126 When you’re a channel-focused company with channel and alliance partners business growth of 42% year over year, what’s your next move? Hire a channel superstar to expand on that growth! That’s why we’re excited to announce that Melissa Lyons has joined the Scality team as senior director of channels, Americas. Bringing Melissa on board is a win both for Scality and for our partners. She’s a dynamo channel expert who has been recognized multiple times with the annual CRN Women of the Channel designation. With a proven track record of being able to not just strategize but execute, Melissa brings a wealth of channel and security expertise that will be instrumental to her work at Scality. In fact, she previously served on the IT security advisory board of CompTIA, one of the industry’s top issuers of professional certifications. We recently chatted with Melissa about her career and what brought her to Scality. How are things going so far, Melissa? Things are going great! The team has been super welcoming and willing to engage. It’s clear that everyone is excited to double down on partnerships this year, and that our partner strategy is going to be key to our growth within the Americas and globally. After several weeks, I’m already starting to dive into real projects — building our business development program/team. I’m also meeting key teammates I’ll be partnering with and starting to build out the channel engagement model that I’ll be implementing this year. Can you give us an overview of your channel background? I’ve primarily worked in the channel throughout my whole career. I worked at Astaro, which Sophos acquired. I had a channel marketing role, which included partner recruitment activity, and I moved from that role into more channel partners program work. I ended up as the global channel manager of Sophos. After Sophos, I went to Turbonomic, where I was responsible for global partner programs and channel strategy. I helped launch a new program there, launched the Microsoft partnership, and ran a team of channel managers. Most recently, I served as regional channel manager for OutSystems, overseeing the eastern region and the federal partner space. What’s your strategy for working with channel partners? First, I make sure we’re on the same page in terms of goals — making sure we understand their objectives and what they’re looking to gain so we can align. Then I do anything I can to make those goals easier to achieve and to build better connections between our organization and the partners. A lot of what I’ve built in the past starts at the ground level: understanding the day-to-day issues. Once challenges and roadblocks are identified on the different sides, we can get to a fix. What are you excited for on the near horizon? Any plans or goals you can share? The team has done a great job building out a foundation for our partners, and we’re now at a critical growth point where we need to build the next layer that provides our partners the right tools, processes and programs to help them get to market faster and more efficiently. We’ll be launching new sales and marketing tools — like a partner portal — to help partners grow and manage their pipeline with us. The roll-out of a new program will let them capitalize on incremental revenue streams with Scality. The market opportunity for the Scality ecosystem is undeniable, so I’m very excited to be here to help build this next layer of partner support and accelerate our channel growth in the Americas. What drew you to Scality? What are you most looking forward to in this new position? I worked with someone at Turbonomic who then moved over to Scality, so I had my eye on the company. There’s a lot of momentum around the Americas market, and Scality is viewing partners as a valuable asset for really scaling the business to the next level. I’m looking forward to building on the great activity that’s already been happening to reach more people in these ecosystems. And, in terms of culture, this seems like a great place to work. What’s it like to work for a French company? Any differences you’ve observed so far? While working for a European company is not new to me — I previously worked for organizations with headquarters in Germany, Portugal and the UK — this is the first French company on my resume. What I love about the Scality team so far is how agile we are. Everyone is very open to new ideas and ready to jump right in with you to get something done. As long as you have a good idea and are willing to build a strong plan to support it, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of red tape, which you can sometimes run into at growing tech companies. It’s been refreshing to come in and realize that I can start to get things done that have an impact on our business right out of the gate. What do you like to do in your free time? I love to travel, and getting a chance to do that through my work has been something I’ve really enjoyed. I also love music and going to concerts. Melissa joined the Scality team in February 2022, and she looks forward to working with our partners to build more win-win opportunities in the coming year.
