CrowdStrike ushers in new channel chief after decent growth

Security player CrowdStrike has followed the announcement of decent full-year numbers with the decision to shuffle its channel leadership team.

The firm reported that for the year ended 31 January, turnover improved by 65% to reach $1.4bn. The company is still at the stage of building the business, and supporting that effort saw its losses widen from $92.6m to $232.4m. 

CrowdStrike has been on a drive to increase its relationships and activity in the managed service provider (MSP) channel and has seen 200% growth in the vendor’s MSSP business year on year. Partner-sourced annual recurring revenues (ARR) grew by 83% as the business sold through its network of GSIs, cloud service providers, alliance partners and telcos.

Following on from sharing those numbers, the firm has announced the appointment of Michael Rogers as vice-president of global business development, channel and alliances.

Former channel head Matthew Polly is moving into the role of vice-president of North America mid-market sales, where he will continue to operate in a channel-friendly position.

Rogers is no stranger to the business, having previously been global vice-president, partner and alliance sales at CrowdStrike. His CV, which spans 25 years in the cyber security industry, also includes time in channel and partner roles at McAfee and Sophos. 

“The difference with CrowdStrike – and why we’ve been able to bring together such an elite network of partners – is that we’ve always advocated for an ecosystem approach that puts customers at the centre of our programme,” said Rogers.

“CrowdStrike and our partners are laser-focused on delivering the solutions, intelligence and expertise required to combat today’s advanced cyber adversaries and help customers stop breaches. When you find partners as committed to the mission as you, customers win, plain and simple.”

Jim Seidel, chief sales officer at CrowdStrike, said Rogers had proved his worth on the channel side of the business and deserved to be promoted into the firm’s most senior partner position.

“Michael Rogers has proven to be a great leader and advocate for CrowdStrike, our partners and our customers, and no one has played a bigger role in growing our channel programme over the past few years,” he said.

“In a rapidly changing cyber security landscape, Michael has always championed a one-team-one-fight approach to helping our customers – bringing to bear the best of CrowdStrike and the unique value of our partners into some of the most critical areas of security.”

Comments made by George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s co-founder and chief executive officer, around the results pointed to the continuing demand from enterprises looking for security tools to protect their businesses as reasons to explain its growth.

“As our record results, growing scale and module adoption rates demonstrate, customers are increasingly leveraging the breadth and depth of the Falcon platform as they look to transform their security stack,” he said.