More Partners, Bigger Strike Zone. As Crowdstrike looks to bring its trailblazing security platform to SMBs—with the help of an army of MSP partners—CEO George Kurtz says the company has put 'legacy' technologies and top rivals such as Microsoft in its crosshairs.
ISSUE 1423 • OCTOBER 2023 crn.com
100 PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW BUT SHOULD Time for the spotlight PAGE 12 THE SMART CHANNEL PLAY It’s ‘go time’ for AI PAGE 23 ANNUAL REPORT CARD Who scored big wins? PAGE 28
NEWS, ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVE FOR VARs AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATORS
More Partners, Bigger Strike Zone As CrowdStrike looks to bring its trailblazing security platform to SMBs—with the help of an army of MSP partners—CEO
George Kurtz says the company has put ‘legacy’ technologies and top rivals such as Microsoft in its crosshairs. PAGE 6
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Computer Reseller News October 2023 Columns 5 The Final Cut By Steven Burke 42 The Channel Factor By Jennifer Follett
As CrowdStrike looks to bring its trailblazing security platform to SMBs—with the help of an army of MSP partners—CEO George Kurtz says the company has put ‘legacy’ technologies and top rivals such as Microsoft in its crosshairs. More Partners, Bigger Strike Zone
Features 23 AI: The Smart Play
Our special section looks at why now is ‘go time’ for solution providers to get into the AI game and which ones are already making their moves. This year’s class of Triple Crown winners— those solution providers honored on the Solution Provider 500, Fast Growth 150 and Tech Elite 250—rose to the challenge in a tough economic environment.
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Channel Value Every year CRN recognizes the efforts of the behind- the-scenes individuals at vendors and distributors who are making things better for partners every day. Our 100 People You Don’t Know But Should list puts the spotlight on the value they bring not only to their own organization, but to the channel at large.
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THE FINAL CUT Nutanix Is Channel Strong ‘INTEGRITY IS DOING THE RIGHT THING WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING’ By Steven Burke
SHANE GARRETT, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF WEI, No. 94 on the 2023 CRN Solution Provider 500, has seen a lot of companies buckle at the last minute when it comes to supporting partners on market-making enterprise deals involving countless sales and technical resources. That’s why Garrett could not have been more thrilled when Nutanix recently stood by his elite technical team,
refusing to yield to a customer’s last-minute request to transfer the deal to a trans- actional partner under the guise of price parity. In the end, Nutanix protected the partner as well as the account planning and engagement model that is at the heart of every good channel program. No small matter given that it was a complex VDI solution amounting to one of the largest marketplace deals ever for WEI. “I have never seen a vendor in a situation like this with so much pressure remain loyal to the partner that they were working with from the inception of the deal,” said Garrett, a 20-year channel sales veteran. “That is a tribute to the channel- strong Nutanix culture. Nutanix has built a program where we can invest, add value and bring services to customers and then be rewarded for that investment.” Garrett credits Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami for creating a channel-first cul- ture and the Nutanix Americas channel team led by Vice President of Americas Channels Christian Goffi for ensuring that the company’s disciplined channel model is enforced under any and all circumstances. “Christian’s practical sales experience working on deals like this was key,” said Garrett. “He knows what it takes to put these complex solution deals together. It’s a matter of protecting Nutanix, the partner and the customer with the right solution and services.” What gets lost in a deal like this is the consulting services that go into doing detailed solution comparisons and the complex integration and services once the deal is done. In this case, the WEI multi-cloud Nutanix solution was more scalable with stronger return on investment than a single-threaded hyperscaler solution. The Nutanix channel-strong culture is a huge competitive advantage in a market where the first reflex of many CEOs and channel chiefs is to give in and look the other way when faced with high-pressure choices. Many CEOs and channel chiefs simply don’t want to get their hands dirty. Goffi, for his part, said it is simply a matter of integrity and doing the right thing. To that point, he said, “Integrity and being channel-centric is not something you can do sometimes. It has to be ingrained in the culture. It is the little things that say the biggest things about who you are. It might feel like a little thing to give in—even one time—but it means a lot if you do. Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking. Either you are channel-centric or you are not. We have a channel-centric culture.” That culture is paying off for Nutanix channel partners. In the case of WEI, the solution provider’s overall sales with Nutanix will double this year. On top of that, WEI’s new Nutanix logo wins are up 20 percent this year. It’s the kind of payback that results from a channel-first culture backed up by a channel-first CEO and channel team. “It’s all about being better together,” said Garrett.
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5
OCTOBER 2023
COVER STORY
More Partners, Bigger Strike Zone As CrowdStrike looks to bring its trailblazing security platform to SMBs—with the help of an army of MSP partners—CEO George Kurtz says the company has put ‘legacy’ technologies and top rivals such as Microsoft in its crosshairs.
