Continuing Impact of COVID-19

CF: Are Palo Alto Networks, and your partners and customers, still dealing with the impact of the pandemic? Is that an ongoing situation?

KS: I would answer that differently based on what geography in the globe we’re discussing. If we’re discussing in Asia Pacific, yes, every day they’re dealing with that, and it’s affecting how they’re going about and doing business. In EMEA, it’s been a little bit of a wave similar to the United States, where we think it’s gone down and it’s winding down, and then it turns back up and winds down, and it turns back up. So I think all of us, at least from my perspective, have settled into the notion that the pandemic is going to be something that we’re dealing with for the next year as well, not knowing to what level, but we’re prepared to support our customers and our partners in that manner.

So what does that mean? That means if we can be on planes and in person onsite, we will be. If not, if we need to support them virtually and remotely, we’ll do that. The good news is we’ve had a couple of years to really prepare, and build an infrastructure and a go-to-market strategy that supports that, so we’re fully prepared to support our customers and partners.