Partners’ Most Pressing Needs

CF: What are you hearing from partners in terms of their most pressing needs?

KS: I’ve been with Palo Alto Networks for five years now and I’m responsible for the NextWave Partner Program as well as the worldwide channel sales. And what I’m hearing a lot of right now is that there is a constant need for enablement and training, both technical and sales. So if you go back to that challenge regarding end users consolidating their infrastructure on a single platform, that single platform doesn’t mean single technology. It’s a lot of technology that’s there, and with that technology, it becomes complexity.

We’ve introduced a platform called Amplify to our partners, which has thousands of assets to help them learn in a lot of different formats. So depending on what your style is and how you digest information best, we have tools and resources for you. Our annual partner survey gave us some feedback that it was the No. 1 improvement that we’ve made to our program, so we’re really leaning in. My belief is before you look at sales as an indicator, the first leading indicator of the success of the channel partner program is are partners investing in training, and if they invest in that training, they’ll bring in opportunities and those opportunities will lead to sales.

The second thing that I’m seeing that’s top of mind for them right now is this is a complex technology, not Palo Alto Networks, but the cybersecurity industry. And with that, there’s a need for specialization. So last year, we rolled out a specialization program as part of NextWave. We’re increasing and adding more specializations. And the need and the demand from partners is they do not want to be master generalists. They know their value to the customer base is the more specialized they are and the more value they have, the more profitable they are. So it’s a win for the end user because their experience and their security posture increases. It’s a win for the partners because there are more opportunities and there’s more profitability. And it’s a win for Palo Alto Networks because it allows us to scale. And as we introduce new technologies, we can bring them to market quickly through our partner base.