Dive Brief:
- Meter appointed Meraki alumn Pete Atkin as head of channel and partnerships after tripling its channel team headcount over the last year, the network services provider said in a Monday announcement..
- Atkin, who led the channel organization at Cisco-owned connectivity provider Meraki, will work to expand the Meter’s indirect sales model in Europe and Asia and firm up its U.S. presence. The 11-year-old company formed relationships with key technology services distributors, value-added resellers, and IT distributors in 2025 and now runs all of its sales through partners.
- Atkin spent seven years with Meraki, ultimately leading global sales from 2015 to 2018. “I’ve spent my career scaling sales and partner teams as companies move from early traction to sustained growth, and Meter has clearly reached that point,” Atkin said in the announcement. “The approach this team is taking aligns with how enterprises actually operate today, and the demand is already there.”
Dive Insight:
In addition to Atkin, Meter brought TJ Mitchie over from Meraki to head up strategic enterprise accounts. The hires are meant to underscore the company’s networking market momentum, Meter Head of Sales and Channel Adam Ulfers told Channel Dive.
Meter owns all elements of its campus networks, including switching, access points and security appliances. In one of its routes to market, the company pre-installs networks into commercial buildings. Now, Meter is banking on partners to convince businesses to activate their subscriptions.
The all-in-one, opex model has proven attractive to customers who want to reduce complexity and partners seeking recurring revenue.
“Their name says it all. I think of Meter as LaaS: LAN-as-a-service,” Chip Hoisington, Avant VP of engineering connectivity, colo and wireless, said in an email. “Their offering is all about designing, deploying, monitoring and managing LANs as a utility.”
Hoisington said Meter’s solution performs well for multi-site, distributed businesses, freeing up IT and network teams from evaluating and configuring their LAN stack. Avant and its technology advisor partners have seen particular success in warehouses, transportation and logistics, retail and education.
Mitchie will focus on large customers in the manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and education sectors, according to the Monday announcement.
“The breadth of the platform, combined with the channel, allows us to deliver real, measurable outcomes,” Mitchie said. “I’m excited to focus enterprise conversations on results, not just components.”
Atkin now oversees a diverse partner base that includes TSDs, VARs, service providers and distributors. It’s a different set than those Atkin and Mitchie worked with at Meraki, a company that did not partner with TSDs.
“We offer multiple flexible routes to enable our partners and customers to choose the option that works best for their business. This includes traditional distribution channels for VARs and MSPs as well as referral business through our TSD partnerships,” Ulfers said.
In addition, Meter and Microsoft in 2025 forged a strategic partnership to deliver Meter through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and eventually integrate Meter with Azure cloud infrastructure.
Meter’s partner program has added staff to its sales, marketing, and engineering teams over the last 12 months. The vendor most recently partnered with security-focused distributor Exclusive Networks and TSD Telarus.
