Sophos Channel Chief Steve Hale Exits Amid Planned Transition

Sophos Global Channel Chief Steve Hale has decided to exit the endpoint security company, trusted sources told The VAR Guy. The apparent reason: Hale is located on the U.S. west coast, while the core Sophos executive team continues to expand on the U.S. east coast and in Europe. Hale is exiting as Sophos kicks off its new fiscal year. Here’s the update.

Hale joined Sophos in May 2011 after tours of duty with Novell, F5 Networks and Microsoft. Over the past year, Hale has helped Sophos to bolster its partner program for MSPs and recurring revenue opportunities. Hale has also helped to connect the dots between Sophos and Astaro — the unified threat management company that Sophos acquired last year.

Although Hale is a talented executive, Sophos has a deep channel bench. Hale is based in Seattle, while most of the Sophos executive team is in the UK company headquarters and a Burlington, Mass., location. Plus, Sophos earlier today acquired Dialogs, a mobile device management (MDM) company based in Germany.

It sounds like Sophos and Hale discussed the exit plan ahead of the new Sophos fiscal year, which started on April 1. Hale reported to Mike McGuinness, senior VP of worldwide sales and field operations.

As the new Sophos year gets started, it’s safe to expect growing synergies between the Sophos and Astaro product sets and partner programs. The VAR Guy is poking around for updates.

Also of note: Hale’s exit at Sophos is the latest in a growing list of channel chief changes and updates at major IT security companies. Kaspersky Lab, McAfee and Symantec each have had high-profile channel chief changes within the last few months.