Channel Voices
Channel Voices is The Podcast for Future Channel Leaders, where we learn the ins and outs of partner ecosystems through casual conversations with channel professionals from a variety of industries, partner types and geographies.
Channel Voices
From Partner to Vendor: One Channel Leader's Journey
What happens when a partner crosses to the vendor side? Brian Hibner brings a refreshingly honest perspective on channel leadership from his journey as a former Deloitte partner who now leads Flexera's global alliance strategy.
Brian's guiding principle—"customer first, partner second, Flexera third"—stems from his firsthand experience as a partner dealing with vendors who prioritised their own interests. He reveals how this customer-centric approach has transformed Flexera's partnerships, creating genuine trust that directly translates to business growth. One European partner recently told him, "The stuff you said you would change last year based on our feedback—you actually did it. That's why we're doing more together."
The conversation explores the evolving partner ecosystem spanning traditional resellers (who face margin pressure), pure services organisations, and technology platform alliances. Brian details Flexera's investments in dedicated engineering resources for partner-specific capabilities, enabling rapid development cycles that demonstrate their commitment to partner success.
Perhaps most fascinating is Brian's insight into Flexera's recent acquisition of NetApp's Spot. Instead of disrupting the existing partner network, Flexera adopted a "don't break anything" philosophy that prioritises stability and understanding before integration. This approach has turned concerned Spot partners into enthusiastic advocates exploring Flexera's broader portfolio.
For channel professionals at any stage, Brian's journey highlights the crucial importance of continuous learning. Despite extensive consulting experience, he had to quickly adapt to the unique rhythms of software business cycles and diverse partner models. His advice? Listen more than you talk, and show up consistently as the partner who genuinely supports your partners' business success.
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Hello, welcome and thank you for tuning in to Channel Voices, the podcast for future channel leaders, where we learn the ins and outs of partner ecosystems through casual conversations with channel professionals from a variety of industries, partner types and geographies. My name is Maciek and I'm your host, brian Huebner. Welcome to Channel Voices.
Brian Hibner:Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Maciej:Thank you so much for joining me. If you wouldn't mind, can you please take a moment to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your channel ?
Brian Hibner:Sure happy . So I'm Flexera Senior Vice President of Alliances and Professional Services, and my background is actually as the partner from the other side optimizing technology spend, optimizing cloud spend, de-risking organizations and helping clients manage their second and third largest portions of spend in IT outside of people, and FlexAir was one of my vendor partners. I worked very closely with them on the solutions that they brought to market and I used them in delivery of my services, and it was about 18 months ago that I decided to make the switch to have an impact on bringing Flexera to the market in a way that I wished a software company would have approached me when I was on the other side of the table.
Maciej:So I've been doing that ever since Very interesting In terms of your move from a partner organization yeah to a vendor organization, like what was. What was the actual motivation for you to to make that move and has it in any ways you know, shifted or influenced your perspective on on partnerships at all?
Brian Hibner:it was for me. For me personally, it was an opportunity. I have a global role, which is very, very exciting. I had global exposure at Deloitte, but we were very our clients were US-based, so it's been a long time there. So I wanted to round out my abilities and opportunities to one see the world and understand how people do business and the way that they do business, but also really for me, the true main motivation was where Flexera.
Brian Hibner:I'd watched Flexera grow up since it was spun out of Macrovision into its own standalone entity Macrovision into its own standalone entity, and I was very excited to join the organization at the size that it was about a half billion dollars of ARR and really bring transformational thinking, big scale thinking, big ways of operating that you can't operate the same way if you want to be a billion dollar company as you do when you're a hundred million dollar company or a ten million dollar company.
Brian Hibner:And so it's very. It's an opportunity to really leave a lasting impression and a mark on an organization as it's going through kind of a hyper growth and hyper scale opportunity as well, as you know, roll up the sleeves and get the hands dirty and be able to say, hey, I'm here, I'm helping do it and I'm a part of it, I'm in with everyone in the trenches and we're changing the world. Because I believe in this space, I believe at my core in the value of what this area can bring to organizations, and so it was very easy from a shift standpoint in that regard, because the value system never changed there. The mission has not changed For me. I just am on one side versus the other. Now.
Maciej:I'm thinking about this. Obviously, majority of your experience in the channel was within a partner organization. Now joining the vendor yep, were they any surprises, good or bad? Yeah, when you, when you, joined a vendor organization yes, absolutely.
