Partner Content from
Interview
Life in the channel
Cato’s Frank Rauch on channel partner relationships
Frank Rauch, global channel chief at Cato Networks talks to PCR about what makes a successful channel partnership.
F
rank Rauch took on the position of global channel chief at Cato at the beginning of the year, and will be responsible for driving the channel ecosystem globally, enabling partners
to profit from the enterprise shiſt to cloud-native networking and security. Here, he explains how building channel partnerships is about mutual growth.
Could you give us a brief overview of your professional background? Contrary to popular belief, I’ve not been a channel guy all my career. I’ve only spent half of my career in the channel. It all started when I joined Compaq as one of their first sales reps during its budding startup days. I worked across several roles overseeing Mid-Atlantic sales during the HP merger. My role at HP saw me responsible for direct sales for IBM. It was a lot of fun and took me into the casino and gaming industry. It was so much fun I started a job in strategy and planning and basically ran strategy planning for the Americas for a short while. It was a reward I got to then choose my next role and the channel side of the business looked like it was a great gig. I started in the channel side of the business for HP, then went over to VMWare and spent several years there and tripled the channel business in the Americas. I then had the opportunity to go into the security industry with
Check Point. Right from the start it was incredibly interesting. Aſter four amazing years there which also took me back into the worldwide arena, I then joined Cato Networks.
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How do you plan to drive the channel ecosystem forward? Ecosystem can mean different things to a lot of different people, but one thing I have always done is respect the work that has been done before. By this I mean, Cato has some very loyal partners and the team has done a terrific job in establishing the current channel for the brand. We must keep those partners satisfied and not look to just recruit every partner in the world – the idea now is to recruit partners that can help us grow and grow together. Since we’re a worldwide company, we’re able to speak to partners
that may be global system integrators, they may be regional sub- regional integrators that are moving towards being global. Tey may also be service providers that are expanding their footprint. But we are going to be selective about who to partner with and the value proposition for both sides. Our commercials work in terms of the margins we offer. Also, the service opportunities that we offer. You’ll see massive progress on this in the upcoming months. We also want to explore different things including managed
services as it fits very well into the Cato business model. We are doing it right now, but not offering them at scale. Managed services are big business. Tere are thousands of managed service providers that come in all shapes and sizes. It is a great opportunity for us to offer SSE and SASE as-a-Service. Plus, professional services are also a great opportunity for Cato to be able to help organisations assess, optimise and modernise their environment. We’re also looking for partners that understand networking and
security with an understanding of how to deal with multi-regional, multi-country, and global customers.
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