“Services is the new product,” Ken Hammond told CRN. “Aligning around profitability beyond the sale, whether it’s basic deployment services or advanced services that the partner can do, is the way to make a partner profitable.”
Zscaler has brought on former Exabeam channel leader Ken Hammond as its new vice president of partners and alliances sales, succeeding Christine McElduff, who left to take a channel sales executive post at Cloudflare in September.
Hammond told CRN in an interview that his goals with the San Jose, Calif.-based security vendor are enabling partners to bring more services to their customers and so become more profitable themselves.
“Services is the new product,” he said. “Aligning around profitability beyond the sale, whether it’s basic deployment services or advanced services that the partner can do, is the way to make a partner profitable.”
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Zscaler Hires Hammond
Zscaler has about 3,000 channel partners worldwide, according to CRN’s 2025 Channel Chiefs. The vendor’s top channel goals for the year include improving partner technical skills, increasing the amount of professional services going through partners, and encouraging partners to sell a broader part of the company’s portfolio.
Hammond joins Zscaler after about seven years with Exabeam, according to his LinkedIn account. He left Exabeam with the title of worldwide channel sales and alliances vice president.
His resume includes about two years with Carbon Black, leaving in 2017 with the title of worldwide channel and alliances sales VP. VMware acquired Carbon Black in 2019.
At Zscaler, Hammond will report to Anthony Torsiello, senior vice president of partners and alliances.
Customers are demanding “less complexity, more cloud, more services led from partners,” he told CRN. Even hyperscalers “are not necessarily wanting to get into and handle all the services. They want to do the transaction.”
“You’re going to see partners emerge that, whether it’s in security or data, that were middle players that are going to get really big because they’ve embraced the services piece. And that just solves what customers want,” he said.
Other recent big-name executive moves in the security space include Cato Networks hiring Karl Soderlund as its new global channel chief and Wiz naming Fazal Merchant as its president and CFO.
