Breaking News Roundup: Microsoft Exec Becomes CTO, HP's Business Model, and Cisco Investing $100 Million in Partners

Microsoft exec becomes CTO of fast-growing Google Cloud partner

Google Cloud Premier Partner CloudWerx has a new CTO, Sidhant Gupta, former Microsoft director of product incubation.

After nine years at Microsoft, Sidhant bid his farewell in a sentimental LinkedIn post.

As a part of CloudWerx, the fast-growing Google Cloud partner, Sidhant shares that he will “build out a world-class engineering team that is customer-obsessed and is always in a learning mode, willing to take on the next tough challenge, and delivering solutions faster than anyone else.”

Moral of the story: you never know which of your partners is going to hire the next CTO of Microsoft. So give all of them a first-class experience.

Read the official press release.

Google Cloud Partner CloudWerx Nabs Microsoft Exec As CTO | CRN
Google Cloud startup partner CloudWerx has hired Microsoft’s director Sidhant Gupta as its new CTO to drive Google innovation at the cloud consulting company.

HP's business model designed for partners

Partners are part of HP’s DNA.

“We design our products [and] our services to be sold by the channel. We design our business model for the channel to make money with us. We design our processes for us to be efficient and to help our partners be efficient,”

Shared 33-year HP veteran, and three-year CEO Enrique Lores.

“HP does 90-plus-plus-plus [percent] of the business through the channel. We think that the channel is a key asset for us, and whether this is for our transactional business, for our service business, we always think about our businesses, our business models [and] our portfolio, as a portfolio that we’ll have to sell through the channel, and that’s a very important commitment to our partners.”

Despite the downturn, Lores is optimistic about HP’s future with partners.

“What is really important is that we ... and our partners invest now to get our companies [positioned] in the strongest possible way for whenever the recovery will happen.”

As apparent by their business model, HP believes the strongest way to invest in partners is by embedding them across their entire portfolio.

Sound like Nearbound, anyone?

CEO Enrique Lores: HP’s Business Model Designed For ‘The Channel To Make Money With Us’ | CRN
HP Inc. CEO Enrique Lores explains to CRN why the vendor is more channel-friendly than rivals and how the company is opening new hybrid work opportunities for partners.

Cisco investing over $100 million in partners and experience

Cisco has invested an “incremental $100 million in our partners around security in the second half [of Fiscal Year 2023] alone,” disclosed Shawn Yuskaitis security director, global partner and routes to market for Cisco.

They’re leveraging partners to improve the entire customer lifecycle. And they’re not stopping there.

According to CRN, the company has already consolidated its 12 security sales teams.

The two most important points in this story are as follows:

  • Cisco is investing in partners because they are important to its bottom line.  
  • Cisco sees an opportunity to improve the experience they provide both customers and partners, and they’re taking it even though it means restructuring and consolidating teams.
Cisco Execs: ‘We’ve Invested $100 Million In Our Partners Around Security’ | CRN
Cisco Systems is on the path toward unifying its cybersecurity portfolio and boosting its market share in the cybersecurity space and to that end, Cisco is simplifying its go to market and investing heavily in partners, according to the tech giant’s security executives.

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