Reseller, MSP, Services Merged: Structural Risks and Rewards in Barracuda’s Program – Michelle Hodges

[00:00:00] Dave Sobel here reporting from the floor of ChannelCom. We'll be sitting down with Michelle Hodges, the SVP of Global Channels and Alliances at Barracuda. One quick disclosure, Barracuda briefed us back in May and we published an independent strategy review that they did a fact check on, but all the analysis is ours. Now Michelle came to Barracuda in May of 2025 from Avanti and before that GitLab, Gigamon, Riverbed, AppDeal, Intel, VMware and Microsoft.

[00:00:27] That's nine partner programs, 15 months rebuilding this one. Michelle, welcome to the show. Michelle Hodges Thank you so much for having me, Dave. Now you unified the Reseller, MSP and Services programs into one partner success program and you've added it to it all this past year, most recently on July 22nd. Walk me through what a partner now has that they didn't have before. Michelle Hodges Wow. How much time do you got?

[00:00:53] Michelle Hodges It's been a pretty exciting year. So, yeah, we unified not only the program but also the portal. Partners used to have seven locations that they had to access, seven logins. Now there's one single area. Michelle Hodges It's a unified program that treats a partner as a partner and not as a type, right? Michelle Hodges Understanding that customer choice is king. A customer might want to buy monthly. Michelle Hodges They might want to buy annually. They might need a little bit of professional services and some managed services.

[00:01:22] Michelle Hodges So, allowing for customer choice to reign, a single unified reimagined partner experience, but then also then letting the partner differentiate and get down to the persona level on how are they delivering our solutions to the customer. Michelle Hodges There is. So, let's make that tangible for a partner today. Michelle Hodges Yeah. Michelle Hodges Like what's a major actionable item that they could take advantage of right now? Michelle Hodges I have to tell them to go to the new portal. Michelle Hodges Okay.

[00:01:50] Michelle Hodges Get logged in, re-opt in, all of those things. But there's a lot, right? So our incentives are continually, every quarter I'm refining and updating our incentives to make it more profitable to grow with Barracuda across the entire customer lifecycle. Michelle Hodges So, not only at the point of transaction, but at the point of growth or cross-sell, identifying new logos. We'll have gamification and increased programs coming out as well.

[00:02:16] Michelle Hodges We've completely reimagined our enablement. Some of our certifications were more than two years old. Michelle Hodges So, we've relaunched our certifications as the Barracuda One certification, starting from a platform level, and then allowing the partner to specialize down into products. Michelle Hodges We're layering on top of that the Barracuda Mastery Program, which is a badging program, certainly focused on products to go very, very deep to allow partners to differentiate themselves.

[00:02:43] Michelle Hodges But we, of course, will be adding AI badging and compliance badging. Michelle Hodges I think it's really important that with all the MSPs that we speak to, we can give a point of view on operationally what MSPs should be thinking about, but also how our products will help expand their AI portfolio. Michelle Hodges And then, you know, I don't know that we worry enough about compliance and how quickly that's going to come at us with the rise of AI.

[00:03:10] Michelle Hodges So, we have completely rebuilt our trust center and want to give the ability for our partners to profit from that. Michelle Hodges Engagement is a big part of the program. I don't know how much you know about Barracuda, but part of, you know, I can't exactly say I'm transforming Barracuda's partner program because it's a very loyal, legendary, long-standing channel, right? Michelle Hodges We've got great partners who, and we've had a profitable program. Michelle Hodges So, as I said earlier, it's more about reimagining that partner experience.

[00:03:39] Michelle Hodges But part of what makes us great is what we call the CUDA culture and our partnering culture, right? Michelle Hodges Really based on trust, based on personal relationships. Michelle Hodges So we want to take advantage of that, showing up at more events like these, as well as investing in our own events. Michelle Hodges We've got a secured series in most major cities throughout the year. Michelle Hodges We have two partner summits a year.

