Pure Storage crowns pair of channel bosses

Fledgling flash firm announces two-tier distribution strategy

Pure Storage has appointed two global channel chiefs as it unveils details of its new two-tier distribution strategy.

Michael Sotnick joins the firm as its vice president of global channel and alliances, and former Riverbed and Symantec man Alex Hesterberg has been appointed vice president of customer and partner success and technology services.

In his new role, Sotnick is responsible for boosting business through partners and disties as well as forging alliances with other firms to drive partner success, Pure said. Before his current appointment, Sotnick was channel chief at cloud firm Moovweb and Quest Software, respectively, until the latter's acquisition by Dell.

Hesterberg will be in charge of Pure's new Customer and Partner Success Organisation which will focus on educating and enabling partners.

On top of the appointment of the pair of channel leaders, Pure updated its global distribution strategy and said from now on, all regions will be served by two disties.

"Pure will implement a dual-distribution model in all international markets – composed of two distributors per country, one based locally and one pan-regional distributor," Pure said.

"Adding a regional distribution tier in international markets will broaden access to new markets for Pure and partners through the channel at scale. The scope of services provided by Pure Storage distributors will vary but include basic broadline distribution services, value-added services, and incremental services such as deal registration and proof-of-concept management."