim, Vice President of Managed Service Providers at Absolute Security. With a career spent on both sides of the channel as a service provider and now leading Absolute's MSP motion, Gene brings a grounded view of what MSPs need to deliver real business continuity in an AI-driven world.Gene opens with the story of building Absolute's MSP motion from the ground up. The company has a long enterprise track record, with 40% of the Fortune 500, 80% of the top airlines, and nearly all of the largest state and local governments as customers, and its presence in the MSP community is now being built with the same intent. He walks through how Absolute's technology, embedded in the BIOS and firmware of more than 600 million devices from Dell, Lenovo, HP, and 25 other manufacturers, is already deployed in MSP fleets today. The opportunity is in activating that capability and showing MSPs how it strengthens their service delivery.From there, the conversation moves into where Absolute fits in the AI era and the shift toward managed intelligence providers. As MSPs add automation, orchestration, and chat layers across their stack, every one of those capabilities relies on the underlying tools being up and available. Absolute keeps the RMM, EDR, encryption, and backup tools resilient through automated self-healing, which Gene frames as a foundational layer for any MSP's AI strategy. He also reframes the customer conversation around business continuity, where the question is how quickly the business is back up.Gene closes on what he calls a winning formula for MSPs: pairing prevention with recovery and resilience to build differentiated, outcome-driven service offerings that capture new business and grow customer mind share._________________________Learn more about Channext 👇https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #channelpartners

June 23, 202616 min

Pax8 Roadshow Special - Nihil Morjaria

Send us Fan MailIn this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Nihil Morjaria, Chief Revenue Officer at usecure. With almost eight years at the company across nearly every sales role and a background in psychology, Nihil brings a thoughtful perspective on what it takes to build a channel-first cybersecurity business where the human element matters as much as the technology.Nihil starts with the story of usecure's pivot to channel-first after more than three years of selling direct. The biggest commercial challenge was getting internal reps to embrace what looked like a margin hit in the short term, in exchange for something much bigger: scale through partners acting as outsourced sales functions. He frames the channel as a force multiplier where commission grows alongside the partner network, and shares how doing the groundwork to align reps before the shift was what made it stick. The right partners, he says, are the ones with supplementary resources who become active extensions of the team.From there the conversation gets into how Nihil's psychology background shapes everything from go-to-market messaging to product. usecure's expertise helps MSPs translate the abstract topic of human risk into real, tangible conversations with their customers. That same lens sits behind the launch of uHealth, a new piece of usecure's human risk intelligence program. By integrating with Entra to pull real signals around services people sign up for, MFA setup, and password reuse, uHealth turns isolated training scores into a tailored view of how each person actually behaves, with clear remediation steps MSPs can deliver as outcome-driven service.Nihil closes on the value of the channel as a community, where honest conversations about real challenges are what help everyone grow. As he puts it, it takes a village._________________________Learn more about Channext 👇https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #channelpartners

June 18, 202642 min

Thomas Christensen - Win-Win-Win

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Thomas Christensen, Vice President of Partner Ecosystem NCEE at IBM. Thomas has 30 years in the industry across all three layers of the channel, as a reseller, in distribution, and as a vendor, and now leads IBM's partner ecosystem across 35 countries in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. That breadth of experience gives him a perspective on ecosystems that is hard to replicate.Thomas opens with what he considers the most valuable thing about having worked all three sides of the channel: you already know what the person across the table needs before they tell you. Having been a reseller, briefly in distribution, and for most of his career in the vendor space, he arrives at every conversation with an understanding of the other side's daily life, goals, and constraints. That understanding is what makes it possible to build win-win-win partnerships: a win for the client, a win for the partner, and a win for IBM.That philosophy shapes how IBM approaches its Partner Plus program and how Thomas thinks about equality in the ecosystem. When a seller believes they did all the work and the partner should receive less margin, they are being binary. A partner who receives fair margin today is the one who invests resources in learning your portfolio tomorrow and brings leads the day after. The program enforces that long-term thinking, even when individuals do not naturally default to it.Across 35 countries, Thomas finds more universality in what partners need than people expect. Trust, respect for how the other party's business works, and the simple question "how can I help your business grow?" transcend cultures and geographies. That is the foundation, and it is remarkably consistent._________________________Learn more about Channext 👇https://channext.com/ Watch on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@channext #channelmarketing #channelpartners

June 16, 202640 min

Sam Valme - The secret power of channel evangelism

Send us Fan MailIn 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 #channelmarketing #channelpartners

June 11, 202636 min

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

Send us Fan MailIn 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 #channelmarketing #channelpartners