Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Alex Walsh - Raising the Bar: Inside Veeam’s High-Performance Channel Culture
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Alex Walsh, Channel Alliances Director for Veeam UK & Ireland, to explore what it takes to lead in a 100% channel-driven business. With over eight years at Veeam and a clear trajectory of growth, Alex shares the leadership philosophies, cultural principles, and executional discipline that have helped him and his team thrive.
From nurturing high-performing partner managers to cultivating a culture of overachievement and strategic enablement, Alex reveals how Veeam balances large-scale partner ecosystems with laser-focused partner engagement. He discusses the company’s focus on being “enterprise-first” and “BaaS-first,” and why doubling down on core fundamentals like responsiveness and relationship-building outpaces flashy strategies.
We unpack how Veeam builds teams ready for their next role, how partner-led success is embedded in everything from hiring to promotions, and why simplicity in execution is often the most powerful differentiator.
Whether you're building channel teams, scaling partner programs, or simply want to hear from someone shaping what excellence looks like in the channel, this one’s not to be missed.
Connect with Alex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-walsh-31b3aa60/
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest. Alex, how are you doing? I'm great, thank you. How are you doing? Yeah, awesome to have you on Outside of you, having the best name in the world you also have. Yeah, you work for an absolute rocket ship of a company, I think, who are doing channel almost as well as anyone. Maybe, if that uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of an introduction about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, thank you. And thank you for the complimentary start. So yeah, I'm Alex Walsh. I am the Channel Alliances Director for Veeam, uk and Ireland. So I've been at Veeam for the last eight and a half years 100% channel company, which is one of the reasons that I initially came to Veeam. So I work closely with my team who support our ecosystem of partner alliances, so that's, through vod distribution service providers, everything that has a route to market with veen either me or my team are responsible for awesome and one of the things that I've been really impressed with in terms of your sort of career trajectory.
Speaker 1:You've really sort of in that in those eight and a half years you've moved through several positions, sort of several levels, um, and I always, um, I hear a lot about people building with intentionality and how they really sort of progress themselves through what were the sort of key factors that helped you really drive that sort of career progression forward yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I've been very fortunate, I'd say, um being not just for having opportunities presented to me and then being fortunate enough to take advantage of them, but I'd say I've been surrounded by really good people throughout my career at Veeam and before that as well, at AppSense and other companies. I've always been surrounded by good leaders, and that's not always the leader that you have in front of of you although I've always been privileged in that respect as well it's the people around you. So you know, as an example, when I started at beam, I knew very much that I was coming to a company that was 100 channel. That was a hell of a big team around me as well, so I'd have the opportunity to learn from from a lot of people. I'd already been working across the uk and the nordics and kind of understood a little bit about different geos and how different partners work. But it was really good coming to Veeam because there was a bunch of different partner managers that supported a bunch of different types of partners and there was leaders all across the board that knew the importance of channel, which, as a young member of a team that didn't have a tenure of a decade in channel, it was good to be able to learn from those individuals and I think, as opportunities presented themselves for progression, I was able to sort of get sponsorship from other sales directors in other parts of the business, in other geos as well, where I'd had the ability to be involved in projects across region as a partner manager. Veeam has been one of those places that really likes to grow their people. I was given every opportunity to do that, arguably in some scenarios when I probably wasn't quite ready for it, but they took a bet on me and, yeah, I was able to move forward in those.
Speaker 2:I think the thing that kept me moving forward was being open to learning. I think the thing that kept me moving forward was being open to learning. If I'm honest, I think you know when I started out in Channel 12, 12, 13 years ago and sort of the roles I've had since then, it can get quite easy to trick yourself into thinking that you know everything. And you know I'm not going to pretend there aren't certain times where I've made mistakes, because I think we all do as we progress through different roles and different points in our career.
Speaker 2:But the good thing that I've had is other leaders around me to sort of help me navigate different things, whether that's managing a team when you were in the team which was a unique experience that I went through six or so years ago to bringing in different types of people and having to navigate that so lots of learning, which I've really enjoyed. But you know, veeam has been a place where the people around you were able to help you to maximize your opportunity and continue to as well. I've been here a long time don't necessarily plan to leave anytime soon and it's very exciting at Veeam at the moment. We've got a lot of new people joining, a lot of fresh ideas, which is always exciting.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I think I really enjoyed, both in terms of what you spoke about in terms of career development, but I also know, in terms of how you run your organization, which is what that preparation for the next role comes from. So, both internally, how do you build your own skill sets to make sure you're ready, but how you cultivate that sort of growth mindset within your team so that they are building for their next role. How does that influence who you hire, what you do, how do you support them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, good question. And an old boss that I had. Actually, he was the first one to say it to me and when I heard it I thought that's a strange thing to say. But as I've grown and as I've been more involved in leadership positions over the last few years, I've really seen the value of it. And what he said to me was his job and his role as a leader was to get me ready for my next job, whether that was a similar role to his, whether it was moving to another company to do the same job but to do it better.
