Fonality (News - Alert) announced recently that it hired David Beagle to be its vice president of channel development. Beagle brings a strong background to Fonality with years of experience in communications as well as channel and partner development.

Based in Plano, Texas, Fonality, Inc. provides unified phone systems for the SMB market. According to its website, it does not like obligating customers into long-term commitments, but reluctantly provides 12-month agreements. These agreements are pretty easy to get out of, however. Unsatisfied customers are advised to give Fonality 30 days to solve whatever problems there are with the service. If after that, the customer is still not satisfied, they can end the agreement.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Beagle has an established background in computer communications dating back nearly 30 years to when he was a systems specialist in the U.S. Air Force. After a few jobs, most of them as a Sales engineer, Beagle became a partner operations director with M5 Networks and advanced to channel development manager. He continued in that position when ShoreTel (News - Alert) Networks acquired M5 in 2012. His final position before joining Fonality was as director of partner business management, also for ShoreTel.

Partnerships and referrals are a major part of Fonality’s strategy. If an existing customer refers another company to Fonality, the customer can receive payment of $100 per user/seat, provided that certain conditions are met. Partners go through a more rigorous program that includes training, an online forum of Fonality partners and marketing plans.

Beagle will play a critical role for Fonality as a VP of Channel Development. Many companies either prefer not to do direct sales or feel they cannot do it effectively as value-added resellers (VARs) can, and as Forbes contributor Tom Gillis alludes to, the nature of VARs has had to change out of necessity.

The cloud has made many of the traditional VAR’s roles obsolete. Instead of leaving all the driving to the VAR, companies now leave much of the driving to the cloud provider. The role of the new VAR is to drive change and help companies deal with those changes, as it often represents a technology and paradigm shift. For companies that rely heavily on VARs as Fonality does, solid channel leadership will often be the difference between success and failure.