Cybersecurity veteran Micheal McCollough tells CRN that Mimecast plans to double down on MSPs to drive its next phase of growth.
Micheal McCollough, a longtime cybersecurity channel executive formerly of vendors including Imperva and Akamai, has been hired by Mimecast as its new channel chief, he said in an interview with CRN.
McCollough (pictured), whose title at Mimecast is senior vice president of worldwide partners and alliances, has joined the prominent email security vendor following a pair of acquisitions in 2024 that have expanded the vendor into new categories.
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In July 2024, Mimecast announced the acquisition of Code42, a company that brought key technologies to Mimecast including an insider threat protection platform, Incydr. Then in August, Mimecast announced the acquisition of a startup, Aware, which focuses on securing workplace collaboration tools with the help of AI.
Together with Mimecast’s core email security platform, the expansion “provides partners a unique service opportunity,” McCollough told CRN.
MSPs and other service providers will be an overall focus at Mimecast for McCollough, who said the vendor is preparing a dedicated program focused on services partners.
McCollough most recently served as global vice president of channel sales at venture-backed security vendor Anomali. Prior to that role, he spent three years as global vice president and channel chief at well-known security vendor Imperva, which was acquired by Thales for $3.6 billion in 2023.
Earlier in his career, McCollough served as global vice president for channels and alliances at Akamai Technologies from 2015 to 2021, and before that spent seven years in various roles at Dell.
What follows is an edited portion of CRN’s interview with McCollough.
What prompted the move to Mimecast?
Everyone I met [at Mimecast] talked about the channel and how the channel is critical to our go-to-market. The second thing is, this is a great market opportunity. Human risks are becoming more and more challenging, and this is a company that prides itself on building a platform that helps CISOs and security professionals manage human risk. So to get the opportunity to join a company that’s prioritizing that and enhancing its portfolio — from not just being a great email security company, but also providing [security around] insider threats and collaboration tools — that’s great as well.
What are the major opportunities for partners from Mimecast expanding its portfolio?
Mimecast acquired two companies, Code42 and Aware [a year ago]. Code42 was really focusing on insider threats, minimizing data loss prevention and making sure that the right information was going to the right people and wasn’t leaving the company when it shouldn’t be. And then as people use more and more collaboration tools, Aware had the capabilities to be able to help support CISOs and security professionals and make sure that the right information was being shared and leveraging those platforms. And so by having those two capabilities, I think it provides partners a unique service opportunity, coupled with the Mimecast’s core email security capabilities. Partners now can build services and service practices, and look at being able to provide that human risk story.
What are your top goals as Mimecast channel chief?
First is, getting partners excited and understanding our capabilities as we expand our portfolio into insider threats, and making sure that they are able to manage their collaboration tools, and how to build that service capability. MSPs are very critical for us — so how do we enable, provide the right content, provide the right support to MSPs as they continue to become a more and more critical route to markets for our customers? How do we expand? Mimecast has done a great job in certain verticals, but in very focused and targeted locations. So as we grow our footprint, being a channel-first company, we want to make sure we leverage partners in helping us expand those territories.
What is your strategy related to working with MSPs?
We have about 40,000 customers. About half our customers are serviced through MSPs, so we clearly have great traction with the MSP community. I think we’ll continue to make sure the MSP sees us as easy to do business with. We hired our new Chief Product Officer Ranjan Singh from Kaseya, one of the biggest MSP vendors out there. Ranjan coming over tells the MSP environment that we’re very serious about it, and we see them as a critical part of our go-to-market strategy. And so as Ranjan makes sure his products continue to be MSP-friendly, I think MSPs will see a lot of positive things that help them continue to go and scale with us.
What can you say about future program updates you’re working on that are focused on MSPs?
We’re going to be launching a program dedicated toward partners with delivering services. We want to make sure that we can leverage those partners to help us, and complement us in supporting those customers. We also have a very strong technical alliance program, and you’ll see us doing a lot more collaboration and engagement with the likes of AWS as well as Google.
