Cloud Technology Alliances Director

The Director of Cloud Technology Alliances will be responsible for Fortinet’s partnerships with industry-leading companies in the Public and Private Cloud areas, driving technical integrations with organizations that align with Fortinet’s Security Fabric architecture, enabling them to be part of Fortinet’s Open Ecosystem. The individual will drive co-marketing and go-to-market initiatives with Cloud partners, including extensive promotion of integrations and joint solutions via development of marketing collateral, thought leadership blogs, industry/customer presentations, and high-profile partner marketing and demand generation activities, in alignment with and supporting Fortinet’s Corporate Marketing initiatives.  The individual will be responsible for enabling new business and customer opportunities by driving Cloud technology alliance partners to assist Fortinet Sales teams in customer engagements and contribute significantly to technology alliance-influenced annual billings in the above domain areas of responsibility. The individual will manage, track, and report on Cloud Sales billings and pipeline to the executive team, including sell-to, sell-through and sell-with financial data for Fortinet’s Cloud partners. This role will require partnership development and cross-functional collaboration with technical, marketing, and sales teams within Fortinet and partner organizations to build breadth and depth to Fortinet’s overall value proposition for customers.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop deep technical, business, and marketing relationships with leading Cloud technology companies, driving new technical integrations and joint solutions, working cross-functionally and collaboratively with internal and partner organizations.
• Drive co-marketing and go-to-market initiatives with Cloud technology alliance partners, in coordination with Fortinet marketing and sales teams, including extensive promotion of integrations and joint solutions via development of marketing collateral, thought leadership blogs, presentations at Fortinet/industry events and webinars, and high-profile sales enablement, partner marketing and demand generation activities.
• Drive sales enablement initiatives to raise awareness and educate Fortinet’s global sales teams on Fortinet’s integrations and joint solutions with Cloud partners, enabling Sales to effectively sell these solutions to existing and prospective customers worldwide. Align with and support Fortinet corporate marketing initiatives, ensuring that Cloud technology alliance partners are inserted into campaigns, events, press and analyst activities, and content development/promotion initiatives.
• Enable new business and customer opportunities by driving Cloud technology alliance partners to assist Fortinet Sales teams in customer engagements and contribute significantly to technology alliance-influenced annual billings (a quarterly MBO goal will be set). Track and manage ecosystem partner impact on sales via tools including SFDC and Tableau, to assess attribution to pipeline and closed sales.  Manage, track and report on Cloud Sales billings and pipeline to the executive team, including sell-to, sell-through and sell-with financial data for Fortinet’s Cloud partners.
• Develop new partnerships with innovative Cloud companies, facilitating their addition into Fortinet’s rapidly growing ecosystem of technology alliances, to address current and emerging customer and market needs in the Cloud area. Recommend potential investment & acquisition opportunities in the Cloud area.
• Drive joint ‘lighthouse customer’ wins by working closely with Fortinet and Partner sales teams. Develop and promote case studies based on the lighthouse wins, in collaboration with Sales and Customer Marketing teams.
• Overall help with partner marketing and support the Fortinet Technology Alliances team with special projects as needed.

Skills and Experience:

• At least 10+ years of experience managing technology alliances and/or business development experience. Experience supporting or working for Public, Private Cloud or virtualization platform or technology providers is highly desirable.
• Strong understanding of networking, security and cloud/virtualization technologies is highly desirable.
• Solid understanding of customers’ usage of Cloud products, platforms, tools and processes, especially related to networking and security use cases. Ability to engage with Cloud practitioners up to the VP/CISO/CEO level.
• The role requires management of multiple Cloud alliance partners. The individual should have broad technical and business skills, experience and flexibility to handle multiple strategic Cloud partnerships. Experience with multiple Public Cloud providers (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle) and Private Cloud vendors (e.g. VMware, Nutanix, etc.)