Curvature Hires Seasoned Juniper, Cisco Veteran To Lead Channel Charge

Curvature, which is building out a broad converged infrastructure service offering with NetSure, hired Bill Marozas, a 19-year Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems veteran, to kick its channel program into high gear.

Marozas, who most recently was responsible for the Juniper Partner Advantage Program as senior director of worldwide alliances and channels enablement, said he is focused squarely on accelerating channel sales growth with both solution providers and large systems integrators as the new vice president of channel development at Curvature.

Curvature already has seen dramatic sales growth with its NetSure technical support offering and is now moving to ramp it up further with a more structured and disciplined global channel sales program.

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"We are going to build out an organization to further support and grow those businesses," said Marozas, who spent five years at Juniper building out a high-margin, services channel that won kudos from partners. "These are relationships that exist and we just want to bring them to the next level."

Marozas said he expects to follow the same well-worn path that has led to channel success for a number of industry bellwethers: focusing on a limited number of highly strategic relationships. "We are going to put some very good care and attention towards a limited number of system integrators that we deem to be strategic," he said. "We will invest in them. We will put in place a program to provide incentives and investments to help them build their practice that ultimately results in further accelerated growth of Curvature sales through those channels."

The channel build-up comes as Curvature, formerly Network Hardware Resale, has gained wide acclaim providing an alternative to Cisco's SmartNet service, moving to provide a broad and deep converged services offering for all the top technology vendors. NetSure today boasts partnerships with 10 OEMs including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Arista Networks.

Vince Bradley, founder and president of WTG, a highly respected master agent connectivity distributor that partners with Curvature, said he sees the Marozas hire as a game-changer for Curvature and its fast-growing NetSure offering.

"This is a huge hire," said Bradley. "When you bring in a channel chief of this caliber, it changes everything. This is going to help make NetSure the main focus. He is going to help take them from the old hardware model to a recurring revenue services model with more incentives for the channel. This shows just how big a commitment that Curvature has to the channel."

With Marozas leading the channel charge, Bradley expects 2015 to be a breakthrough year for Curvature. "2015 is going to be the year we take the Curvature partnership to the next level," he said. "When you get someone like Bill who has worked at Juniper and Cisco and has more than 19 years' experience, it is going to make a big difference. This is going to be a huge shift for us too. Before this, Curvature didn't have anyone that has experience selling both hardware and services in the channel."

Bradley expects Curvature to double its sales from $300 million to $600 million over the next several years. "We are very bullish on them," said Bradley of Curvature. "We are excited to be their partner. You can expect to see a lot more to come on the WTG-Curvature partnership."

PUBLISHED DEC. 11, 2014