By Kyle Alspach
E ven among the smallest of businesses, James Range has witnessed a dramatic shift in their willingness to spend on cybersecurity. Range pointed to the recent case of a small busi- ness that his company,White Rock Cybersecurity, has been working with. Despite having just 10 users, the tax software firm opted to deploy premium endpoint security technology from an enterprise-focused vendor: CrowdStrike. Why? Because the vendor’s track record suggested it would offer the best chance of holding the hackers at bay. And today, that’s priority No. 1 for a growing set of small and midsize busi- nesses, he said. “What they’re thinking is, ‘We have to be protected because if something happens, we’re out of business,’” said Range, the CEO of Dallas-based White Rock. It’s not just SMB attitudes that have changed, however. Solution providers such asWhite Rock now recognize that CrowdStrike— which is among the most prominent and widely used vendors in the enterprise security space—is also an increasingly good fit for SMB customers. Through the launch of Falcon Go—a more affordable version of its acclaimed Falcon security platform—CrowdStrike is hitting the right note with White Rock’s smaller customers, Range said. Falcon Go “has been a dynamite product. It helps get people [into CrowdStrike],” Range said. “It’s definitely geared for your SMB customer. It’s a little easier to use, but it’s still got most of the bells and whistles that [SMBs] need to protect their businesses and their livelihoods.” In addition, a major partnership with Pax8 is also playing
a key role as CrowdStrike is working aggressively to bring its technology down into the SMB market, an exceedingly rare move for a top-tier enterprise tech vendor. But according to CrowdStrike co-founder and CEO George Kurtz, the company is aiming big with small businesses, with the goal of transforming cybersecurity for SMBs in the same way it has for the enterprise. Plagued by data breaches and ransomware attacks, SMBs are simply not being protected by existing security tools from Microsoft and “legacy” antivirus vendors, Kurtz said in a recent interview with CRN . If those tools were doing the job, “there wouldn’t be companies like CrowdStrike, and you wouldn’t see all these breaches,” he said. CrowdStrike’s promise, Kurtz said, is to offer smaller businesses “something better”—the same core technology that has enabled substantial improvement in preventing ransomware in the enter- prise but simplified for SMB use. The early results from the SMB push have been positive, accord- ing to CrowdStrike executives. For SMBs that have struggled with cyberattacks, there’s huge interest in acquiring something that can truly “make the problem go away,” Kurtz said. “It’s very, very compelling.” The cybersecurity giant’s work with channel partners is the engine driving the SMB initiative, CrowdStrike executives said. In particular, CrowdStrike’s Pax8 partnership has been “game- changing,” Kurtz said. In the past, Pax8 has been instrumental in bringing an array of cloud-based technologies to MSPs and their SMB customers—a list that has notably included Microsoft’s cloud offerings.
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OCTOBER 2023
Pax8 is now looking to do the same for CrowdStrike, the dis- tributor’s executives said. Given that CrowdStrike is “the gold standard in the enterprise cybersecurity space,” it’s a very big deal that MSPs are now gaining access to the technology in a way that’s tuned to their needs, said David Powell, vice president of sales strategy at Pax8. Looking ahead, MSPs will have access not just to CrowdStrike’s flagship endpoint security product but also to its tools for protecting identity, data, cloud workloads and more—all of which are capabili- ties that it offers as easy-to-deploy “modules” on its cloud-native, single-agent platform, according to company executives. CrowdStrike currently offers 23 different modules covering an array of security categories, and the plan is to make all of them available to Pax8 partners as soon as possible, said CrowdStrike Chief Business Officer Daniel Bernard. In short, the battle is on for the SMB customer among Crowd- Strike and other security vendors that focus on the smaller end of the market. But there’s one competitor in particular that’s on Kurtz’s mind: Microsoft. ‘The Clear Winner’ Starting in late 2020, multiple global financial service firms sought out solution provider powerhouse World Wide Technology for some badly needed assistance. Amid the explosion in cyberattacks prompted by the pandemic, the financial giants were looking to find the best endpoint security tool for securing worker laptops against the throng of hackers seeking to steal data and deploy ransomware. WWT’s Advanced Technology Center—a physical and vir- tualized tech lab with more than 200 specialists and six data centers, capable of performing exhaustive tests on IT technolo- gies—seemed like an ideal place to get the rigorous testing they were looking for. And so throughout much of 2021,WWT’sAdvancedTechnology Center team performed a battery of tests on endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools from top vendors including CrowdStrike and Microsoft, recalled Chris Konrad, area vice president for global cyber at WWT. The teams tested for security effectiveness, performance on endpoint devices and network utilization. The financial service firms also brought in their own penetration testers to launch simulated cyberattacks against the EDR tools. “This was very holistic testing across the board,” Konrad said, noting one firm’s assessment was so thorough it lasted 11 months. In the end, according to Konrad, every one of the financial service firms came to the same conclusion: “CrowdStrike came out as the clear winner.” For major enterprise-focused channel players like St. Louis- based WWT, No. 9 on CRN ’s 2023 Solution Provider 500, successes like these have cemented CrowdStrike’s reputation in endpoint protection technology.
