Immediately before his hiring at Cupertino, Calif.-based Sugar CRM, Coulson was VP of business development for Parature, which markets Web-based customer service software. While there, he had global responsibility for channel, alliance and strategic partnership programs. Before that, to get to the headline experience, he was SAP's senior director of business development and field operations and prior to that he was senior director of solutions alliances for Salesforce.com. It all adds up to the fact that he's a channel guy.