Speaker 2:That was a responsibility that you take on when you're in a leadership position, and I really like that, because when you bring people into an organization, you don't want carbon copies.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 2:You want different types of people with different experience, whether that's different experience from different industries or different experience because they've done a job longer or even arguably shorter.
Speaker 2:You want to be able to take the best bits of your team and be able to maximize those. And when I bring people into the organization, I'm really looking for people that have their own sort of uniqueness, whether that's, you know, a unique perspective on their drive, what drives them, what motivates them, whether that's they've got some really funky, crazy ideas that they want to bring to the table that you maybe don't typically see. There's always a benefit of bringing different people in, and one of the things that I really try and focus on in any interview process whether that's for bringing people into my team or if I'm part of a panel interview for other teams is are we bringing people in with ambition? And when I talk about ambition, I don't necessarily mean that they always want a promotion or that they want to be a CEO of a company or anything crazy like that but do they have the ambition to do their best work and when we talk about their best work.
Speaker 2:Are they looking to over achieve on their targets? Are they looking to be, you know, that president's club next year? You know, are they just looking to do a really good job so that they can take the family on a holiday? You know, what is it that is fundamentally driving them to do that work? When you start to understand that and when you start to associate yourself with your team and really understand what drives them, you do start to get the best out of people and that's something that we really try and focus on at Veeam broadly.
Speaker 2:But even within my team, you know, if I look at the, there's about 27 people that touch channel for Veeam UK and Ireland, but in the core field team I've got about nine people and within that team everyone's a leader, everyone is raising the bar of the team. Everyone's trying to help motivate each other to do their best work Because fundamentally we drive to be the best team in the industry. And that's when you do that and when you've got the team raising the bar of everyone around them. It's not just up to the leader of the team to raise that bar and to sort of set the agenda. Once everybody in the team is setting that same agenda and everyone's moving to that same sort of motivational point and they want to be the number one, for whatever reason.
Speaker 2:You have a really strong culture and you have a really strong culture of overachievement. You have a really strong culture of idea sharing. You have a really strong culture of idea sharing and that's something that I really enjoy about being in this position is bringing people into the organization, understanding what motivates them and helping them to progress. And I'm quite happy and proud to say that in my six years that I've worked at Veeam, I've had a number of people promoted into other parts of the organization, whether that's into director roles in EMEA, whether that's into end user sales, because channel wasn't quite for them anymore. We've had plenty of opportunities of growth for people and that's always a good moment for me when they're progressing the team in the way that they want to, whether that's internally in the team or into another role. I'm always quite happy when that happens, if we can help people to realize that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one of the things when you're talking about building team, I almost think maybe I'm slightly biased that building your team in the channel organization is fundamentally the most important, because you're so far removed from the end customer. And so then stuff like culture matters a factor more, because there's one thing which is how do you deal with your partners, but it's how do you therefore influence those partners to deal with their end users, and that becomes a whole complexity in itself, particularly important when you talk about Veeam, where you are balancing a very large channel and supporting MSPs and resellers and SIs and bars and DMRs at the very top level, but also through the long tail. How do you balance that and drive the right level of engagement for your team into those different venues?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question and it's not without its own challenges, right? I think you touched on the scale of Veeam's channel. We've got thousands and thousands of partners. That's not to say the engagement is the same with every single partner, but I think, fundamentally we try and make sure that, as a vendor, we do three things very well, and it's something that I talk to my team about constantly and unfortunately, it's not going to be some magical pill that people can take and say, oh, this is this crazy thing, but it's very simple really. It's just doing the basics, doing them well and doing them regularly.
