Barracuda Strengthens Investment in Partner Experience With New Hires, Additional Enablement Resources, and Expanded Global Presence

Barracuda Networks, a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-first security solutions announced several strategic channel roles to strengthen the partner experience and help drive success within the channel ecosystem. These investments include new channel roles, additional resources for partner enablement, and an expanded global footprint.

As part of this, Barracuda recently hired Maria Martinez as VP of Channels, Americas and promoted Karen Ward to VP, MSP Sales, Americas. Martinez brings more than 20 years of channel experience, including how to accelerate channel sales growth and enhance program development. Ward has been with Barracuda’s MSP business unit for more than six years, focusing her and the team’s efforts on partner success and development.

Additionally, Barracuda is adding new channel roles, to build out its partner experience, enablement, and channel ecosystem teams. These efforts support Barracuda’s increased emphasis on providing more technical education and training for channel partners. In addition, Barracuda is investing in extended detection and response (XDR) technology to help channel partners strengthen their security practices.

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Barracuda is also expanding its global presence with regional channel ecosystem and sales directors in the Asia Pacific region. Earlier this month, Andy Lau joined Barracuda as Director, Partner Ecosystems and Alliance for Asia Pacific & Japan and Makoto Suzuki joined as Regional Sales Director for Japan. In March, Paul Crighton joined Barracuda as Regional Sales Director for Australia, New Zealand & the Pacific Islands. Combined, the new leaders in the region bring more than 50 years of cybersecurity, technology and channel experience to their roles.

“We are pleased to share the increasing level of investment in our partner experience and all the ways we’re helping drive partner success and the expansion of our channel ecosystem,” said Jason Beal, VP, Worldwide Partner Ecosystems at Barracuda. “With these new hires, and an added emphasis on technical enablement, we’re giving our partners the tools they need to identify and win more opportunities with prospects and customers. The closer alignment between our reseller and MSP teams is also benefiting our partners.”

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Barracuda is also adding resources and new tools to help drive stronger relationships with our alliance partners, particularly hyperscalers like AWS and Microsoft Azure. For example, in November Barracuda announced that Barracuda Email Protection now integrates with Amazon Security Lake, which helps customers optimize access to email security data. A broad range of Barracuda’s network, application, and email protection solutions are available on the AWS and Azure marketplaces.

“Barracuda combines three essential ingredients to support the growth plans of high-performance MSP partners,” said Don Wisdom, President, Datalink Networks. “The first two are a well-known and expanding security portfolio, along with a company growth vision and strong partner programs. The third is the Barracuda team itself. From executive management to channel marketing, to engineering and account managers, all Barracuda employees have a partner-first mindset. Our growth as a cybersecurity integrator and MSP is inextricably tied to the Barracuda’s strong commitment and belief in us.”

Barracuda’s active and engaged Partner Advisory Board met earlier this year to share insights and best practices. The next CudaCoSell Day is coming up on May 4, and Barracuda Discover23 partner summits are happening in Europe in May and in the U.S. in June. Barracuda partners contact your channel representative for more details.

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