SADA’s Sandy Hogan: ‘The Opportunity Is Really on the Partner Side’

SADA on Wednesday announced that it has hired Sandy Hogan as its first-ever chief revenue officer. Hogan, of course, comes to the Google Cloud-only managed service provider from VMware, where she spearheaded the channel program for more than two years.

Channel Futures had the good fortune to catch up with Hogan for a few minutes on Wednesday in advance of a deeper conversation set for Thursday. When it comes to her move to SADA, Hogan sees the decision as one of ideal timing. For Hogan, the ecosystem, and cloud and digital transformation, all collide to ensure that no one company can go it alone. Regardless of whether that organization is a vendor or a partner, the important thing is to focus on bringing complementary skills together to solve customers’ business problems, Hogan says.

“That’s what customers are looking for; they want the simplicity,” she tells Channel Futures.

And simplicity often translates into providing managed services of the type SADA delivers.

In this short Q&A, we give you a little more insight into Hogan’s plans for her new role. Note that we have edited this transcript.

Channel Futures: What went into the decision to make this move?

SADA’s Sandy Hogan

Sandy Hogan: I think there were a few elements that made this move pretty relevant, particularly my interest in SADA. I’ve been in the tech space for 20 years. And a good majority of that time, in any of the roles that I’ve been in, I have really put a lot of energy and passion around the customer-first approach, outcome-led selling. … And so when I had an opportunity to meet with Tony [Safoian, SADA CEO] … the very first thing he said to me was that he was building a forever company. And that forever company is built on the premise of delivering customer-for-life value. Hearing those words that were identical to a passion of mine just naturally started what I felt were timely conversations.

… And at this point in my career as well, culture is everything. … So as I met the leadership team at SADA and engaged with various leaders across the organization, it was almost just too natural to make the change.

CF: Let’s touch on this interesting aspect of you moving from a vendor, to a partner. What goes into that? How is that different?

SH: The last two-plus years, that’s been my role at VMware — leading and transforming the partner ecosystem. And so I feel pretty blessed. Honestly, during my time at VMware, I had the opportunity to work with just amazing partners who were transforming their business models, who were leading in that customer-first approach. And so what I got to learn and appreciate was the nature of the transformation that the partner ecosystem was experiencing.

… [The transformation] I’ve seen in the last two years is more than what I’ve seen in the last five-plus years together. And so that, in a way, was the catalyst for me to see what these companies were doing in the ecosystem. And they’re really at the front and center of leading the customer transformation and enabling their digital transformation success. So that really was the catalyst for me to look at it. And it wasn’t about, “Oh, do I go to the vendor side or the partner side — it was just such a …