[00:04:03] Michelle Hodges And then we run monthly co-sell, so in-person co-sell sessions that are powered by digital sales rooms and loaded up with not only call scripts, but email scripts, go-to-market campaigns, propensity data, etc. Michelle Hodges And then also what we call grow-sell, which is custom for the MSP, where we bring our security practice along, focused on the MSP to look at their reference architecture, help them understand where they can consolidate their tools sprawl, and identify growth for their customers.

[00:04:33] Michelle Hodges The next area is around partner success. Michelle Hodges So it's one thing to add and grow to your business, but it's also reducing churn and keeping those customers and making them successful. Michelle Hodges So why not take all those great tools that we have in customer success and turn them to the MSP so that we can help them know where they're winning, but also give them early signals around churn. Michelle Hodges So invested heavily in a partner success team and tools to help them go there. Michelle Hodges This episode is supported by Halo.

[00:05:01] There's a moment many MSPs eventually reach. The PSA they started with worked well early on, but as the business grows, workflows get harder to manage, automation becomes complicated, and the systems start shaping how the company operates. Michelle Hodges Halo PSA is designed for service providers who want more control over how their operations run, from ticketing and service delivery to billing and workflow automation.

[00:05:25] Michelle Hodges That's one reason Halo PSA often comes up when MSPs start evaluating their next PSA platform. Michelle Hodges You can learn more at usehalo.com. Michelle Hodges Back in March, you said the updates would help partners prioritize the right things and over the next six to 12 months. Michelle Hodges So you're going to do all the things, the consolidating tools. Michelle Hodges The clock started back in March. Michelle Hodges How are you doing against your own tests? Michelle Hodges How's the progress going?

[00:05:51] Michelle Hodges So I, using the portal as an example, I said, okay, across all of our tools we had X number of folks sign in or engage with the portal last year. Michelle Hodges How many do we think we're going to do next year? So I added 20% to that and we blew that out two weeks ago. Michelle Hodges So yeah, partners are responding very well. Michelle Hodges You know, our error rate, right, is less than 10%, even though it gives me a hard time every time I see one. Michelle Hodges I freak my team out.

[00:06:21] Michelle Hodges Get on that right away. Michelle Hodges Yeah, the incentives are working quite well and creating a hot list pipeline for our partners. Michelle Hodges So yeah, so far so good. Michelle Hodges Gotcha. Michelle Hodges Now, I want to get some feedback from the community here. Michelle Hodges So I'm taking something that I wanted to get a sense of an MSP reports a client who needs one or two seats of email protection, they're ready to sign an annual contract, and they weren't able to do it because the client was under a minimum partner had a deal, they couldn't do it.

[00:06:48] Michelle Hodges From your perspective, is that a sense of the partner work, the program working is the way it's supposed to? Michelle Hodges Or is that areas that you want to continue to work in? Michelle Hodges Talk Talk to me about the way you think about the way someone hits something like a minimum or a portion of the program that may not fit. Michelle Hodges So we do have a new feature, a buy now function on the portal, right, which is still partner first and partner only, there's a partner behind that, but we do have a feature to be able to allow for that. Michelle Hodges Okay, gotcha. Michelle Hodges So the idea then is that.

[00:07:17] Michelle Hodges So by the way, I want to give some credit to the organization, you know, you guys have said MSPs continue to say really nice things about the cloud, how backups and the restores operators say that that that's a real thing. Michelle Hodges Are you looking at this as saying trying to make the portfolio consistent to that experience? Michelle Hodges Because I know it's in certain areas very well received and in other areas we have a little bit of work. Michelle Hodges How do you measure that partner response to take something that's really positive and make sure it's consistent across the organization?

[00:07:43] Michelle Hodges Well, I'm excited at our tech summit that's upcoming in September is we're relaunching our partner technical advisory board. Michelle Hodges Part of I think what makes us great is our willingness and ability to listen and then to act on that feedback. Michelle Hodges Just reviewed that agenda this morning, it'll be loaded up with all of our product managers and product leadership to be sure that we're hearing it. Michelle Hodges And we can act on that going forward. Michelle Hodges We'll do the Americas one attached to our SE summit coming up.

