Barracuda Networks looking to drive accelerated growth in APAC

Channel veteran Michelle Hodges takes on the role as Barracuda Network’s newly appointed Senior Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances.

Barracuda Networks has appointed Michelle Hodges as Senior Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances. The channel veteran with more than two decades of experience in transforming partner programs for leading technology vendors, will spearhead Barracuda’s worldwide channel strategy, driving growth and deepening engagement across the company’s partner ecosystem.

Geoff Waters, Chief Revenue Officer at Barracuda Networks commented on Hodges new role, stating

Hodges’ appointment reflects Barracuda’s deep commitment to empowering its partners with innovative solutions and managed security services that are easy to buy, deploy and use.

“Her experience and leadership will be instrumental in advancing the Barracuda Partner Success Program, enhancing our go-to-market execution and accelerating growth,” added Waters.

“Barracuda’s channel-first approach and outstanding reputation for delivering industry-leading solutions make it a trusted leader in the market,” said Hodges. “I look forward to working with our partners to extend our global reach, help customers defend against today’s evolving threat landscape and drive sustainable, mutual growth and value.”

In an interview with CRN Asia, Hodges also said that she will be focused on working with partners and colleagues worldwide, including in Asia-Pacific, to ensure the cybersecurity vendor can consistently deliver exceptional value for partners while helping their customers to strengthen their security posture with solutions that are easy to buy, deploy and use.

“Innovation, automation and engagement are critical for successful partner relationships – you will find me focusing much of my energy in those areas in the early days and long term,” said Hodges.

Acknowledging that the industry is very competitive right now, especially with customers having to deal with so many cybersecurity vendors in the market, Hodges added that Barracuda spends a lot of time understanding the challenges partners and their customers face.

“Right now, many are struggling with too many security tools and vendors, products that don’t integrate with each other and which all need to be managed and monitored. This creates risk – making it harder to detect and mitigate active threats and placing a heavy burden on resource-constrained IT teams. Through our commitment to innovation and platform-based protection, we are supporting partners in consolidating tools and vendors and moving to an advanced and integrated approach that addresses all these challenges and more,” explained Hodges.

Looking at partners in the Asia Pacific region, Hodges highlighted that Barracuda is looking to drive accelerated growth for partners across Asia Pacific.

“There are many opportunities for partners in the region to deliver innovative, integrated protection and managed security services to customers and we’ll be there to help every step of the way,” added Hodges.

Prior to joining Barracuda, Hodges served as Senior Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances at Ivanti. She has also held senior leadership roles overseeing global channel and alliance strategy at GitLab, Gigamon, Riverbed, Apptio, Intel, VMware, SAP, and Microsoft. A recognized industry leader, Hodges has been named a CRN Channel Chief, one of CRN’s Power 100 Women of the Channel and a Channel Futures Top Cybersecurity Leader.