In talking to CISOs who have used CrowdStrike, they consistently report a high level of satisfaction with the company’s product, said Lee Waskevich, vice president of security at Herndon, Va.-based ePlus Technology, No. 28 on CRN ’s 2023 Solution Provider 500. “Some of the largest companies have felt that the investment they made in CrowdStrike was a worthy investment,”Waskevich said. “I think where people see the value, they’re going to pay that price. And I don’t see a lot of people switching away from CrowdStrike.” During the second quarter of CrowdStrike’s fiscal 2024, ended July 31, revenue climbed 37 percent from the same period a year earlier to reach $731.6 million, surpassing Wall Street estimates despite the challenging macroeconomic conditions. In the fiercely competitive endpoint security market, Crowd- Strike holds the largest share at 17.7 percent, according to the latest available figures from IDC for July 2021 through June 2022. That put the Austin, Texas-based company ahead of No. 2 Microsoft, whose market share was 16.4 percent. Now, as CrowdStrike looks to replicate its enterprise success at the SMB level, the company is once again coming up against its familiar rival from Redmond. Like CrowdStrike, Microsoft is on a mission to win over SMBs on endpoint security with its Defender products that are bundled into many of its Microsoft 365 software licenses. Microsoft’s massive presence in the business world and its bun- dling strategy remain a serious challenge for CrowdStrike, solution provider executives noted, particularly as many customers look to save wherever possible amid the uncertain economic environment. At the same time, the list of customers that have adopted CrowdStrike after suffering a breach even with Microsoft security technologies in place is growing, Kurtz told CRN . He points to CrowdStrike’s own findings: In three out of four breaches of Microsoft customers that CrowdStrike’s incident response team has investigated over the years, Defender had been in use but had been bypassed by attackers. It’s a major lead generator for CrowdStrike, according to Kurtz. “We routinely convert Microsoft customers that have been breached using Microsoft security technologies into CrowdStrike customers,” he said. Ultimately, he contends that Microsoft is seeing a diminishing opportunity to convince businesses to adopt its security products with its sales pitch of, “‘You get it for free, use it.’” “[Customers] are saying, ‘Well, you’re putting us at risk,’” Kurtz said. “That’s really what we’re hearing from customers—Microsoft is putting them at risk.” IDC figures show that CrowdStrike’s endpoint security rev- enue grew faster than Microsoft’s during the period of July 2021 through June 2022, by 62.4 percent, compared with Microsoft’s growth of 59.2 percent during the period. That was a reversal from the previous 12-month period’s figures, when Microsoft had grown significantly faster on endpoint security revenue than CrowdStrike, according to IDC.
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COVER STORY
CrowdStrike’s win rates versus Microsoft “continue to be very high,” CrowdStrike President Michael Sentonas told CRN . In a statement provided to CRN , Microsoft said that “cybersecu- rity is a top priority for Microsoft and has been for over 20 years.” “Anecdotal comments and marketing speak from competitors simply seeking market share does nothing towards keeping all customers safer,” Microsoft said in the statement. “We believe collaboration and partnership across the security industry is essen- tial to stay ahead of expansive advanced threats and find the aggressive competitive framing of security issues unfortunate.” ‘Not Mutually Exclusive’ As CrowdStrike’s move into the SMB market escalates its yearslong rivalry with Microsoft, solution providers are taking a variety of approaches when it comes to helping customers to select one—or both—of the vendors. Some solution provid-
need to be able to answer some really tough questions,” Drolet said. “CrowdStrike helps do that.” For SMBs, it’s abundantly clear that the market is underserved on security, CrowdStrike’s Bernard said. As just one indicator, tech-driven cyber insurer Coalition disclosed in a mid-2022 report that average claims for SMBs had surged 58 percent from the year before. “The modern attacks aren’t being stopped by whatever tech- nologies are deployed there,” Bernard said. “This is a market that so desperately needs modern, AI-powered cybersecurity.” To quickly improve the security posture of smaller businesses, CrowdStrike’s cloud-native architecture is a major advantage, Kurtz said. “It’s super easy to get an SMB up and running” on the platform, he said. And along with its affordability, the Falcon Go offering pro-
vides the core elements necessary to drastically improve threat visibility and prevention for SMBs, Kurtz said.
