Security operations services provider Arctic Wolf has appointed Bob Skelley as senior vice president of global channels. He will lead Arctic Wolf’s channel organisation with a “near-term focus” on developing the US company’s international distribution strategy and partner ecosystem.
Skelley brings more than 25 years of channel leadership expertise to his new role. Before joining Arctic Wolf, he served as the chief executive officer of The Channel Company, where he oversaw the team responsible for being a go-to source for communication, recruitment, enablement, engagement, demand generation and market intelligence. Before joining The Channel Company, he served in senior channel leadership roles at Dell, Microsoft and EqualLogic.
“Year after year, the channel has sold new security tools that promise to help keep organisations secure, but the number of security incidents experienced by their customers continues to grow,” said Skelley. “Arctic Wolf’s vendor-neutral platform and Concierge Security Team are the keys to helping organisations be more effective in their security operations - I want to introduce Arctic Wolf to a new set of channel partners around the world.”
In mid-2019, Arctic Wolf adopted a 100% channel sales model and made “significant investments” in growing its internal channel team and building out hundreds of security-minded and cloud-focused resale partners. Over the past year, it said, those investments have resulted in Arctic Wolf experiencing a 106% growth in revenue, a 282% growth in the number of new channel partners, and the company becoming the first managed detection and response (MDR) vendor to achieve a valuation of over $1bn.
Arctic Wolf’s vice president for the Americas channels and programmes, Will Briggs, will continue to oversee all aspects of Arctic Wolf’s channel programme in North America, while also working closely alongside Skelley to bring Arctic Wolf’s channel programme to new international markets.
Briggs said: “Our company and our channel programme have been experiencing tremendous growth over the past year. As we begin to plan our market entry overseas Bob’s unmatched knowledge of the global IT channel ecosystem makes him the perfect fit to lead our international expansion.”
Last month, Arctic Wolf raised $200m in Series E funding at a valuation of $1.3 billion. The funding round was led by Viking Global Investors, with additional participation from DTCP and existing investors.
Alongside the funding round the firm announced it was relocating its global headquarters from Silicon Valley, California to Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Over the last four years, Arctic Wolf’s office in Minnesota has been at the centre of the company’s corporate growth strategy, with the team in Eden Prairie growing to over 200 employees.
Using the Series E funding, Arctic Wolf plans to make significant investments in its new headquarters by the end of 2021, with the addition of over 150 new jobs and the construction of the company’s third security operations centre (SOC).
