Veritas Hires Former Hitachi Vantara Exec As New Channel Chief

Mike Walkey said in July he was retiring after 13 years at Hitachi Vantara and Hitachi Data Systems, but didn't stay away from the channel for long.

Data protection and management software developer Veritas Technologies on Thursday unveiled the appointment of Mike Walkey as its new channel chief.

Walkey, who joined Veritas Monday, is the company's vice president of global channel sales, strategic partners, and alliances, and will be working with the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's solution provider communities and its alliance partners including Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft.

Walkey is taking over the position previously held by Barbara Spicek, who joined Veritas two years ago this month but left the company in July. Spicek told CRN that she is currently evaluating several new opportunities.

[Related: Veritas Brings New Funding, Flexibility To Partner Force Program]

Walkey comes to Veritas after a 13-year run at Hitachi Vantara and its predecessor company Hitachi Data Systems. He told CRN in July that he was planning to retire from Hitachi Vantara, the Santa Clara, Calif. now heavily invested in IoT and data analytics.

Walkey's role at Hitachi Vantara was at that time taken over by Todd Palmer, the new senior vice president of strategic partners and alliances and former vice president of worldwide channels at San Jose, Calif.-based Cohesity.

Walkey was an outstanding channel-focused executive at Hitachi Vantara, and will likely continue to be at Veritas, said Joe Kadlec, vice president and senior partner at Consiliant Technologies, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider and channel partner to both companies.

"Mike treated Consiliant extremely well," Kadlec told CRN. "We were provided all the resources we needed."

Kadlec said he appreciated Walkey's support for partners.

"He enabled us to do a lot of development of new accounts which led us to a lot of new business," he said. "That helped us break into greenfield opportunities, and for a partner, that's a big deal."

Kadlec expects Walkey to continue his channel focus at Veritas.

"For us, the biggest thing we hope is for him to make it easy to do business with Veritas," he said. "I want to see him make it as easy as possible to engage so we can get what we need in a timely manner to take care of our customers. And overall, Veritas has been pretty good."

Walkey told CRN that he will take care of partners, but was unable to provide any detailed plans or programs at this time.

"I just joined Monday," he said.

Veritas is a very exciting place with a fantastic team already in place, Walkey said.

"The company's strategy is phenomenal, bringing together its data protection and other mission-critical capabilities as well as its Aptare acquisition."

Veritas in March unveiled the acquisition of Aptare, a provider of analytics, monitoring, and management technologies across heterogeneous storage environments, including data stored on competitors' primary and secondary storage and in multi-cloud environments.

Veritas' Partner Force channel program has been a major part of Veritas' channel business, Walkey said.

"The program has been driving business with our core partner community, and is driving the overall portfolio and not just the Veritas NetBackup Suite," he said. "I look forward to growing that program, as well as our alliances business where I can bring my experience and my industry contacts to bear."