Speaker 2:And my team and teams that have worked for me in the past will remember that because, fundamentally, when you're working with channel partners, there's a few things that you need to do to really keep them engaged, and that's being at the end of the phone when they need you, responding to quotes in a timely manner, making sure that, technically, the product does what it needs to do. But fundamentally and it's the old adage of people buy from people in the channel that's the most important part of it. If, fundamentally, a partner is reaching out to you and you're non-responsive or you're not polite or you're just not easy to work with, you're going to struggle to do business. And when we talk about the scale of Veeam's business, with the amount of partners we have, if we don't have the resources and we don't have the response rates that we need to, then our channel and our brand within the channel becomes very limited in terms of what we can do. And so what we really try and focus on is those basics, those fundamentals making sure that, you know, whilst we can do these imaginative things and innovative things and we do, and we try to be agile and work with our partners on different types of promotions and incentives or, you know, work on, really you know strategic business plans for what we both want to achieve in terms of growth Fundamentally, if we don't do those basic things well, we're not going to have a good relationship, because it's not just about what you know.
Speaker 2:Senior leaders decide what to do between a vendor and a partner. It's the people that are on the, on the cold face, making sure they work well together and, again, proud to say that the team embody that and uh and they ensure that that happens, which is why we've got a great relationship with our channel partners you.
Speaker 1:We spoke a lot about world-class fundamentals. Um, in the prep goal, which I'm always such a fan of, I've started this mantra that I think I hate strategy. And it's not because strategy isn't important Of course it is. It's just so overblown Like people spend all day talking about strategy and the difference between a great plan badly executed and a good plan brilliantly executed. The good plan wins every time because it comes down to the real execution and that's, as you say, the feet on the street. Where do some vendors get it wrong when it comes to prioritizing other things other than those world-class fundamentals?
Speaker 2:I think you kind of just touched on it yourself, so it's not just to repeat you, really but I think sometimes it's very tempting to try and do something absolutely transformational, something completely different to what you were doing before, because it sounds incredible and the end result will be incredible. But there's somewhere between the strategy and the execution, which is the people that we talk about on. Is that a realistic ask? And I think a lot of vendors are tempted to make these monumental shifts and these monumental changes without taking into consideration the people element of it. And whilst there's the rise of AI and automation and everything else, the reality is we're still dealing with people and for us to make those kinds of changes, there's steps and you know again, as a leader, you can decide on strategy, and I wouldn't go as far as to say I hate strategy, but I might agree with you that it's all well and good saying that we want to do these things this year, but in reality, if, if the steps that we need to take to do those things are so far removed from what we do today, then we at least need to have a plan on doing it in over a longer period and, like we said before. If you're not doing those fundamentals as you go, then you're really going to struggle to do anything strategically different anyway. So personally, if we do look at strategic plans, I'm trying to look a longer way out.
Speaker 2:You know I'm definitely not looking in the quarter Most of the time. I'm not looking at a half year. We're looking at a 12-month transformation and you need the buy-in of the people that are actually going to do it to do it and I think again, that's that's an area that potentially some vendors fall down on and you know we've definitely been guilty of doing that at Veeam in the past is you make a decision at a very senior level that we're going to do something different and then you go right, let's do it. And when you don't see the results that you want to see in three to six months and you turn around and ask the question why?
Speaker 2:Quite commonly what you find out is that you haven't got the buy-in of the people that actually need to go and execute it, and a lot of the time, as simon sinek says, it's because you didn't start with why, you didn't explain to people why we're making these changes. It's just look how great this is going to be at the end, if we can get there by doing this thing, but then actually those steps in between and those you know, those failures that you're going to have between it and learning from those lessons those things sometimes aren't necessarily taken on board as you're going through the strategy. So I think strategy is great, but you always need to remain agile and you need to have the people that are actually going to be implementing it, buying into it and correcting you when you're wrong as well yeah, I think that's the thing.
Speaker 1:Maybe I hate strategy. It's not the right. Yeah, I think that's the thing. Maybe I hate strategy, it's not the right phrase, but I think I hate people who talk about strategy.
Speaker 1:I think because what I've been blown away with with this podcast in particular, is I've sat down with almost 150 executives now and I'm blown away by how much they do the execution, how much they do the day-to-day work, because you sort of think, oh, but I don't know, sat back like a puppet master, it just isn't the case. Like the very best channel chiefs I know spend 200 days a year doing face-to-face meeting with partners Like and really like which, ironically, is about what a cam does, and so you're just speaking to someone more senior but having a lot of the same conversations. So I think that's the thing and I just it is those fundamentals done, actioned, every single day, maybe in slightly nicer restaurants than the ones you used to go to, but it is broadly the same thing yeah, I definitely tend to agree and I think fundamentally anyone that's in a channel role usually um likes people.
