New Zscaler Channel Leader Won't 'Boil the Ocean' in Partner Program Expansion
"I love amplifying partner communities, and that's going to be my task here," Karl Soderlund said.
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Karl Soderlund (pictured), Zscaler’s new senior vice president of worldwide partner and alliances sales, has worked at some of the largest vendors in IT and cybersecurity.
Near the beginning of his career, He directed telco operations for Cisco five years before directing Northeast sales at Extreme Networks. He went on to lead Americas sales and global alliances at Fortinet and America’s sales and marketing at HP Procurve.
Soderlund in 2011 joined Avaya to lead U.S. channel sales. He worked there for two and a half years, managing approximately 200 people. He then spent two short stints at Aruba and Imperva, in both cases performing the role of vice president of worldwide channels and alliances. Soderlund joined Palo Alto in 2017 as vice president of Americas channels. After a year, he switched to senior vice president of worldwide channel sales. Last December he started a role as senior vice president of North American ecosystem sales.
At the same time, Palo Alto promoted Tom Evans to vice president of worldwide channel sales. Evans, a five-year veteran of Palo Alto, had been working as vice president of woldwide channel sales strategy.
Soderlund in the new role oversaw sales execution for all of Palo Alto’s North American partners. Those included distributors, VARs, MSPs, systems integrators and service providers.
Soderlund said he has seen an emphasis on focus at Zscaler. He said he sees a strong sense of focus in the company’s channel efforts as well.
“We’re not trying to boil the ocean. What I mean by that is, we’re not trying to take 5,000 partners and bring them up to speed equally,” he said.
“We’re looking at the market and saying, ‘Who are the top 20 globally that we should really be investing in, and who in return are investing in us? And what scale can we get from them?'”
Soderlund’s new job takes him to a much smaller company. Palo Alto drove $1.66 billion in revenue last quarter, while Zscaler drove $388 million last quarter. Soderlund said he sees tremendous “room to grow” and potential market impact for Zscaler.
“It’s less about size. It’s more the opportunity to build. We’re really in build mode right now. We’re looking at the program, the team, the geographical coverage and what we can do to really expand. That part’s really exciting to me.”
Soderlund said he’ll be interacting with many of the same partners he knew at Palo Alto.
“In the security ecosystem, there’s a core group of 25 to 50 partners that we all have in common. And I do have long-standing relationships of 10-20 years with partners that are Zscaler partners as well, so those relationships come over with me. And I think I have a reputation of trust and credibility with them from building programs at other companies. I think that’s where there is alignment,” he said.
When it comes to bringing in new partners to the Zscaler ecosystem, Soderlund said he does not believe in “shotgun recruitment campaigns.”
“I think it’s going to be more of a rifle focus. So specific partners that are looking to invest and to grow are the ones we’re looking for,” he said.
Soderlund said he’s embarking on a listening tour to hear from partners about what they want to see from Zscaler.
He said he doesn’t want to outline any plans for the Zscaler channel program until he learns about all the different variables involved.
“Historically, if you look at channel leaders when they move to a new company, I think the first thing they do is rush too fast to make changes to really kind of put their fingerprints on the organization. What I really try to do is spend time in the field with our partners. I built a reputation on listening first and acting second, whether it’s programmatic changes, field expansion or organizational structure changes,” he said.
Zscaler works with a variety of channel partners. Those include solution providers (VARs), MSPs, global systems integrators, distributors and service providers.
And all of those routes to market need a different value from Zscaler, Soderlund said.
“In some cases the value may be from a top-line booking standpoint. In some cases it may be the services pull-through that’s the value,” he said.
“It’s really about working with each of them and understanding their needs and what success looks like and then mapping out a plan to reach that success.”
Would Zscaler consider signing a partnership with a technology services distributor (TSD) and entering the advisor/agent channel?
Soderlund said “there will be” conversations with those types of partners.
“How I think about the partner community is, I start with the end user. What the end user wants is flexibility in how they consume technology. And that flexibility comes in the form of many different partners and shapes and sizes. [The TSD channel] could very well be one of those viable routes to market for us to investigate and work with,” he said.