CRN Women & Diversity in Channel Awards - Finalist Q&A with Steph Hackney Channel Marketing at OpenText

Steph Hackney talks being finalists at this year's CRN Women & Diversity in Channel Awards

Why do you think awards like the Women & Diversity in Channel Awards matter?

The Women & Diversity in Channel Awards are hugely important to both celebrate individual and organisational successes, as well as to highlight the continuous evolution of our channel ecosystem. The shift in dynamic from my early years working in the industry to now has been profound and welcomed, but there is still so much to be done. It excites me that talking to young women now, they see that there are career paths for them in cybersecurity and technology which ten years ago they might not have had.

What would winning this award mean to your company?

OpenText proudly empowers all its employees to achieve their greatest potential, and so to win this award would absolutely be a testament to the support and guidance provided by the organisation as well as to myself as an employee. We have an active network of women supporting women at OpenText and for me this award would represent every single woman in the organisation.

What would you say is your company’s proudest achievement over the past year?

The past year we have accomplished a whole raft of things – releasing the new version of our Secure Cloud platform, launching our new brand identity with all our legacy brands hosted in one new area, and harnessing the power of AI with our Aviator product. I think for me I am most proud of our Secure Cloud launch; working with MSPs every day I have been able to see how this new and improved service is simplifying business processes to deliver tangible results without an impact on productivity.

What have been the biggest challenges of 2025 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?

The challenge always seems to be that we need to do more, faster, but with less. I’m incredibly lucky to work within a team with deep understanding of the channel and the specific challenges relating to it, and they are willing to share their knowledge openly within our team to help drive success. The EMEA Channel Sales and Channel Marketing teams in particular are amazing at rising to the challenge and giving their best to our community, and I am very proud to be a part of a team like ours.

How do you think the channel has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

Once again I think that the vendor channel has been consumed by following the biggest trend, AI. By jumping headfirst into the newest exciting topic, we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to stand back and ask questions about the challenges that adoption may present to our partners and their customers. In my role I am always eager to understand why partners are taking on specific parts of their security stack and what they are hoping to achieve by doing so, because this is what helps me to support them in the best way possible.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the channel in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

As I watch the landscape continuously shifting towards the addition of professional services and managed services, I think it’s an exciting time to be in our community. At OpenText we have a strong history of providing and supporting these solutions with our partners, and so I’m very keen to see how enabling partners to add these wraparound services impacts their growth and direction, and the channel as a whole.