‘ e modern attacks aren’t being stopped by whatever technologies are being deployed there. is is a market that so desperately needs modern, AI- powered cybersecurity.’ — Daniel Bernard, Chief Business O cer, CrowdStrike
ers, such as White Rock, are finding that Crowd- Strike is actually less expensive than using Microsoft for endpoint security. In part, that’s on account of the “real expenses that the Micro- soft product has as far as
For the vendor and its partners, he said, SMB represents “such a mas- sive market that I think it will drive growth for many years to come.” To spearhead the SMB initiative, CrowdStrike hired Bernard, who was previously the CMO at SentinelOne, as chief business officer in January. Then came the Pax8 partnership. ‘Consumable For SMBs’ At Pax8, which serves nearly 30,000 partners, a growing chorus of solution providers had been asking the same thing in recent years: “‘When are you going to get CrowdStrike?’” said Nick Heddy, chief commerce officer at the Greenwood Village, Colo.- based distributor. To make CrowdStrike feasible for many MSPs and their SMB customers, however, there were obstacles that needed to be over- come. Requirements around the minimum number of licenses were a big one. So were the requirements for up-front payments and yearlong commitments. Pax8 and CrowdStrike, however, have worked together to address all of these issues, he said. Now partners will be able to acquire CrowdStrike licenses for a single user for just one month, allowing them to easily try the technology before expanding it across their customer base, Heddy said. The distributor is also handling some of the heavy lifting by taking on support and billing responsibilities for the CrowdStrike platform, he said. Pax8’s core mission is to “make things consumable for SMBs. And we absolutely did that with Microsoft,” Heddy said. “We
time, effort, putting all the different pieces together,”White Rock’s Range said. CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform, on the other hand, “takes less people to run. It’s easier to use,” he said. Another increasingly common scenario is that customers that already have Defender through a Microsoft 365 subscription will adopt CrowdStrike in addition to it, said Michelle Drolet, founder and CEO of Framingham, Mass.-based solution providerTowerwall. “A lot of organizations now are coming to us saying, ‘We have Defender, but we need defense-in-depth,’” she said, referencing the strategy of deploying numerous cyberdefense tools to make up for the limitations of any single product or technology. A frequent question from Microsoft customers is, “‘What else can we look at?’” Drolet said. “While Defender is still there with the E5 and E3 licenses, we’re adding layers with CrowdStrike—if not taking [Defender] out.” CrowdStrike frequently encounters this scenario across its customer base, according to Kurtz. “I really want to hammer this because I don’t think it’s as well-known that Microsoft and CrowdStrike are not mutually exclusive,” he said. All in all, demand for more effective cybersecurity tools is rising amid the intensifying threat landscape, growing insurance and regulatory requirements and myriad other security-related pressures. “The ransoms are getting larger. Cyber insurance policies are getting dropped. For our customers to sell to their customers, they
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intend to do the exact same thing with CrowdStrike—take an amazing product and make it consumable for managed service providers who serve SMBs.” Historically, few companies in the IT industry “have been enterprise-first and then committed to come down to the chan- nel, to work with the SMB community,” said Powell, a channel and cybersecurity industry veteran who joined Pax8 in April. Microsoft, of course, is one of them. Now, CrowdStrike is making the right moves to be next, he said: “Their willingness to do this right—not just dabble in it, but to really engage with the channel in the correct way—has been really encouraging.” Even as CrowdStrike looks to unleash an army of new MSP partners, the vendor is also seeking to bolster its work with exist- ing partners, executives said. With the September unveiling of its new channel program,Accel- erate, executives said it’s the biggest update to the CrowdStrike program since it debuted in 2015. As Bernard puts it, Accelerate constitutes a “tectonic shift” in CrowdStrike’s approach to working with partners.The program features expanded discounts and incen- tives, greater resources around support and marketing, reduced response times for deal registration and a refreshed video training series, CrowdClass. CrowdStrike has also launched a new marketing campaign platform for partners, dubbed “the grid,” which includes an array of co-branded sales resources. The platform allows partners to enter in a list of customers or prospects and then generates “up- to-the-minute marketing material,” saidWhite Rock’s Range.“It’s a huge benefit.” ForWhite Rock, the combination of CrowdStrike’s strong tech- nology and partner enablement is leading the solution provider to expect revenue growth of at least 50 percent this year in its CrowdStrike business, Range said. “CrowdStrike has definitely been a home run for us,” he said. Looking ahead, CrowdStrike is aiming to build out its channel- focused routes to market even further, and “we also need to continue to invest and enable our partners,” Kurtz told CRN . “That’s an area that we really want to focus on. We know we can do better there.” Going forward, CrowdStrike will also be doubling down on helping partners to utilize more of the modules now available on its platform, executives said. Emerging Opportunities Whether large or small, most businesses are dealing with the same types of cybersecurity issues right now: too much complexity, not enough expertise, changing threats. Bringing more of CrowdStrike’s capabilities to customers, beyond its core endpoint security technology, can help address all these issues at the same time, solution provider executives said. For starters, many customers are looking to consolidate more of their security tools on a single vendor to reduce complexity and cost, executives said.
Meanwhile, thanks in part to CrowdStrike’s success at stop- ping hackers on endpoints, identity-based attacks that aim to get around endpoint detection are surging. For many businesses, “identity threats are No. 1” right now, said Adam Meyers, head of Counter Adversary Operations at CrowdStrike. In this environment, CrowdStrike reports rapid customer adoption of its identity threat protection and detection capabili- ties—and executives pointed to the modules as a next area for partners to explore. Additional CrowdStrike modules cover cloud workload protec- tion, data security and observability, log management and many more key areas of interest to businesses. Bringing it all together is CrowdStrike’s XDR (extended detec- tion and response) technology, which correlates threat data from across the tools as well as numerous third-party products. New modules can also be added quickly and easily thanks to CrowdStrike’s single-agent, cloud-native architecture, according to executives from CrowdStrike and from solution provider partners. Working with CrowdStrike makes it far easier to have con- versations with customers around consolidating their security tools, said Faisal Abou-Shahla, director of security enablement and sales at Irvine, Calif.-based Trace3, No. 36 on CRN ’s 2023 Solution Provider 500. With CrowdStrike, customers “can get one holistic solution that covers many different areas, and they can add on what they need as they expand and want more coverage in a certain space,” Abou-Shahla said. ‘Better Path Forward’ Along with continuing to add new modules to its platform as threat trends evolve, CrowdStrike is enhancing its platform with generative AI technology, executives said. CrowdStrike recently unveiled Charlotte AI, which the com- pany calls a “generativeAI security analyst” that can dramatically boost productivity and effectiveness for cyber defense teams, according to the company. The tool can “accelerate the human decision-making process, which is critical in cyber,” Sentonas said. Ultimately, whether it’s about displacing existing endpoint security vendors, vying with Microsoft or offering protection against modern threats such as identity-based attacks, Kurtz said that CrowdStrike’s technology platform remains its top advantage, just as it has since the company’s founding in 2011. “We instrument the technology in the Falcon platform in such a way that we get full visibility across the [attack] chain,” he said. Even if no malware is used in an attack, “we’re still going to be able to see and prevent it,” Kurtz said. For partners and customers that are exhausted by today’s threat environment and are looking for a new approach, Kurtz said CrowdStrike has a hopeful message for them: “There’s a better path forward that’s going to provide better prevention at a lower cost to them.”