Brian Hibner:For me, the, the I think the biggest thing was appreciating the, the pace or the focus that a software company takes on quarterly and annual results. I came from a large consulting organization that makes its money when you deliver services. Yes, you want to have good financials along the way, but I did not. Even though I worked with a lot of software companies over the years at Deloitte, I didn't. Until you're on the inside, you don't fully appreciate. You know what quarter end really means until you're part of an organization, or what year end really means when you're part of an organization, when you do that, and so that was probably the biggest surprise for me was that shift, because my time at Deloitte and this still hasn't changed.
Brian Hibner:It's all about relationships and building trust and nurturing and developing relationships over years. There's that dichotomy between that with hey, we've got certain metrics and targets we need to hit. Now I see that with peer software companies, with peer organizations as well. So it's not like it's just us, it's everybody. It's how the industry operates. But until you're in it, you don't really truly know. But that's the same for anything. You can say it in reverse. If you were at Flexera for 20 years and went to Deloitte, you'd wonder why people aren't stressing out the last week of a quarter. You'd wonder why people aren't stressing out the last week of a quarter.
Brian Hibner:Well, you don't have that quarterly pressure to sign something on that last day.
Maciej:Of course, that makes a lot of sense In terms of what you're building now. You're obviously in charge when it comes to the ecosystem at Flexera. Are you bringing in any of those experiences from a partner perspective into what you're doing now, be it on a program or how you interact and engage with partners?
Brian Hibner:Yes, yes, core and key mantra that I brought here, and I'm really really trying to make sure everyone understands that this is a core value for our team. It's a value within a value and, very simply put, it's customer first, partner second, flexera third. That is the order of success. Nothing changes and you can go anywhere. If your customer or your client is successful, you will be successful in turn, and for some it's been a bit of a mental shift. It's a mental shift between looking inward versus looking outward and really trying to get everyone hyper-focused on first of all.
Brian Hibner:Of course, it's all about the customer. At the end of the day, they're the ones getting the value out of the services and the software that our partners in Flexera provide. But also, if you're putting your objectives, if you're putting you personally, your personal goals or Flexera's ambitions ahead of those partners' goals and objectives, they're not going to work with you. They have a lot of choice in life of who they can partner with and they have limited time and limited mindshare. And that, what I shared with you, was also born out of me experiencing where it doesn't go wrong. When software companies or even certain individuals at Flexera in the past would show up, it was very clear to me as a partner, when it was about them, it wasn't about me and I had a choice of who I wanted to work with, and it made it harder to want to engage when it was all about them and it wasn't about me trying to achieve my customer objectives.
Brian Hibner:And so that's such a big, big focus that spans across everything in our group of what we're trying to do and hopefully the whole company to go. Hey, if we're aligned and have a singular formation around that, we will be wildly successful, because we understand our partners and we understand our partners' customers', business to the point where we know how to solve their problems together and there's the highest value in being able to do that.
Maciej:I've had a recent conversation about pretty much a similar topic and it was all about the partner experience and we talked quite a bit about the choices that partners have and how hard it is for a vendor to gain that mindshare of a partner right. Yeah, yeah, if you don't put your customers and your partners first, it is very hard to achieve that.
Brian Hibner:And I'll give you some examples and I love sharing this because this is live. This came from this week. We had a partner meeting over in Europe this week and we were sitting down with some new partners some existing partners that have not been at that event before, and I was very, very happy that there's a partner that was there last year and I was meeting them for the first time last year.
Brian Hibner:I'd never interacted with them because when I was relatively newer to, the role only had been on for four or five months, I had not had the chance to meet them in person. So I'm with them in person. I'm hearing about their business, how they're trying to go to market in the Benelux region, to get very specific and taking some of those things away and going all right, this is what they need to be successful with their customer base in their region. And it was so great to be sitting with them at a table on Wednesday.
Brian Hibner:We were having a meeting and she shared with us hey, the stuff you talked about last year that you said you were going to change to be more in line with how we operate. You did. It were going to change to be more in line with how we operate. You didn't. And I noticed. And that's why we're doing more together. That's why I'm here, that's why I'm not at this other event, that's why I'm focused with you and I want to grow a business with you, because you're listening to us and it isn't just lip service. You're actually putting it into action, You're changing how you operate, You're supporting us in our delivery mechanisms and how we bring our services to market and you're showing up as a true partner.
Maciej:You're not showing up as a software member In terms of building those true collaborative and win-win relationships between vendors and partners. That listening is so important. Right, you have to understand what partners need to be successful so they can grow their business. If you enable them to grow their business, I mean the rest will follow. Right, the revenue will come.
