Centrify, a leader in securing hybrid enterprises through the power of identity services, has appointed John Andrews as its new EMEA Channel Director. John, who reports to Vice President and Managing Director for EMEA, Andy Heather, will be responsible for setting out and delivering on the company’s long-term channel strategy and building a core set of distribution partners and VARs across the region. This will include countries  and regions including the UK, DACH, Middle East, Northern Europe and Southern Europe.

John, who joined from BeyondTrust, has spent the last 18 years helping to build a channel presence and coverage in the Middle East and APAC markets. He has worked for market-leading security vendors, including Juniper Networks, F5 and McAfee. He also spent three years as Marketing Director for Computerlinks Distribution, managing a portfolio of more than 25 security-focused vendors.

One of the first jobs of the new Channel Director will be to evaluate 250+ partners and focus on establishing a top 10 tier of VARs in each region. Centrify also plans to introduce an enhanced and improved virtual training platform for partners. This will include a one-week boot-camp style delivery into each region. There will be intensive training to bring partners up to speed on the company’s services capabilities and encourage better cross-selling and customer support.

“We have built up a strong channel network across EMEA over the past few years. Now is the time to assess these relationships to ensure our partners have the right skill set, product alignment and are committed to adding real value to our mutual customers,” comments John Andrews. “We also want to ensure we are working with channel partners that can offer specialist skills and routes into core vertical markets, including banking, retail and telcos.

“Our strength is the identity message, which plays into every part of the security sell, from privileged access management and single sign on to multi-factor authentication and identity as a service (IaaS). My primary goal is to support our channel partners in delivering this message to customers who are struggling to manage identity and access in today’s diverse environments, incorporating hybrid cloud, mobile and data centre.”

Centrify, who appointed Exertis as its distribution partner in the UK two years ago following the decision to move to a two-tier model, will visit distributors in each country to involve them in the process and present the new corporate strategy and vision. Other distributors include Infinigate in DACH and France, StarLink in the Middle East, and DCB in Benelux.