John Taylor, CrowdStrike
John Taylor is the EMEA vice president for channels and alliances at CrowdStrike, where he is responsible for growing and shaping the company's regional presence. John took up the role in 2023 after a successful 30+ years spent in leading IT software sales teams and channel management roles.
John's early days spent at SUN Microsystems gave him a foundational background in channel leverage, initially managing its only UK distributor (Tplc) where revenues grew 15-fold in three years, through to leading the financial services business selling to the largest investment and retail banks internationally.
Upon leaving SUN, John worked for the Horizon Technology Group headed by Samir Naji, growing it to the point of acquisition by Avnet after just three years. Staying in distribution, John joined the formation of what became SDG helping to grow the business managing its new Vendor and Technology Division for five years. John joined Good Technology in 2014, where for three years he ran the channels business globally gaining international experience across all partner types and transitioned the business into a channel first model. John later spent more than five years at Tanium as EMEA VP Channels.
Number of years in current role:
1
Number of years in current company:
1
Number of years involved in indirect/channel sales:
34
Reports to:
Mike Rogers, global VP alliances and channel
What is your personal channel philosophy?
My philosophy is that transparency and simplicity are the key foundations of any successful business relationship - and the channel, after all, is built on relationships. I always look for ways to simplify the proposition and make it as easy as possible for channel teams to understand. The more that people understand the proposition, the more transparent every aspect of the relationship is and expectations are then met or exceeded.
What were your biggest personal channel accomplishments over the past year?
We have built an alliances team that has grown its industry influence by integrating many different partner types into a multi-segmented sales team and in so doing created an environment in which partners and vendor sellers work together to fix real life customer problems.
What were your organisation's biggest channel accomplishments over the past year?
CrowdStrike recently announced that it became the first cybersecurity independent software vendor (ISV) founded for the cloud to exceed $1 billion in AWS Marketplace sales, and that Optiv surpassed the $1 billion milestone in sales for the AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon platform.
We also signed Ignition Technology as a strategic distribution partner in the UK. The partnership gives our solution providers the resources to increase the availability of our AI-native CrowdStrike XDR Falcon® platform to UK businesses through Ignition's market-leading partner network.
CrowdStrike was named a growth leader among cybersecurity companies selling through the channel, according to a report released by Canalys, an independent analyst firm. We surpassed the 12 cybersecurity vendors identified in the report, with a year-on-year percentage growth rate of 39.1% for overall channel sales.
My Northern European Leader, Claudia Hebden, was nominated as a 2023 Channel Chief by CRN.
What areas would you like to see your channel partners invest in in 2024?
The development of associated managed service offerings for our platform. There are three areas where this is key - cloud security, identity protection and next generation SIEM.
What are the biggest challenges facing your partners in 2024?
Customers are looking to consolidate point solutions to a platform. As a result, partners, for the same reasons, will have some difficult decisions to make when they start to consolidate out point solutions to winning platforms - those decisions are hard but have to be made.
In what ways do you use your role to build equity and inclusion?
We have a large channel team at CrowdStrike and we pride ourselves in hiring the best of the best.
A diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture fuels creative excellence and innovation, helping us achieve our best work in the channel. We encourage a culture of openness that welcomes dialogue about varying diversity, equity, and inclusion topics so our people can be themselves. We provide tools that help us come together to celebrate a common cause, raise awareness around issues that affect all of us, and learn to actively and mindfully involve everyone's ideas, perspectives, experiences and approaches.
Describe how your use of market development funds (MDF) is changing this year?
We have designed a budget to increase the value and breadth of the Market Development Fund and grow the number of funded heads that reside within our key channel partnerships.
What are your biggest channel priorities in 2024?
We have ambitious targets at CrowdStrike, but we're committed to making EMEA a region that helps a long way to reaching them. As such, our key goal for the year is to increase the amount of recurring revenue for our partners.