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OCTOBER 2023
COVER STORY
CrowdStrike co-founder and CEO George Kurtz discusses how the company is doubling down on partners, competing with Microsoft on security and expanding more broadly within the IT space.
When it comes to preventing breaches, what are the biggest reasons you’d argue CrowdStrike is superior to Microsoft’s technology? I ask every customer this—it’s a very simple question: ‘When is the last time Microsoft has called you and said you had a potential breach condition?’ I haven’t got one answer— not one. We’ve got an overlay where we’re engaging with customers. And we’re focusing on getting an outcome. The outcome is stopping the breach. If we see something and the company doesn’t take action, we’re on the phone, we’re emailing, we’re engaging with them.Time is a critical element in stopping breaches—seconds matter.And that’s what we do end to end. That’s highly differentiated from Microsoft, or pick any of the other competitors that are out there in our space, because they haven’t built this integrated approach. And candidly, they don’t really have the architecture that gives them the real-time visibility we have. At your investor day in the spring, you shared a stat that with 75 percent of breaches of Microsoft customers that you’ve investigated, Defender had been in use but was bypassed. Does that continue to be the case? Absolutely. When we go in and we investigate these attacks—yes, there’s probably some Microsoft technology that got exploited. But a lot of times, it’s Defender that’s actually being used to protect against these attacks. It really is the fox guarding the henhouse. If you look at the latest breaches that you’ve seen in the government space, and you look at some of the certificates that were stolen, and the [attackers’] ability to impersonate other users across the [Microsoft] 365 environment, it’s scary. And that’s a function of some of the architectural challenges that existed pre-2000, in the way Microsoft works and the way [Active] Directory works. Those challenges were just moved and replicated, en masse, into their cloud. So it’s a challenge for many customers.And there’s a reason why we’ve done so well—because we’re not building applications. We’re
not building cloud architectures. We’re building security technologies that work across a heterogeneous environ- ment and across all cloud environments. And that’s what customers are looking for. Are you expecting to see more partners switching from Microsoft security technologies to CrowdStrike? I absolutely think so. Because more and more, we’re seeing the crisis in confidence from Microsoft customers—where they’ve had a problem, they had a breach, they read the news.When the U.S. government is being breached because of Microsoft’s own architectural flaws, that’s pretty concern- ing.And I think you have partners looking at that and going, ‘OK, what else is out there? Maybe there are other things that we need to add to the mix to make sure that these cus- tomers stay safe.’ [It’s] death by a thousand cuts. It’s the technology which is insecure, which is your zero-day Tuesdays. It’s things like the U.S. government being breached because of Microsoft’s failures.There’s only so many opportunities to say, ‘Hey, you get it for free, use it’ when people are saying, ‘Well, you’re putting us at risk.’ And that’s really what we’re hearing from customers—Microsoft is putting them at risk. In terms of expanding into the SMB market, do you see the potential to do the same thing there that you did for enterprises? That’s absolutely right. [Cybersecurity] is one of the unique spaces where you can protect the DoD [Department of Defense] and you can protect the smallest little SMB—it basically is the same technology. So what we found is that being born in the cloud, it’s super easy to get an SMB up and running. We remove a lot of the complexity for them. Time-to-value is immediate. And we’re seeing that in the SMB space, there’s still a very fragmented market of legacy [antivirus] players that are there, and that’s pretty much all they have for protec-
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tion.And when you offer them something better—when you offer them the ability to make the problem go away and not have to deal with the managing, the care and feeding, and the head count—it’s very, very compelling. So it’s still in the early innings, but it’s such a massive market that I think it will drive growth for many years to come. Specific to the partner network, bringing on Daniel Bernard [as chief business officer] and really focusing on this SMB space, creating relationships with companies like Pax8 … this has really been game-changing for us to be able to get into the SMB partner ecosystem and have success there. What makes the Pax8 partnership so critical to your SMB strategy? You can’t go to every little managed service provider out there. [Pax8 has] access to 30,000 managed service providers that have relationships in the SMB market.And when you add it all up, it’s the law of large numbers—a lot of little numbers add up pretty quick.And that has been, I think, a tremendous path for us to get to these smaller SMBs—and obviously, smaller managed service provider channel partners that we simply couldn’t [reach] on our own. Has Falcon Go been another key piece of the puzzle in terms of reaching SMBs? Yes, which we didn’t have when we started the company. So we’ve been able to take world-leading technology and pack- age it up in a way that makes it super easy for a customer to buy and to consume, and for partners to be able to leverage that and sell that into their customer base. It doesn’t have every bell and whistle of the full enterprise product, which you would expect, but the core elements of what’s needed in terms of prevention and visibility are there. So Falcon Go has been a great addition. What are your other major areas of investment in partners right now? From resellers to cloud providers to managed service pro- viders to PC OEMs—there’s an opportunity for all of these various partners to be successful with CrowdStrike. And we’re investing in it. And you can see the investment with [Bernard] being able to create a separate organization, out- side the sales organization. Most sales organizations are focused on making their number every 90 days. So the fact that we’ve been able to move this into a separate group, run by [Bernard], and make the investments that we’re making from both a time and dollar perspective I think is really important for partners.We can’t be successful if they’re not, and we need to continue to build out these routes to mar- ket now.We also need to continue to invest and enable our
partners. And I think that’s an area that we really want to focus on.
