James Lewis, Infinidat
James Lewis is Infinidat's director of channel sales for EMEA and APJ. James has extensive channel expertise and experience.
Prior to Infinidat, he worked for Data Interchange as head of channel sales and was the strategy and growth officer for Altdata Technology Solutions, focusing on the cyber security market.
He spent 15 years at EMC and RSA, based in London and Frankfurt, where he built up comprehensive experience in the recruitment, enablement, and leadership of channel partners and distributors. James has a proven track record in the enterprise IT, storage, and network security industries.
His broad industry experience includes roles involving cybersecurity, storage area networks (SAN), enterprise storage, IT service management, IT strategy, professional services, cloud computing and virtual computing environments.
Number of years in current role:
A year and half
Number of years in current company:
A year and half
Number of years involved in indirect sales:
25
Reporting to:
Steve Sullivan, CRO
Does this person report to the CEO?
Yes
What percentage of your sales come through the channel?
80 per cent
Describe your personal channel philosophy.
To collaborate strategically with partners and foster strong trusted relationships. To identify profitable opportunities such as services so that we build on a successful business model for our partnership as well as support our joint end-users to meet and exceed their customers' expectations. It is a team sport.
What were your organisation's biggest channel accomplishments over the past year?
From an organisational perspective, Infinidat has solidified, enhanced, and empowered a cohesive team of channel-dedicated sales, channel-dedicated SE and support personnel, and channel-dedicated marketing that are global (across Americas, EMEA and APJ).
Infinidat achieved significant growth based on a directive, led by Steve Sullivan and executed in collaboration with his Channel Leadership team, to co-sell with channel partners as often as possible.
We increased our channel partner community and launched our new Infuziast certification program with over 75+ and growing 'Infuziasts' in the field. Infinidat enhanced its EMEA and APJ channel programme with new tiering levels for partners; an enhanced deal registration process; new backend rebates; a redesigned criteria for MDF; a not-for-resell programme; redesigned the enablement programme on the InfiniVersity partner portal; and increased joint marketing efforts.
Infinidat continues, from a company perspective, to win awards that are channel centric. In just 2023, Infinidat has won five channel centric awards, including a 5-star rating in CRN's Partner Programme Guide for the second consecutive year.
Additionally, Infinidat has won another 19 awards for Infinidat's enterprise storage solutions.
How is your company working to build equity and inclusion in the channel?
We continually strive to have a very inclusive team within channel marketing and beyond at Infinidat.
To this effect, the team is >50 per cent women and a number of diversity employees. We also have several channel partners that are diversity/minority owned companies.
Infinidat makes it clear that we are a company of diversity in ethnic makeup, gender make up and age make up. We encourage our partners to hire and train the best of all make ups and to not exclude anyone based on ethnicity, gender, age, or religious beliefs.
How is your organisation's market development strategy (MDF) changing this year?
Infinidat's MDF strategy is not changing. Infinidat works with partners and provides funding for them based on the activities they're doing.
We're continuing that very successful programme in 2024. Our programmes received the 5-star CRN award for two years running and will continue to hone our overall programme.
Feedback from partners in EMEA & APJ, and globally, is that our programmes are solid and among the best they see in the vendor community.
What are your top channel goals for 2024?
Increase overall percentage of company revenue that comes through the channel, improve partner sales skills, encourage partners to sell a broader part of our portfolio
What were the key partner investments made over the past year?
- Rolling out the 2023 comprehensive channel programme across EMEA and APJ
- Increasing channel headcount and resources
- Increasing channel co-op/MDF funding
- Launching our Infuziast Certification Programme