McAfee appointed insider Dave Dickison, a sales veteran and former channel representative, to head its U.S. channel, the company announced July 20.

Dickison takes over as senior vice president of North American Channels in year four of a shift to a partner-led go to market strategy the company expects to boost enterprise sales.

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More than half of that shift was shepherded by Dave Roberts, and Dickison inherits a channel team and partner program Roberts built on channel talent and procedures picked up during years at Microsoft, said Jim Lewandowski, McAfee's executive vice president of the Americas, in May.

Roberts left in May to run sales at Websense, a McAfee rival.

Dickison's priority at McAfee will be partner profitability—creating a services-enabled channel, developing deeper relationships with networking solution providers, ensuring they have access to the appropriate tools and program offerings, and focused spending to increase SMB market share, Lewandowski said.

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"Dave has been instrumental in McAfee's successful evolution to a channel-driven organization, and his previous work with partners makes him an excellent choice to lead the North American channel organization and to continue its growth and expansion," he said.

"His commitment to delivering the best partner and customer experience along with his knowledge of the global partner program and the entire McAfee product portfolio will prove essential as he steps into this new role."

Under Roberts, McAfee developed the Security Alliance channel program that streamlined the vendor's channel and rewards programs and the MAX partner portal, which formalized a communication platform between partners and the channel organization.

He also quadrupled the channel organization, many of whom are channel talent Roberts met during his years at Microsoft, Lewandowski said.