Barracuda's new CRO lifts lid on growth plans

CPI caught up with Barracuda’s new CRO to find out where in EMEA the vendor plans on investing

Barracuda Networks recently named Chris Ross as its new chief revenue officer, stepping up from his previous role as senior vice president of international sales.

Speaking with CRN sister publication Channel Partner Insight, Ross outlined where the vendor is planning on investing over the next year.

"We're looking at the coverage of people to support our partners, and we're looking at tools and processes," he said.

"The other things we're focused on is how we better enable our partners.

"Our product portfolio continues to grow and expand and with it the opportunities for our partners, but also then the burden is on us to make sure we have the right things in place to help our partners understand everything that we're bringing to market."

Ross added that this increased support for Barracuda's partners also involves upping investments around sales teams and resources, as well as helping them "jump onto" the cloud solution provider selling motion.

Investments in EMEA

Lifting the lid on where his immediate focus lies in the new role, Ross highlighted spending time with Barracuda's Americas team as one of his main priorities.

"It's about understanding the differences and how they're going to market. Looking at how we can leverage best practices from there to over here and here to over there," he said.

"I think there's a lot of commonality between the different regions but I think there's also a great opportunity to become more aligned across the different geographies in our overall go-to market."

The Americas bring in the bulk of revenues for Barracuda, Ross said, while Europe is also growing at a significant pace.

Breaking down Barracuda's EMEA business, Ross said the vendor is seeing the strongest growth in Germany, Austria, the UK and Benelux region.

He said Barracuda is looking at how to continue to fuel and accelerate this growth for these areas.

While in regions like France and Iberia where the group has slightly less investment in terms of resources, people, and presence in the market, Ross said the vendor plans to ramp up resources to ensure it has "the right coverage for partners and the right marketing programmes in place to drive that."

"And then there's some emerging markets as we look at things like Eastern Europe. It's emerging for Barracuda so we're starting to see some really strong signs of potential there and continuing to invest in growth," he added.