Exclusive: Roland Stritt appointed CrowdStrike VP Europe Alliances

Former SentinelOne, Rubrik and Palo Alto Networks exec brings decades of channel leadership to accelerate partner growth

CrowdStrike has appointed Roland Stritt as VP Europe alliances to lead the European alliances strategy, accelerate partner-led growth and expansion into new markets.

Stritt comes to the role with over 20 years of industry experience building within Europe and the channel.

Most recently, Stritt served as CRO at FAST LTA, and before that, he spent more than five years at SentinelOne, progressing from EMEA channel leadership to VP of central EMEA sales.

He has also held channel leadership roles at Rubrik and Palo Alto Networks.

The appointment comes as CrowdStrike’s GSI business grew almost 50 per cent year-on-year in Q2 FY27, and its MSSP business increased from less than $100m to over $1.3bn in total contract value over the last three years.

“The channel has moved from reselling technology to building services around it. Partners earn their place through expertise – and invest in vendors that help them scale,” said Roland Stritt, VP, Europe Alliances, CrowdStrike.

“Having worked across prevention and recovery, I’ve seen firsthand that customers don’t buy point products – they buy outcomes.

“CrowdStrike brings security together on one platform, giving partners the foundation to deliver those outcomes and build profitable businesses around them. That’s what drew me here.”

Stritt will be tasked with growing the partner community across Europe, both through scale and strengthening relationships with existing partners.

“There’s already an incredible partner community across Europe, and I’m excited about what’s ahead.

“As AI-driven attacks accelerate and regulatory demands increase, customers need partners they can rely on for the long run.

“For me, it’s about understanding how each partner wants to grow, making it easier to work with CrowdStrike, and helping them grow profitably. That’s what makes partnerships last.”

Existing partners welcome Stritt to the new role, and looking forward to the experience he will bring with him.

Mark Sobol, head of the cybersecurity business unit, SVA, commented, “I’ve known Roland for years, and he treats a partner’s business with as much care as if it was his own.

“SVA has committed to CrowdStrike, and with him leading European alliances, that commitment is in good hands.”

Bytes’ head of cybersecurity, Luke Kiernan, said, “The best security outcomes come from strong technology and strong relationships working together.

“Roland understands both, and we’re excited to do even more with CrowdStrike across Europe.”

“Distribution is where strategy becomes partner growth, and Roland brings the experience to help make that happen, said Paul Eccleston, chief business innovation officer, Exclusive Networks group.

“As partners across Europe continue to build their recurring services with CrowdStrike, he will accelerate that momentum and create new opportunities across the region.”

In conversation with CrowdStrike’s global SVP of alliances

Ahead of the announcement, CRN UK sat down with Amanda Adams, Global SVP of Alliances at CrowdStrike, to discuss why Stritt is well placed to lead lead CrowdStrike’s expansion across Europe, priorities for the year ahead and the opportunities that lay ahead for European partners.

“I’m excited about Roland because he brings tremendous experience across the board, from CRO to plenty of jobs across cybersecurity and he has strong partner and customer relationships,” Adams explained.

“When it comes to Roland’s appointment … there's really three things that I think about.

“One is Roland himself. He’s a proven builder and executor. He knows how to scale and has been successful at building European and partner ecosystems.

“The second thing is around CrowdStrike's own investment in growth. His hire is an indication of the expanding opportunity that our partners have in Europe.

“We’re not just filling a seat in our leadership team, it’s a very intentional decision because we want to make sure that we are growing our partners, and there's an incredible opportunity for the European partners with CrowdStrike.

“Lastly, when it comes to partners, they're central to our next chapter of growth.

“We at CrowdStrike want our partners to build bigger, more differentiated, and profitable businesses around our platform, and we only do that by enabling them from setting up those services, building investment programmes, putting the right people and leaders in a seat to do that.

“I want our partners to be incredibly successful with us, and this hire is one way that we are doing just that.”

CrowdStrike is looking to continue its growth in Europe, with the belief that the region holds huge opportunity.

The vendor is “marching towards $20bn”, so it wants partners to see it as a company that helps drive their own growth, either on par or faster than CrowdStrike as it looks to reach $20bn.

Stritt has been tasked with expanding CrowdStrike’s European partner base, as well as strengthening partner relationships in the region.

Adams said, “We want to make sure that we're helping our partners build different profitable businesses around CrowdStrike, and Roland truly understands how to make that a reality for them and our team.”

Stritt’s appointment has been announced at CrowdStrike’s annual Fal.Con Europe conference, and Adams outlined the biggest priorities as Stritt steps into the role.

“If you look at how we're scaling in the market, first with our MSSPs, I think that we see tremendous opportunity to build services around the Falcon platform.

“Partners across the globe are leaning in, they're investing, they're building practices not only on endpoints, which is where we started, but they're also looking at cloud security and identity.

“Our Guardian and AI security is the fastest growing module that we have today, but also with Next Gen Sim, there is so much that our partners are building or can build upon for their practices, not only from the advisory but implementation to the managed aspects.

“We see tremendous opportunity for him to focus and partner with Brandon Andrews, who leads our global MSSP organisation, to really expand and drive what we're doing with customer value and our MSSPs,” Adams explained.

The growth strategy will differ based on country and sub-region, but at the core, ease of business is a priority.

“I think importantly when it comes to his role, I want to make sure that our partners understand that by investing in Roland and his leadership for the region, that we're also investing in their success.”

SMBs are another point of focus for CrowdStrike as it prioritises further growth, as its business started with large enterprises, made its way into the mid-market and now focus is on the SMB market.

“Our investment is how we are driving independence for our authorised distributors into SMBs, which is any organisation that's less than 250 employees.

“In Europe there’s hundreds of thousands of SMBs across the region, in which we are really focused on ramping up with our MSSP partners, distributors, and aggregators to open up that market for us.”

Adams explained that while Stritt enters the role, partners shouldn’t expect a major overhaul, but simply improved service from the vendor by listening to partners about what is or isn’t working, what should be invested into further and how to make the vendor-partner relationship stronger.

Success for Stritt in the first 12 months comes down to revenue targets, as well as partner growth and success, specifically looking at metrics such as partner programme growth rates, enabling partners to deliver value for customers and growth and scale within the SMB and mid-market.

“[Priorities will be] really focused on partner growth, the value that we're adding to customers, and the growth rates a year from now on revenue for Europe and the contribution that our partners and the team have made to CrowdStrike as a whole.

“Those are really the outcomes that matter for success.”