Beyond SMB, what are the other major opportunities for your partners in working with CrowdStrike right now? We need to empower [partners] and make sure they know about a lot of the other modules and can sell the other modules above and beyond the core endpoint protection technologies that everybody knows us for. Identity has been just tremendous, in terms of the adoption—one of the fastest- growing modules we’ve ever introduced.We’ve got LogScale [for] SIEM [security information and event management], which is growing like a weed. [On] cloud protection, we’ve really harmonized cloud workload protection with CSPM [cloud security posture management]. It’s very easy now for customers to consume that. We’ve had tremendous success in those areas. So those are the growth areas that we want to continue to work with. What are your goals right now for expanding more broadly within the IT space, such as into areas like observability? That’s something we’re continuing to look at in a lot of fine detail. What we found is that with customers who use our technology [for cybersecurity], what happens over time is that the IT teams get wind of this technology and start to ask a few questions.And many times it’s like, ‘I didn’t realize that Falcon can actually do that.’ To give you a good example, in COVID, when everyone had their systems at home, the IT teams were scrambling on how they were going to update the systems and how they were going to reset the passwords.And they were actually using the Falcon technology to adminis- ter the systems. So what we found over time is that the IT teams have been wanting more and more of CrowdStrike. They want more visibility into the assets, they want more control. They want the ability to drive automation beyond just security tasks. And security is a big market, but IT has an even bigger budget. We’re $100 billion-plus just in securityTAM [total address- able market]. If you add IT as a new pool of dollars, it’s massive. So we think that’s really compelling.And we think the ability to leverage this agent is really valuable beach- front that we have. Customers want to do more with less. They want less agents. We’ve got the most efficient and capable agent out there—it just happens to be that we deliver security through it. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t deliver other IT outcomes using our technology.
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OCTOBER 2023
100 People You Don’t Know BUT SHOULD
By Jennifer Follett
P utting the right resources in place for solution provider partners, beefing up programs or crafting new ones to help them succeed—these are the individuals across the industry’s vendors and distributors who make things happen. It’s their turn to have the spotlight shine on all of their hard work and efforts.
Rares Matei Global Distribution Program
Jennifer Letourneau Global Leader, Partner Journey, Experience Amazon Web Services
John Hampton Sr. Director, Worldwide Customer Field Support AMD
Dylan Bittrich Global Systems Integrator Alliance Manager Aqua Security
Manager Acronis
Matei took big steps to expand Acronis’ part- ner ecosystem by building
Letourneau gets the credit for bringing the voice of the partner
With field sup- port, AMD’s Global High Performance Computing
In the year-plus since Bittrich joined Aqua Security, he has already had a
incentive programs and business plans with dozens of cloud distributors across the globe, all with the aim of helping them boost performance, increase services consumption and attract new service provid- ers to its platform.
into every meeting and program discussion, work- ing across departments to ensure partners see value in working with AWS. She has launched five guided paths to help partners navigate AWS programs based on their business model.
Center of Excellence and worldwide commercial sales development teams under his purview, Hampton never- theless always makes time to work with partners and cus- tomers to share his technical knowledge and help them through any roadblocks.
big impact. He is said to be ruthlessly focused on driving real outcomes for customers through the company’s global systems integrators, tapping into his own relationships and expertise to drive results faster than expected.
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OCTOBER 2023
Trent Carpenter Field Sales Manager Arrow Electronics
Diana Torok Director, Channel Sales, Partnerships Asimily
Nick Watkins Manager, Partner Marketing Arctic Wolf
Hakim Williams Lead Product Marketing Manager AT&T
Carpenter is lauded for his deep knowl- edge of the distribution
Torok’s col- leagues say that she is an absolute force of nature whose
Known for hav- ing a magic touch with com- munications, Watkins drives
Williams works closely with key stakeholders to make sure the strategic wire-
landscape and for con- stantly putting channel partners first. He has become adept at the bal- ancing act needed to align channel partners with Arrow’s resources and capabilities, building a solid strategy both with and for its partners.
energy and knowledge are a catalyst for growth. As a result, partners love working with her, and she is seen as a pivotal player in Asimily’s channel suc- cess—one who is having a demonstrable impact on partners’ business.
awareness and engagement across Arctic Wolf’s channel community to develop strat- egy, generate pipeline and enhance the overall partner experience. His willingness to dedicate himself to any initiative has won over fans internally and throughout the partner base.
line products he rolls out to the channel are impactful to partners’ business, includ- ing the development of pro- motions that have incentiv- ized the channel to hop on new business fiber services opportunities with gusto.
