It didn’t take veteran channel executive Christian Alvarez long to resurface after departing last month from Nutanix. Stratasys, the 3-D printing manufacturer, has tapped Alvarez as its chief revenue officer.

Stratasys’ Christian Alvarez

Alvarez left Nutanix in early November after more than three years at the hyperconverged infrastructure provider. As senior VP of worldwide channels, Alvarez led a revamp of the Nutanix Elevate partner program in 2020. More recently, in September, Alvarez oversaw the rollout of enhanced incentives. But Nutanix cut 4% of its workforce last month, amid declining revenues and speculation that the company is for sale.

Before joining Nutanix, Alvarez led global channel sales at Juniper Networks. With his arrival at Stratasys, Alvarez has moved into a different segment of the technology industry. However, Alvarez sees many similarities in the go-to-market requirements in an industry with strong growth potential.

Stratasys and Verticals

Stratasys prints 3-D-based molds focusing on the aerospace, automotive, consumer products, medical, and dental industries. The company reported $607 million in revenues for its 2021 fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31, up from $521 million a year earlier.

“Look, they’re vastly different; let’s not confuse the two,” Alvarez told Channel Futures, speaking of the IT and telecom infrastructure industry he came from to the new sector that focuses on 3-D printing and additive manufacturing.

“But when you think about additive manufacturing and all of the solutions that we develop and are developing, there are some similarities in how we go to market, how we help customers solve problems and in how we build solutions for them,” he added. “The buyer’s journey has evolved and changed. And where I came from, it was very consultative, value-added selling. It’s no different in additive manufacturing and 3-D printing and what Stratasys does.”

Assessing Integration Opportunities

Alvarez said Stratasys is already a very partner-focused company. Having just arrived at Stratasys three weeks ago, Alvarez said he is still assessing potential changes. Any changes, he said, would address creating more opportunities for its partners and adding more integration alliances.

“We need more friends in the industry,” Alvarez said. “And what I mean by friends is tighter integration with other technologies along the manufacturing line, like robotics, operational support systems and business support systems. We need tighter integration to really be part of that whole lifecycle and that end-to-end solution for customers.”

Looking at the partner landscape, Alvarez said there is a need for more VARs with strong domain expertise. Also, many industries Stratasys serves have very focused requirements and partners with expertise focused in those verticals.

“The opportunity here is going to be for Stratasys to really double down and focus a lot on system integrators,” he said. “When you think about all this great technology, from the software to the hardware, someone needs to glue it all together, and who better than system integrators.”