Speaker 2:So I think you know most of us have worked in the channel, we've done the cam roles. You don't get away from that being. One of your favorite parts of it is spending time with the partners, and I speak for myself. You know that is my favorite part of my job is being out, meeting partners, understanding their challenges, understanding what we can do better as a vendor um, and you know I always say I'd love to do more of that um, but then you know the actual part of the day job gets in the way and you know again, you know managing people and helping to lead the team is part of the role as well. So you, you kind of want to do that, but you also have to have the um, suppose the wherewithal, to be able to step back and go. Actually that that's not always my job now, but definitely part of my favorite uh, favorite part of my job.
Speaker 1:And the restaurants are okay as well yeah, the restaurants is that's the real part. Um, you mentioned, uh, 2025. Um, obviously that we're expecting the continued success that have been over the last few years theme. You guys have been on a, on an absolute mission and it's clear to see. One of the things I find interesting when you've got a broad brush channel is there's lots of ways to be successful. So, which avenue do you prioritize and how do you prioritize and what do you sort of do to enact that vision?
Speaker 2:It's a good question and I'd love to think I've got the perfect answer, but I'll give you the answer that I've got, at least for Veeam. So Veeam, over our tenure and over the last sort of 17, 18 years, have been very, very successful in working with as many partners as we possibly can, and whilst that's still a desire of the company is to onboard the right partners, I think, for me at least, it's about focus. Now and Veeam as a company are focusing on two key areas, and that is to be number one in the enterprise and to be BaaS first. So we've worked strategically with our service provider partners globally for the last number of years around being able to provide backup as a service, dr as a service and a bunch of other as a service models into customers. As we entered 2024, we also had our own first party BaaS solution in Beam Data Cloud. So our whole sort of go to market strategy now is about making sure that we are servicing our customers. That are our heritage and keeping on working with those SMBs and commercial mid-market customers along with the public sector. But also now that our platform has evolved and now that we've got much tighter integrations with security vendors and that we are providing true data resiliency to customers.
Speaker 2:We are very clear and focused on the fact that we need to drive further into our enterprise market and that we need to be Baz first. The way that we do that is we make sure we align with those partners that are investing into Veeam as much as we're investing into them, and investment doesn't always mean the amount of PMDF you're putting in or the revenues, but it's really about you know, we've got dedicated people that we are working with those partners to grow our joint business. We're really focused on increasing profitability for those partners, because that's an important part of the partnership is if they're not making any money with us, then they're not going to work with us. But, as I say, 2025 for me is doubling down in the areas that we need to, which is working with our top partners to ensure that we've got the right partners to get into those enterprise accounts and to make sure that we're working on those accounts with partners that can provide true end-to-end solutions, whether that's through a managed service provider or through a value added reseller or through a GSI. We're being very specific with the way that we go to market.
Speaker 2:So our teams internally, the channel teams, are focused on those partners that have been bringing more business to us and that have better access to accounts, and everything that we do, everything that we strive to do, is driven by the data that we have. So, leveraging Salesforce to understand where are the lowest hanging fruit for our partners, introducing the right promotions to make sure that the profitability is there for partners and the relevance for the end user sales teams and, fundamentally, making sure that if you are a partner with Veeam and you're doing the right things, that you're rewarded for doing that. So it's not to say that we're not going to continue to work with that, that long tail of uh partners that we manage through distribution um. But for me, I want us to be more focused and more aligned with our top partners to ensure that we're both successful um in 2025, but also in 2026 and beyond awesome, alex.
Speaker 1:We talk partnerships on this podcast and I think the best thing about partnerships is you can get free referrals. We always ask our current guests to recommend our next guest. Who do you have in mind?
Speaker 2:So, having watched a few of your podcasts and seen the types of guests that you've got, I think I'd like to nominate Imran Malik from Pure Storage. He's the EMEA Alliances Director, works closely with Veeam, so obviously I'm a little bit biased, but Imran's got a very good perspective on the market and I think he'd be a really interesting guest for you to speak with.
Speaker 1:Awesome, imran. We're coming for you. Alex. Well, one well done for having the best name and two well done for running an awesome channel. It's been great speaking to you. Perfect Thanks, alex.