Allan Rickhi VP, Channels, Alliances Augtera Networks
Mimish Lesperance Sr. Director, Americas Field, Channel Marketing Barracuda
Frank Suglia VP, Technical Services BitTitan
Alessandro Raffa Director, Value, Solution Engineering BMC Software
Network opera- tions vendor Augtera brought Rickhi in at the beginning of
Lesperance has cultivated a reputation as a driving force of constant
A 20-year indus- try veteran, Suglia leads the technical ser- vices division at
Raffa created BMC’s Partner Pre-Sales Program, which supports part-
2023 to help drive adoption of its AIOps platform. He’s now building and scaling the channel and alliance ecosystem, driving revenue growth and collaborating across multiple teams to make sure the partner per- spective is front and center.
innovation in her quest to bring new programs to the Barracuda channel. It’s said that she lives and breathes channel and has had a strong, positive impact on solution providers and their level of engagement with the company.
BitTitan, where he is known for fostering trust, encourag- ing growth and empowering teammates. He’s seen as a problem-solver who always steps up in the face of a new challenge, making sure part- ners and customers get the attention they deserve.
ner pre-sales consultants by providing recommendations and best practices to ramp up their skills. It features a self-service application to define learning paths, set goals and track skills, all of which help to set channel partners up for success.
Maureen May Program Director, Global Customer Success Broadcom
Caroline Wells Channel Account Manager Cato Networks
Ken Seitz Sr. Director, Partner Managed, XaaS Sales Cisco Systems
Ash DSouza Global Head of Partner Operations, Strategy, Partner Programs Cloudflare Area 1 Security
May is a team player who often goes above and beyond the call of duty to help
Wells joined Cato’s chan- nel team over a year ago, seamlessly tran-
Seitz developed Cisco’s first cat- alog of offerings partners could use to build man-
Over the past four-plus years, DSouza’s strong analytical skills, incredible work
support her colleagues. She’s earned kudos for intro- ducing a survey and rating process to Broadcom’s Expert Advantage Partner Program, sharing her insight to help the team avoid pit- falls and ensure success.
sitioning into her new role and jumping at the chance to collaborate closely with partners and her peers. She has become a go-to resource for ideas on how to enhance processes and use innovative tools for channel success.
aged services, which is said to have redefined the way the company works with its product management and sales teams. He also leads the team that evolved Cisco’s field compensation models and other elements key to its managed services efforts.
ethic and unerring abil- ity to get things done have impressed colleagues and partners alike as he strove to drive Cloudflare’s channel strategy, build up its part- ner programs and scale its channel ecosystem.
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OCTOBER 2023
100 People You Don’t Know BUT SHOULD
Steven Gangaram Director, Partner Program Management Comcast Business and Masergy
Kipp Stumpf IT Nation Program Manager ConnectWise
Armand Boudreau Director, Global Alliance Programs, Readiness CrowdStrike
Jared Venson Partner Marketing Manager CyberQP (formerly QuickPass Cybersecurity)
Gangaram is at the helm of numerous proj- ects, including building out an
Stumpf is laser- focused on adding structure to ConnectWise’s role-based peer
B o u d r e a u oversees part- ner programs, incentives and readiness,
Venson earns kudos by work- ing behind the scenes to build connections
18-city road show in 2022, that are credited with boost- ing partner engagement and building sales opportunities. The combination of his capa- bilities, positive approach and tendency to hit his yearly goals make him a well- regarded team member.
groups. One of his recent endeavors includes taking steps to measure program effectiveness and develop a robust feedback loop to ensure partner voices are heard and incorporated into future planning.
leading a high-performing team that is on a mission to empower CrowdStrike part- ners. He played a key role in the recent launch of the ser- vice provider program, which included a new go-to-market framework that aimed to enhance partner profitability.
between CyberQP and its partners. With a hand in nearly all the content the company produces, he is said to take great pride in helping solution providers with carefully crafted mar- keting messages.
Dean Hill As-A-Service Channel Strategy Lead Dell Technologies
Shashi Nair Partner Manager, North America Cyware Labs
Adam Crockett Sr. Director, Professional Services, Modern Solutions Business Unit D&H Distributing
Brett Fountain Director, AWS Partnership Deepwatch
Hill drives operational, programmatic and technical readiness and
In less than two years at D&H, Crockett has already had a big impact on the
As Cyware made the move to adopt a channel- first philosophy, Nair tapped into
Fountain is laser- focused on his directive to nur- ture and grow Deepwatch’s
played a key role in the design of Dell’s Apex as-a- service strategy. He made sure channel considerations were incorporated from the get-go and was instrumental in establishing the structure and governance for manag- ing the new Apex offerings.
development and execution of the distributor’s profes- sional services practice. The team has grown dramati- cally under his leadership as it worked to introduce new white-label options such as Help-Desk- and Security-as- a-Service offerings.
his deep channel roots and strong cybersecurity back- ground to build Cyware One, the company’s new chan- nel program. He also drives channel strategy and opera- tions, making it his mission to recruit and grow strategic partners.
partnership with AWS. In working toward that goal, he has cultivated a reputa- tion for being a motivated, reliable teammate whose honesty, confidence, cha- risma and communication skills are keeping the rela- tionship strong.