Brian Hibner:The rest follows and I'm very proud of what we're able to do, and we've got a long road to go. We have a lot of room to continue doing it. But even just the pieces that we've been able to do with certain partners in the last year, in the last 18 months, is moving the needle, and it's moving the needle for Flexera because it's really moving the needle for them, and so you can talk about that either way. But but in to one of your other other questions you asked earlier, we've, we've, we've got a, a you know kind of within the channel or within the partner ecosystem. I'll I'll expand it a little bit beyond that. We've got reseller partners, we've got the traditional companies that are out there that ultimately then the customer has the license and they make their money on that.
Brian Hibner:But as I'm sure you're aware, as probably everyone that's listening to this is well aware, that that business model is is under threat, it's being continually squeezed. I don't think we have any partners that aren't diversifying, that aren't looking for new revenue streams. They're leaning into services, um, they're leaning into the value-added things that they can bring to keep them relevant, because it's a hard living if you're eking out 1% or 2% net or 3% net in a resale business and it was great for what it was, but it's transforming as businesses do. We've got a lot of partners that are in our portfolio that are spanned from pure services partners that they have no reselling capabilities or motion at all. They don't even want to get into it to ones that go, hey, we will span the spectrum here, but we want to be the trusted advisor to our customers. We want to be the value-added whether it's value-added distributor or value-added partner or reseller. We want to be viewed in that sense that it is bigger than just they think.
Brian Hibner:We're making a couple points on slinging skews All the way to. We do have technology partnerships. So tech on tech platform, platform together from an ecosystem standpoint. I'm super excited about that, just because I see what we've been able to do. And then I also see the art of the possible.
Brian Hibner:When you take our platform of what we're really really good at and combine it with a platform of what they're really really good at, there's new and unique use cases that can come out of that. Or it's the same use case, it's just brought up another level because it's not one. It's not one, it's now three, when you bring it together, of what you can do more. So when we're really looking at what is our alliance business or what does our entire partner ecosystem look like, it spans across that whole kind of spectrum and we continue to invest in all of those because there's still more that we can do in all of those, and I'm pleased to see that we haven't found a diminishing return on our investments in this space. We continue to see more return the more we're putting in here, which is obviously fantastic for where we are today in the market.
Maciej:Great and in terms of the investments that you're speaking about. At the beginning of March we heard the news about Flexera's acquisition of NetApp's Spot. Can you elaborate on the impact that it will have on your existing partner ecosystem?
Brian Hibner:And it's been two weeks, 10 business days, since we closed on that and the stuff that I've learned just in the last two weeks is outstanding. And it is a very complimentary acquisition from a product portfolio for a standpoint because it does tie to partners. It filled in some gaps from a product portfolio standpoint capabilities that FlexAir didn't have, which is obviously a great reason to do something like this. We're continuing to plow investment into that. So it wasn't a partner-customer acquisition and then you close it down. We love the ocean, the eco-capabilities, everything else that exists there. Spot Connect the rest. But folding them in from a platform standpoint is certainly logical because you want everyone to be able to avail themselves of all the capabilities of what you can bring in an easy to consume manner. Spot has a partner ecosystem that actually there's very little overlap with the Flexera partner ecosystem, so one.
Brian Hibner:We have a whole new host of partners that I've been getting to meet over the last couple of weeks, which is obviously tremendous to know more about their business, how they're approaching things. You know a lot more of a. Some have a lot more DevOps type focus and personas, which is very different than what Flexera had previously. But already and it was even last week or sorry, earlier this week in some of these meetings talking to our existing partners, longtime Flexera partners that are going. Hey, I have a lot of clients that have a ton of Kubernetes containers. I'm so glad to see that you now have a tool for managing that. How soon can we get access to it? How soon can we bring it? The answer is always yesterday, let's go, and all those kinds of interesting things.
Brian Hibner:But it's also allowed us very rapidly here to, I would say, create differentiated entry points where by being able to look at a wider portfolio or different or additional use cases, instead of saying, well, hey, normally here's the five doors that we might walk through to start a discussion, a value discussion. Now we have 10.
Brian Hibner:We have other doors that we can go into as a way of bringing value, with our partners, to their customers, because if they've got a burning need in a specific area, we can get very hyper-specific with them to be able to solve that, to be able to build the brand and build a reputation together with our partners, that, hey, we're the trusted group that you can go on a journey with and we can continue to show you this value along the way. And it's super exciting from a spot standpoint. We're also making a ton of I would call it just normal investments into our program, into what we do and the entire organizational apparatus around it, because it isn't just me, it isn't just someone on my team or someone else that, in an individual capacity, is looking after a particular partner.
