‘I’ve focused my career on building deep and lasting relationships at scale and helping people—whether that’s my team, partners or others in the industry—navigate challenges and grow,” says Barlow after his Channel Madness victory.
Scott Barlow has built his channel reputation by showing up when partners need help most—even when there’s nothing in it for him. That mindset, solution providers say, is why the Sophos chief evangelist and global head of community was voted the winner of CRN’s 2026 Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs.
When an MSP friend was in the middle of a ransomware attack, for example, Barlow saw a chance to step in, even though the MSP wasn’t a Sophos partner.
“I saw him post something on Facebook,” Barlow told CRN in an interview. “I reached out and said, ‘Hey, we can help.’ And we stepped in and helped him pretty much save his business.”
That MSP has since joined Oxford, U.K.-based Sophos’ partner ranks.
It’s that kind of hands-on, relationship-first approach that solution providers say defines Barlow and helped propel him to victory in the championship round of the Channel Madness Tournament, winning 69 percent of the vote against CrowdStrike’s Michael Rogers, who ended with 31 percent.
“It feels amazing to win,” Barlow said. “And I appreciate it because of the audience that’s voting. There are partners, there are other vendors, distributors. It’s amazing to be recognized from both my peers and my partners.”
He didn’t expect to take the title this year, especially after falling short in the Field of Four round in the 2025 tournament. “There were a lot of very close friends and mentors in the competition [this year],” Barlow said. “It was fierce.”
In this year’s tournament, Barlow’s path to the championship began with a victory over Everpure’s Hope Galley in Round 1. He then moved past SentinelOne’s Brian Lanigan, Veeam Software’s Kevin Rooney and Lenovo’s Wade McFarland in the next three rounds before besting Rogers in the final.
This marks the second time a Sophos executive has won the tournament. Then-Sophos channel chief Michael Valentine won the inaugural Channel Madness crown in 2015.
Barlow attributes his success to years of relationship-building.
“I’ve focused my career on building deep and lasting relationships at scale and helping people—whether that’s my team, partners or others in the industry—navigate challenges and grow,” he said.
‘Channel-First, Channel-Only’
Sophos partner Joe Ussia, president and CEO of Toronto-based Infinite IT Solutions, said Barlow takes in feedback, quickly finds solutions and guides people in the right direction. That impact, Ussia said, is what’s felt across the industry.
“He’s the face of Sophos in the channel,” he said. “You think Sophos, you think Scott. He listens to partners and brings that feedback back to the company so they can pivot. That’s huge.”
Barlow himself credits the cybersecurity vendor’s longstanding channel-first strategy.
“Sophos has been channel-first and channel-only for a long time,” he said. “I like to think this recognition reflects what we’re doing for partners. I’m just the voice of the channel internally and externally.”
Barlow, who also serves as the chair of the Global Technology Industry Association board, is widely viewed as a channel leader who advocates for partners and shares best practices globally.
“If there’s something unique happening in one region, I can take that and share it with partners elsewhere,” he said. “It helps build trust, not just in our products but in the community.”
Zak Karsan, co-founder and CEO of Boston-based data protection vendor Vault America, said Barlow is someone others look up to, “not just partners, but other leaders in similar roles.”
“He’s a global executive, but he’s always reachable,” Karsan said. “If the chips are down, he’s there. And that replicates across the channel. People know him and they trust him.”
That trust is rooted in a broader strategy Sophos has refined for about a decade. Barlow pointed to three core principles that have guided the company’s approach since launching its MSP program: helping partners increase revenue, lower costs and improve operational efficiency.
Other recent initiatives include enhanced partner programs, deeper integrations with third-party tools and a virtual CISO offering.
As for the Channel Madness win, Barlow said it just gives him more fuel.
“It gives me energy,” he said. “But our commitment doesn’t change. We’re going to keep listening to partners, keep acting on their feedback and keep finding ways to make their businesses more successful.”
‘Magic’ Mike
For Rogers and CrowdStrike, meanwhile, the strong showing in Channel Madness comes as the Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity giant has reached an “inflection point” with solution and service provider partners, Rogers told CRN.
“The momentum with partners has not been stronger in my eight years with CrowdStrike,” said Rogers, vice president of global business development, channels and alliances at CrowdStrike.
Rogers reached the Channel Madness final with a Round 1 win against Schneider Electric’s Gordon Lord in the tournament’s first contest to be decided in overtime. He then held off OpenText’s Mike DePalma, F5’s Lisa Citron and HP Inc.’s Scott Lannum in subsequent rounds.
His berth in the finals represents his best finish since his tournament debut in 2022.
In recent years, CrowdStrike has doubled down on enabling partners to expand beyond the vendor’s core endpoint security offering while helping customers consolidate their tools on the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, which has represented a massive growth opportunity for the channel, solution provider executives told CRN.
The cybersecurity vendor has done this with innovative products across segments such as identity protection, Next-Gen SIEM and AI security, as well as with CrowdStrike’s trailblazing Falcon Flex subscription model, solution provider executives said.
Without a doubt, Rogers has been pivotal to the expansion by helping to foster countless relationships with the partner community, according to Jim Finn, vice president for cybersecurity sales at New York-based Presidio, No. 24 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500.
For instance, whenever an issue arises involving a deal, Rogers excels at producing a quick resolution by having the right conversations with the right people, Finn said.
“Mike just has that magic touch,” Finn said. “There’s a lot of good tech out there, but the ease of doing business is so critical on our side.”
The bottom line with Rogers, Finn said, is simple: “He protects his partners.”
Optiv’s John Hurley echoed the sentiments, saying that “in this market, trust and communication are core to any relationship that we have. And Mike just exudes that.”
Regardless of the situation, “Mike’s the kind of guy you can pick up the phone and have a very transparent conversation with,” said Hurley, CRO at Denver-based Optiv, No. 28 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500.
All in all, “he’s been very heavily involved in our growth inside of CrowdStrike,” Hurley said.
Rogers said that making it to the final round in Channel Madness is a testament to the strength of the relationships that CrowdStrike and its partners have built over many years.
“I couldn’t be more humbled by the outpouring of support—both from the partner community as well as CrowdStrike and colleagues that I’ve worked with throughout my career,” he said.
