Matt Cook, former channel chief and current chief sales officer for Ericsson Enterprise Wireless, tells CRN about how partners ‘weren’t making enough money’ with the former partner program, Ericsson’s commitment to working hand-in-hand with the channel, and how AI as a network transformation agent is coming on quicker than anticipated, and faster than cloud.
Matt Cook joined Ericsson in September 2024 as senior vice president of global partner sales and the telecom executive four months later was named Ericsson Enterprise Wireless’ chief sales officer, a testament to the company’s commitment to doing business alongside channel partners, Cook told CRN.
Ericsson Enterprise Wireless is the combination of the company’s wireless and cellular portfolio with Cradlepoint, which Ericcson bought in 2020 for $1.1 billion, as well as cloud security specialist Ericom. Enterprises need flexible connectivity solutions, especially as AI applications and workloads drive new networking requirements and infrastructure refreshes. With AI in mind, cellular has become an important part of the networking infrastructure equation for many enterprises, not just a backup option, because many AI applications require connectivity in new, or previously hard to reach places, Cook said. But while the market is undoubtedly now coming to Ericsson instead of the other way around, the company needs to work in step with solution providers to bring together and deploy the full package, he said.
To that end, Cook is making good on his previous promise to revamp the Ericsson Enterprise Wireless partner program. The company is replacing its previous tiered resale programs for its Enterprise Wireless Solutions division with a unified partner program in which all partners start with the same base requirements and benefits. Partners can advance in the program through investment in enablement programs, the company said.
Cook sat down with CRN in an exclusive interview to learn about the partner program changes that aim to simplify operations, the network refresh opportunity, and the impact tariffs are having on the wireless business. Here are excerpts from the conversation.
Is the addition of cellular to the wireless network resonating with partners as AI demands new, flexible connectivity options?
I would say the use cases are changing the dynamics over the last year. If you go back to a year, doing some kind of cellular was very much for backup purposes, or even if you’re talking [private cellular network] PCN, you’re doing it for mobility coverage inside of buildings — that’s what
[Distributed Antenna System] DAS was all about. But DAS isn’t really playing out. I think over the last year, what you’re seeing because of AI, because of robotics, because of IoT, [cellular] starting to take a bigger foothold in places like mining and farming and everywhere else, these applications are now driving you to: It’s not one or the other. You’re doing it because if I want to have a robot dog going around the mall for security to make sure that I’m spotting trouble, Wi-Fi doesn’t work for that. It’s just it’s not very good at doing the handoffs between access point to access point, so people are looking at a coverage model that that helps them take advantage of AI, robotics [and] IoT applications, and a connectivity that’s simple and secure, and that’s it. So, all of a sudden, you’re no longer [saying]: “Do I do Wi-Fi, or do I do 5G?” Well, no, it probably makes sense to do both, because the applications support both. It just depends on what it is you’re trying to accomplish in your environment. What we’re seeing emerge over this last year is, is we’re not just backup. We’re very much application driven. We’re very much use case driven. And there’s a need that just makes sense for you to have to deploy it. It’s nice because we’re shifting from this position of creating a market trying to sell why you need us. If you want to do these applications the right way, you need this.
This market is finally coming to us versus us just creating it. And that’s where [this is] exciting. Last [year,] I was running channels for the organization and as of January, I’m now the chief sales officer. And that is a testament to Ericsson’s view of how are we going to grow in the enterprise? We’re not just going to do this by direct sales motion, because when you think about these applications that are coming out, we don’t make robot dogs. We don’t make these AI software packages. So, we need a partner who could actually pull together these full solutions to deploy those with the customer, and we recognize that we’re a piece of that. Our move forward strategy is very much through partners. That’s why we recreated the partner program and it’s a cool time to be a part of this.
What is the main goal of the newly revamped channel program?