Moran Habani Director, Business Development Dig Security
Jeff Kennedy Director, Sales, Partner Enable- ment Distributed Infrastructure Eaton
Vincent Gatti Global Business Development Manager eSentire
Cameron Tousley Director, MSP Channels ESET
Habani began her security career in the famed 8200 intelligence unit
In the wake of Eaton’s acquisi- tion of Tripp Lite in 2021, Kennedy has stepped in to
Tousley is a champion for MSPs at ESET North America, recruiting new
Gatti is respon- sible for driving and expand- ing eSentire’s partnerships
of the Israeli Defense Forces. Now at Dig Security, she’s turning heads for the work she’s done to rapidly grow the business by building strong relationships and positioning the company as a preferred partner in a com- petitive market landscape.
develop new programs and processes to help streamline business with partners. He has also added new software and support teams to create efficiencies, taking a personal interest in ensuring solution providers have the support they need.
partners, managing the largest MSP accounts and collaborating with the ESET team on ways to strengthen the company’s global pro- gram. He is viewed as a go-to resource that is able to clearly articulate market trends and partner business needs.
with Technology Service Brokers, a route to market that impacts 12,000 part- ners globally. He also has a keen sense for training and coaching partner sales teams. Over the last year his team developed over $43 million in pipeline.
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OCTOBER 2023
Nick Wolf Director, Partner Acquisition Evo Security
David Yang Sr. Director, Support, Service Exclusive Networks
Anais Dupont Global Partner Programs Manager Extreme Networks
Paul Alleluia U.S. MSSP Sales Director Fortinet
Dupont is the rock star in charge of Extreme’s MDF program,
Yang, a former Employee of the Year, drives Exclusive’s support and
Alleluia is lauded for bringing a combination of experience,
In less than a year, Wolf has grown Evo Security’s MSP ranks to 150
distributing budgets, work- ing elbow-deep in the company’s program man- agement tool and making sure that every request gets reviewed and every question gets answered—all to make sure partners receive the funds they’ve earned.
services efforts, including leading and developing the company’s sales engineer and professional services teams. He’s also often knee- deep in security market research as he hunts for new companies to enhance the distributor’s portfolio.
leadership and vision to the table. In his role driving Fortinet’s MSSP sales team in the U.S., he gets a lot of credit for playing a critical part in the daily success of the company’s managed services partners.
partners—up from 30 part- ners—in January, and he has aspirations of hitting 300 by year’s end. Helping to drive that growth are recently inked partnerships with ConnectWise and Solutions Granted.
Kyla Hunts Head of Partner Services Center of Excellence Google Cloud
Staci Corbett Sr. Channel Marketing Manager Fusion Connect
Mo Guerrero CEM GlassHive
Patrick Winters Director, Channel Sales Hammerspace
Hunts leads delivery enable- ment programs for partners, with her team
Known for his insight and win- win approach to partner- ship, Winters is
Described as a channel force to be reckoned with, Corbett has developed
GlassHive is taking the channel by storm with its MSP-targeted
focused on evolving Google Cloud’s strategy, readiness and quality. She’s leaving her mark on many of the company’s recent chan- nel efforts, including its Partner Success Services and Delivery Readiness Index programs.
working hand in hand with Hammerspace partners to forge a path to success that sees him tailor a plan to each partner’s strengths. He has developed channel enablement and marketing programs to bring new part- ners up to speed.
and manages the channel marketing strategy at cloud services provider Fusion Connect. This includes building out the company’s events strategy, partner newsletter and tools to support sales campaigns.
sales and marketing plat- form, and it’s Guerrero who’s helping build the company’s reputation for partner-first, white-glove service. He’s working hard to keep customers happy and win over new ones.
Justin Crane Director, North America Partner Programs, Transformation Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Brian Mavigliano Director, Service Delivery High Wire Networks
David Landew Director, Global Partner Program Office Hitachi Vantara
Isabella Phoenix Director, Global Channel Sustainability HP Inc.
Through her passion and expertise, Phoenix from scratch built
Colleagues d e s c r i b e Mavigliano as one of their hardest work-
Crane scoffs in the face of head- winds, refusing to let factors such as supply
Year after year, Landew has seen his role expand, and year after year
out the HP Amplify Impact program, which—since launching in 2021—is now helping over 3,500 partners tackle sustainability, human rights and digital equity with resources and training. Now she’s driving the pro- gram’s global expansion.
ing and most helpful peers. It’s no wonder, since he’s the one bridging the gap between the company’s sales team and it’s around- the-clock network and cybersecurity operations, listening to partners’ con- cerns and addressing them.
chain challenges disrupt the high-level partner expe- rience he strives to provide. He focuses on ensuring that HPE’s partner programs are finely tuned and efficiently managed every day, moti- vating partners to reach their goals.
he meets that rising chal- lenge. He is seen as an expert in Hitachi Vantara’s portfolio and the value of the company’s partner ecosys- tem who will stop at nothing to help the company and its partners succeed.
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OCTOBER 2023
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