[00:08:13] Michelle Hodges I think partner success is going to really distill that messaging, right, that we hear back in a way that will make it increasingly timely and actionable as well. Michelle Hodges Now, I want to ask somebody, you were Avanti's channel chief from November 2022 until Barracuda, right? Michelle Hodges So you were the person the partners called in January of 2024, right? Michelle Hodges Good times. Michelle Hodges Yeah, exactly. Michelle Hodges Avanti had its own incident during this timeframe. Michelle Hodges You didn't build a product, right?

[00:08:43] Michelle Hodges You're the one who had to talk to partners about it. Michelle Hodges What I'd really like to know is what did you learn that week about what a partner needs from a vendor channel leader? Michelle Hodges It's personal to my philosophy is I exist because of partner success. Michelle Hodges That's what my job is. Michelle Hodges And being able to tie the objectives or the challenges to their success and feed that back in the organization to drive change.

[00:09:11] Michelle Hodges And we had a very heavy MSP model there as well around the Olympics with some partners who were impacted. Michelle Hodges And so sitting with them hand to hand and not just handing it off to product, right? Michelle Hodges I was on every single one of those escalation calls and stood by the partnership as opposed to the crisis, right? Michelle Hodges It was a really hard time, right? Michelle Hodges And the hits kept coming, right?

[00:09:40] Michelle Hodges It was not just one incident. Michelle Hodges The incidents kept rolling and rolling. Michelle Hodges And one of the first best examples of what an AI empowered threat landscape looks like. Michelle Hodges And so it was challenging. Michelle Hodges This episode is brought to you by Control Map.

[00:10:23] Michelle Hodges Growing Dave to get started. That's scalepad.com slash Dave. The other thing I kind of wanted to get a sense of, so we run a community analysis platform to get a sense of what the community is talking about. And in our analysis, the trend has been flat over the course of the year for Barracuda. And when I break down the areas of discussion, they fall into four major areas for complaint.

[00:10:51] And that would be billing, contracts, renewal, pricing, and support. When you look at a pile like that, which of those fall into your purview as the channel chief and leader? All of those to some degree. First, I absolutely believe that in my role, I am the outward facing representation of the entire organization and not just the partnering function. And it's part of my critical role to get all of those other functions aligned and living this partner first, partner only

[00:11:20] thing that we say. We're really excited to be working on programs that really modernize that experience for our MSPs so that they can scale up and scale down as their business goes without all of this paper trading and the rest of it. From the renewals perspective, we are really trying to put as much of that incentive and value at who is driving that renewal, right? So down at tier two,

[00:11:46] for lack of a better word, one of the key reasons of bringing that services and support, believe it or not, we didn't have a partner support program, right? And so rolling those into the partner program and then building out enablement and certification around that so partners can partake in what is still an industry-recognized best practice, our support team. So if we're looking at a year and we're sitting down and talking again, like, what do you hope to be accomplished by ChannelCon 2027? Like, what's the goal there?

[00:12:15] DRM will be fully implemented all the way down to a repeat process around business planning that's tied to pipeline. We'll be transacting on the portal. We'll be quoting on the portal, all of those sorts of things. We'll have a very robust incentives environment. So very tailored, you know, I don't want our business to be just about the biggest partners because in

[00:12:41] this ICP, in this segment, it's all the partners that make this work. So I want to make sure that there's incentives across the board. I want a well-differentiated and recognized channel. And I'm very excited for, as our brand continues to grow as that complete cybersecurity offering that's easy to buy, deploy, and use that our partners are sharing in that success. Well, Michelle, I really appreciate you giving insight into the way you're looking at the partner program. Thanks for joining me. Thanks, Dave.

[00:13:17] Produced by Picture This Video. Part of the MSP Radio Network.