Cohesity appoints Matthew Johnston to drive APJ channel growth
“We will continue to recruit partners with the right expertise that bring differentiated capabilities, reach or access to customer segments. The goal is a stronger, more capable ecosystem—not simply a larger one," says Matthew Johnston has joined Cohesity as the new Senior Director, Partner Sales, Asia Pacific and Japan.
Matthew Johnston has joined Cohesity as the new Senior Director, Partner Sales, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ). In his new role, Johnston will lead Cohesity's partner and channel go-to-market strategy across the region.
With a focus on driving growth through the Cohesity Aspire Partner Program, Johnston's appointment underscores Cohesity's expanding investment in strengthening its partner ecosystem across the Asia Pacific and Japan region.
Speaking to CRN Asia, Johnston shared that across APJ, cyber resilience and AI are creating a significant growth opportunity for partners.
“As AI agents move into critical workflows, customers need to secure data access, close protection gaps and recover agents, data and systems to a trusted state. Through Cohesity Aspire Program, we are helping partners turn that demand into differentiated, services-led and recurring-revenue practices,” he said.
For Johnston, the biggest opportunities are in markets where cyber resilience, data sovereignty and AI have moved into the boardroom.
“Across APJ, customers share the same imperative: secure data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments and restore the Minimum Viable Company to a trusted state. Partners that can deliver that outcome will be well positioned for growth,” he added.
Growth through the channel
Johnston also shared that growth in the region will be market-specific and partner-led, with joint plans centered on local priorities such as data sovereignty, ransomware recovery, AI resilience and workload modernization.
“This is not a coverage exercise—it is about deeper co-selling, stronger services capabilities, and measurable customer outcomes,” he said.
Johnston also stated that the focus for Cohesity in the region will be on helping existing partners build out their business with the vendor by helping them expand into data insights and AI-driven use cases.
“We will continue to recruit partners with the right expertise that bring differentiated capabilities, reach or access to customer segments. The goal is a stronger, more capable ecosystem—not simply a larger one. A simpler Aspire program, streamlined training, expanded incentives and new specializations will help partners build deeper expertise and more profitable practices,” he added.
With more than two decades of pan-regional industry leadership experience across Asia Pacific, Johnston was most recently as Chief Revenue Officer at Odaseva, where he led global sales, marketing, business development, solutions engineering, and alliances.
Prior to Odaseva, Johnston held senior regional leadership roles at VMware, Commvault, Dell Software, and Quest Software, including Area Vice President, ASEAN & Korea at Commvault, where he doubled the region's revenue in under three years, and General Manager, Systems Management, APJ at Dell Software.
A clear message
Reporting directly to Peter Hanna, Vice President of Sales and General Manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, at Cohesity, Johnston will be responsible for driving the delivery of best-in-breed data resilience and security solutions across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the wider ASEAN region, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, while expanding new GTM partner programs and partnerships to maximize alignment with customers' most pressing cyber resilience challenges.
“Matthew's appointment reflects our continued commitment to deepening Cohesity's partner ecosystem across one of our fastest-growing global regions,” said Peter Hanna, Vice President of Sales and General Manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, at Cohesity.
“He brings a rare combination of regional expertise, executive sales leadership and deep channel relationships with our most significant multi-national partners. I'm confident he will play a pivotal role in developing our channel ecosystem and helping our customers across APJ strengthen their data resilience and security capabilities. We're thrilled to welcome him to the team, and ‘selling with’ our entire ecosystem.”
For Johnston the message is simple.
“We win together. Partners are essential to helping customers protect critical data, strengthen data security, recover with confidence and adopt AI securely. We are making Aspire simpler and more rewarding and investing in joint execution that turns cyber resilience into measurable customer and business outcomes,” Johnston concluded.