Simplification and being easy to do business with is the name the game. That is everything. With that pile on profitability for partners. One of the things I realized is [partners] weren’t making enough money. I want them to make a lot more. If they’re going to sell our products, we’ve got to go after the market, make a lot of money doing it. We want to sell with our partners, not just through our partners, and I think there’s a big differentiation between those two. We wanted to sell with them, and we want them to be profitable doing it.
The other thing is we’re tying our [originally Cradlepoint] Mountaineers program to our partner program because we don’t want to look at those as two separate things. So if you become technically competent on our products, then there’s rewards for that and we’re just going to make it that simple. We’ve removed the tiers from the partner program. I kind of liken it to my two daughters — I don’t have a gold daughter and a silver daughter. I just have two daughters, and I love them both in their own way, and we’re looking at partners the same way as that. We are taking an emphasis off partner recruitment. I don’t think the answer for our growth is: “Go find partner number 5,230.” I think it’s making sure that we have the right partners who are in this market, who do these types of applications with their customers, and we complement them and we work very well with them side by side, as opposed to continually trying to sell people on why to work with us. The thought is, is, if it makes sense for your business and you’re doing these types of solutions for your customers, let’s work together. And if we work together and it makes sense for you and us, you’ll make a lot of money selling us. That’s kind of the heart of this program, is, take on, take all the fluff out of it. Let’s just get down to the basics of: How do we go sell this market together and grow?”
Are you seeing tariffs, or the potential of tariffs, impacting the wireless space?
Tariffs are coming up a lot, especially in the last couple weeks. It’s one of the situations we’re monitoring pretty closely. We don’t have an answer for it yet. What we don’t want to do is react too soon and just go adjust pricing. We just saw the latest thing where tariffs are going out, the stock market crashes, and then all sudden: ‘We’re going to wait for 90 days.’ Now, if we would have just adjusted pricing to react to that, which I saw in the news that several [companies] did, then it’s kind of like, are you reacting because you’re trying to protect your own profits? Are you really looking out for your customers? And so, what we are prioritizing over everything else is we’re going to stay close to the situation, but we want to be competitive and do the right thing for our customers, so we’re not going to prematurely react. Where [our] head is, is just keep moving. We’re not seeing a slowdown of pipeline. We haven’t seen a slowdown of bookings. I think we had one deal actually delay because of [the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency] DOGE. That’s it. So, would I say one deal equals an impact? No, not really. So, I would say at this point, we’re not reacting. We’re trying to figure out: How do we do this? And we’ve seen a couple good practices out there where it just becomes a line item — tariff — where you don’t adjust pricing, just put in a line item. Everybody would understand it. So, we’re trying to work through stuff like this. But I don’t think we really know what’s going to happen yet, so we’re going to wait and see and just make sure that we do what’s correct for the customer.
Is AI driving the wireless network refresh opportunity?
Definitely over the last six months it’s been a driver because it’s coming on quicker than we anticipated. I remember when cloud became a thing, we were very excited, there was definitely hype cycle, but it took some time before it really became monetized. You started seeing 5 percent [of workloads] move to the cloud and now we’re seeing [about] 40 percent, but it took some time to get there. With AI, it just seems like people are putting money into it and they want to see a payback on it quickly. You’re starting to see this convergence — it’s not just AI as a standalone [technology]. We’ve got AI integrated into our products. I’ve got AI integrated into our sales process and in our technical support. So, what you’re seeing is, AI is being integrated in with other products that drives a demand. What we’re noticing is self-driving cars in one market. You’re seeing robotics in another market. You’re seeing IoT in another market. These as individual things have been out there for literally years and years — We’ve been talking about IoT for at least the last 20-25, years. That is a standalone need, but it wasn’t enough to get everybody to start investing in it heavily. You take IoT with AI, it changes the entire proposition of IoT. Now it makes the entire use case something that’s viable and something that customers are wanting to invest in. So, I would say it’s definitely had an impact over the last six months because AI combined with these other technologies, is making it something people want to invest in. As they invest it drives a need for mobility or a different way of coverage, which ends up driving the need for our technologies.