Brian Hibner:It's all of our technical resources, it's all of our technical resources, it's all of our engineering resources, it's the entire finance, it's the entire organization that has been charged and tasked with having a focus on how do we better support our partners. Or I'll give you an example In the case of engineering, we have engineering pods that are dedicated to just the MSP and partner roadmap that our partners need, from a product capability standpoint, solution capability standpoint, to be able to drive the outcomes that they want to drive for their customers, their customers, and and that's, that's a, that's a differentiated, you know value for how we show up, because now it isn't hey, yes, get in line along with everybody else and queue up Uh, you know like you're trying to get your, your uh driver's license renewed and take a number and wait, um, but it's, it's, here's a, here's a super highway, here's a lane just for you and there's no speed limit on the highway or this car, and we're going to make it go as fast as we can. And we started a lot of this investment in earnest last summer, and so we've seen a lot of it come to fruition in Q4 and in Q1. And it's so exciting to be able to talk to somebody and then, 75 and 90 days later, it's live, it's in the solution, they're getting the value out of it, and they saw us build it at day 30 and 45 and 60. And they're going wow, you're turning this around and you're materially impacting my business.
Brian Hibner:You're listening to me. You're giving me what I need. I'm able to drive either additional revenue streams or more profitability. Let're listening to me. You're giving me what I need. I'm able to drive either additional revenue streams or more profitability. Let's do more together, and that's the moment that we want to create with those partners where they're going. What else can we do with you that? We know that we've earned that mind share. Now we just need to keep it by continuing to maintain that pace.
Maciej:Obviously, when you acquire a company with its own partner ecosystem, there are some steps that you need to take to assess what the partner program looks like, whether it fits, what are the similarities, what are the things that maybe aren't going to work that well for everybody within now your expanded ecosystem aren't going to work that well for everybody within now. Your expanded ecosystem, yep. Are there any first steps that you took to assess what Spot comes with in terms of partners?
Brian Hibner:Sure, yes, and I'm very happy to share our corporate strategy here on this was Don't break anything and nothing changes. And I say that half-jokingly, just because with any transition from one organization to another, organizations get to decide how disruptive that's going to be. Is it going to be hugely disruptive or is it not going to be as far as we can onto the non-disruptive side of that spectrum? Because the more we make it about the event, the less our partners are staying focused on the market. They're looking inward, they're looking behind, they're not looking forward, and that's what slows business down, that's what produces unhappy customers or clients, that's what causes potential competitors to seize an opening, earn some mind share. And so we're taking a very, very cautious and concentrated effort around seek to understand first what it is, the rhythms, the business, all the way down to the contracts, the terms, the discounts, anything that goes into that and then, and only then, once you have that understanding, start to say hey, how do we start to bring these things together? Of course things will be brought together. We have a spot sales force and a flexero sales force. Eventually we will bring those together.
Brian Hibner:We'd be a terrible advisor from an asset management standpoint if we didn't say, consolidate your assets. So you know, bring these together, we will do it. But there's no reason to try to do it in 15 days or 30 days. Let's understand what it is and bring it together again. And it's anything like that to. I'll give you an example. A little over a year ago we closed on snow software. We still have partners on snow contracts. We've amended snow contracts for Flexera products because it's a great vehicle. We don't need to renegotiate something for the fun of it.
Brian Hibner:We want to stay hyper-focused on the customers and we want to stay hyper-focused on reassuring and ensuring that the partners continue to see that, one, we're a trusted partner of theirs, that we're backstopping their business, but two, we're investing in it and they're going to want to do more and they're going to want to be able to take more to the market, and we want to be able to support them in that.
Maciej:Yeah, and I'd absolutely agree with you. Introducing any disruptions is only going to do the company disservice, right? You don't continue listening to that partner ecosystem that came with the acquisition and you're changing things for the benefit of the overall organization and potentially losing some partners along the way, which is never nice, Sometimes necessary, obviously right. If a partnership doesn't work and it's mutually agreed, it's okay to part ways.
Brian Hibner:Yeah, it's been. I mean, it's super exciting to talk to a lot of these folks around the world talking to partners from early to late, spot partners that want to. It was a very, very common, you know, theme of what are you going to do to our business and and it took a little while to go what do you mean? You're not going to just flip it upside down and turn it inside out. It's like, well, do you want us to do that? It's like no, well, that's why we're not doing it. But it was such a great, it was such a great chance.
