ForeScout Channel Chief Jumps To Risk Management Vendor Prevalent

ForeScout channel chief Devin Archer, who has spearheaded the company's channel efforts in the Americas for more than two years, has left to build a partner program at emerging vendor Prevalent.

Archer will begin work Monday as the head of channels for Warren, N.J.-based risk management and cyber threat intelligence vendor Prevalent, where he will be responsible for recruiting more channel partners around the globe. Archer said he relishes the opportunity at Prevalent to build a global channel strategy from the ground up.

"It's one of those times where all the stars align," Archer told CRN. "It seems too good to be true."

[Related: ForeScout Aims To Be The Most Channel-Friendly Company On The Block]

Archer said there's a lot of change happening at ForeScout -- where Mike DeCesare started as CEO in February -- and credited the company with growing and doing the right things.

"It's hard to leave a place like that," Archer said. "Sometimes you've got to leave a good company to grow something else."

ForeScout spokeswoman Jennifer Geisler said the Campbell, Calif.-based vendor remains committed to its reseller program, and said it will have more information to share about succession plans for Archer in two weeks.

"We have maintained continuity and engagement with our business reseller partners," Geisler told CRN. "They should not experience any disruption whatsoever as a result of these changes."

Archer said he typically joins smaller companies with roughly 150 employees and helps guide them through a growth stage until they go public or get acquired.

This is what happened with British Web security company MessageLabs, which Archer joined in 2006 as director of channel sales. MessageLabs was bought by security giant Symantec in 2008, and Archer stayed on for an additional four years as the company’s director of cloud channel sales for the Americas.

Prevalent -- which today has between 40 and 60 employees -- will be by far the smallest and least-established company Archer has joined, he said, but Archer believes the vendor has great technology and a very strong group of executives.

"I've always liked a small company," he said.

ForeScout, according to its LinkedIn profile, now has 501 to 1,000 employees.

Archer will be reporting to Dave McNamara, Prevalent's vice president of worldwide third-party risk sales.

Prevalent has roughly a dozen channel partners today despite not making significant channel-related investments over the past year, Jonathan Dambrot, Prevalent's CEO, told CRN. Archer will be tasked with pivoting from the current strategy of relying on inbound partner interest to going out into the community and finding partners that make sense for the products Prevalent carries, Dambrot said.

The company, which was founded as a VAR, will have all of its business go through the channel, according to Dambrot.

PUBLISHED JAN. 15, 2016