SkyKick Deepens Exec Bench with Microsoft Vets
SkyKick added three senior leaders with Microsoft experience to its executive team as the company acts to bolster its marketing and accelerate its global expansion.
Seattle-based SkyKick, which provides tools for migrating and backing up Office 365 and managing Software as a Service (SaaS) accounts from multiple vendors, announced on Monday the hiring of Chike Farrell as vice president of marketing; Kathryn Saducas as general manager of Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Anthony Philips as general manager of business development EMEA.
"We're really investing all up and down the stack with partners with technology and with people. We're trying to put all the resources and assets in place to help partners build successful cloud practices," said SkyKick Co-CEO Todd Schwartz in a telephone interview about the moves.
The three new hires deepen SkyKick's senior leadership team to 10 executives and support an effort to expand the business, especially internationally. While SkyKick has around 5,000 partners in 125 countries, about 60 percent of the company's revenues currently come from the United States, said Co-CEO Evan Richman.
L to R: New SkyKick executives Chike Farrell, Anthony Philips and Kathryn Saducas.
The marketing role is a new one for SkyKick, Schwartz said. "We actually have built SkyKick without a head of marketing. Bringing on Chike as VP of marketing really drives more engagement and education to grow our global partner base," Schwartz said. "This gives us the ability to give them more information, more content, more education and engagement. It's not around sell, sell, sell. It's about helping more partners engage with our technology and engage with our platform."
Farrell's B2B and B2C marketing experience includes Fortune 500 company marketing roles and a stint as co-founder and CEO of Caribbean Ideas Ltd., a digital and inbound marketing agency. Previously he had product management and advertising roles in the Online Services Group at Microsoft.
Saducas comes to SkyKick after a decade of channel-focused roles at Microsoft, including the launch of Office 365 in Australia, Surface commercial channel development in APAC, and cloud channel development in Latin America. She is based in SkyKick's Amsterdam office.
Philips, a lawyer who spent about 14 years at Microsoft in global business development, marketing, media strategy and other roles, will focus on telcos, hosters and large resellers in EMEA for SkyKick.
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 25, 2016