Brian Hibner:When they hear this broader story about what flexera is trying to do, uh, in in the market from a technology, value and risk management kind of lens, about that, they're going. Educate me on this. I want to, I want, I need to know more about the flexera stuff. What a great, what a great opportunity, what a great introduction. I can already see how I can bring some complementary SaaS or licensing capabilities to what I already do with my client base, and I showed up to this call concerned that our partnership was going to be shaky and I'm leaving wanting to get a demo of the platform, wanting to understand more about what you're doing, wanting to work with you guys to bring some of these things to bear, for us to get trained, because I'm already seeing more services opportunities.
Brian Hibner:It's like yes, that's it, that's the whole point.
Maciej:And this is why communication is so important, right? Because uncertainty for anyone within within the business, be it you know an individual or a partner, it just doesn't do anyone any service, to be honest, right? Yep, yeah, and we're coming close to the to the end of the show, and I did. I did let you know that this question is coming, and you've listened to a couple of episodes before. Yes, we would like to know what's the one thing you wish you knew before you started your career in channel and I like to say I have a different approach to how I got into the channel.
Brian Hibner:I was the partner. For me it's been hugely educational and I kind of touched on it a little bit before understanding a broader operating rhythm. I came from a large-scale services provider that didn't live by a quarterly, monthly, annual clock attached to it from a revenue standpoint. So it was very educational for me that and this is not just a Flexera thing, but it's the broader ecosystem as a whole, with the partners, with the sales folks, with commissions-based individuals. I did not operate in a commission-based capacity before. That's not where I came from. There was a lot of learning I had to do. There's a lot of learning and I'm still asking I feel like a three-year-old why, why?
Maciej:Why, why you?
Brian Hibner:know why do we do the things that we do. You know why do we do it that way, why don't we do it that way? And it isn't just us, it's why are the partners operating this way, why are they doing it this way? And that's been the biggest eye opener for me. And that's been the biggest eye opener for me.
Brian Hibner:If I could have done it over, I don't know when I could have gotten this education, but I would have loved to have shown up with what I'd call maybe that more classical distributor, reseller, market understanding. That was new to me. I had to learn that, learn it rapidly. I do not know everything about it, but there's people that are on the team that are smarter than me in this capacity which is why they're on the team to be able to help kind of focus and say, hey, here's how we're going to support this motion and, yes, I have skills over here, this is where I came from. But we need both. We need to bring it together, and the only thing that if I could do it over would be that would be that deeper understanding of that piece of the partner business in this space, because then I could have been more helpful to our partners. Sooner with what I do in my role, sooner with what I do in my role.
Maciej:Got it. Appreciate you sharing that with us. Brian and I wrote recently an article and published it on LinkedIn about some of the learnings that I got from interviewing people in your seat right Channel leaders, ecosystem leaders, you name it and there's one thing that become very transparent and pretty much every channel leader speaks about this and it's continuous learning, right.
Maciej:Yeah, you're rarely going to know everything, the regardless whether you're at the very top and you have been doing it for 20 years, or you're new in the seat and it's your first month leading a channel organization. You have to keep learning right if you want to stay ahead of the curve and be up to date with how you operate and what how your partners operate and what new partner types are spurring um, because they do right. Like you said earlier, everybody diversifies. We need to stay learning all those things on an ongoing basis. There is never I know everything.
Brian Hibner:Yeah, and that comes from the field. It comes from getting out there and being on the edge of understanding what people are trying to do, how they're trying to do it, suggesting new ways, seeing what works as well. But I think our secret recipe for success is a lot more learning than talking these days with our partners and listening and responding to the asks, and the more that we're going to be able to do that, the better we're going to be able to scale, the easier it's going to be to be a trusted partner that our partners can look back on and go. Yes, when.
Brian Hibner:I call Flexera. They show up, they backstop my business, they support my business. I'm wildly successful because of them and that's the true aha, that's the true partnership. But if we can get that, sky's the limit.
Maciej:And on that bombshell, brian, thank you so much for joining me today. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much. Let's keep in touch and perhaps we can have you back later this year, or maybe next year, and see how things have progressed since.
Brian Hibner:I would love it. Thank you so much for hosting today. Progressed since. I would love it. Thank you so much for hosting today. I could talk about this all day long, because I'm extremely passionate about this space and look forward to it in the future.
Maciej:Thank you, Brian.
Brian Hibner:Thank you.
Maciej:Thank you for tuning into this episode of Channel Voices. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation and gained valuable insights. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Every bit helps us grow and reach more future channel leaders like you. Thanks again and we'll catch you in the next episode. You.
