Brendan T. O'Connor

Brendan O'Connor is a senior commercial executive with more than 25 years of channels, strategy, and licensing leadership at Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Sage Software. He founded The Brushton Group in 2018 to bring enterprise-grade partner ecosystem expertise to technology companies at every stage of growth.

Brendan began his career as a mechanical engineer at Westinghouse Savannah River Company, where he served as one of six Lead Engineers on a $400M classified national security project at one of the Department of Energy's largest nuclear facilities. That engineering discipline, systems thinking, operational rigor, and first-principles problem solving, has shaped every commercial role that followed.

He moved into venture-backed technology as a Program Manager at Innovation Works (formerly Ben Franklin Technology Center), where he managed a $6M early-stage investment portfolio and sourced the early Challenge Grant investment in FreeMarkets Online, which later IPO'd with a 440% first-day gain and grew into a $4.3B acquisition chain.

At Microsoft, Brendan spent 18 years building the licensing models, deal structures, and partner ecosystems that became industry standards. He co-architected Microsoft's Licensing 6.0 enterprise volume licensing program and the Enterprise Agreement channel architecture, spanning the US, Canada, and 22 Western European countries. He later led Microsoft's $1.2B global partner incentive budget during the cloud-first transformation, funding the launch of Microsoft's first Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) incentive model from the enterprise incentive budget.

At Cisco, Brendan co-developed the company's first Enterprise Agreement model and designed the sales playbook for hardware-focused GSIs to sell enterprise software licensing, creating the GTM foundation for the company's first global GSI EA channel.

At Sage, he served as Senior Director of Global Alliances and Partners, negotiating a 5-year, multi-million dollar Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS that drove 900% co-sell revenue growth in a single year. He also created and led the company's ISV partner market and product development strategy, generating $350M+ in incremental revenue.

Brendan holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MS Industrial Administration (MBA Equivalent) from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. He is based in Sarasota, FL.