Barracuda Partner Advisory Council (#CudaPAC) 2018

The Barracuda Partner Advisory Council (#CudaPAC) convenes annually for some friendship, fun, and very important feedback from partners on a variety of topics.  This year we were at Lake Tahoe for two days of sessions and roundtables before heading over to the Montreux to wrap things up with the Barracuda Championship Microsoft ProAm Tournament. 

Most attendees arrived Sunday to register and get to know each other a bit at our welcome dinner.  Monday morning started with an early breakfast at the Lone Eagle Grille followed by an opening session presented by CEO BJ Jenkins on where Barracuda is headed as a company.   BJ spends this time engaging with partners on accomplishments of the past year and what we're planning for the future.  This is an important piece of our sessions so that our partners get a recap of the business and we can start the #CudaPAC work with a shared understanding of  Barracuda from the corporate perspective.  This is also time for our partners to give us feedback on the overall business and partnership.

The remaining sessions covered key aspects of the business:

Hatem Naguib, SVP & GM of our security business presented information on the innovations and accomplishments from his team.  Our email protection advancements received an enthusiastic response from the group, with many expressing an interest in Barracuda Phishline, our anti-phishing training and simulation platform.  Recent studies have shown that user training remains a priority for customers.  Barracuda Phishline makes it easy to add user training to existing email protection solutions.  

Rod Mathews, SVP & GM of Data Protection had a lot to talk about in terms of new technologies and features from the backup and archiving teams.  These accomplishments include a new dashboard, replication to AWS and a receiver Vx, our encrypted appliances, and the new BBS 295.

Brian Babineau, SVP & GM of MSP Solutions received some great feedback on what partners need to fully roll out Barracuda MSP solutions to their clients.  He also discussed the hybrid nature of the MSP / IT consulting business and how to offer services to increase profitability.

Ezra Hookano discussed the history of our channel program (though he did not go all the way back to October 13, 2003!) and offered details on the future plans.  The partners offered excellent feedback in this session on how we can help them be successful.  Ezra is VP of Channels Americas.

Tim Jefferson, VP of Public Cloud, discussed the intelligent cloud, intelligent edge, and IoT security.  One of the technologies he discussed was our ability to programmatically protect web applications with the Barracuda Vulnerability Manager (BVRM) and Remediation Service which works with the Barracuda WAF.  The BVRM will import results from a Barracuda Vulnerability Manager scan and create remediation policies on the WAF as needed.  

Erin Hintz gave the final session, which was a conversation on our brand.  Our partners gave us great feedback on this, just like they had through all of the sessions.  Erin is SVP and Chief Marketing Officer.

Monday and Tuesday ended with roundtable sessions on various topics.  This was a chance for everyone to deep dive into WAF-as-a-Service, email security, public cloud, partner programs, and more. 

There's more to the #CudaPAC than these sessions and roundtables.  We had awards, a Microsoft keynote, and an all-day Barracuda Championship Microsoft ProAm Tournament.  Follow the links for more information on those, and follow us on social media for updates throughout the week.