Acronis

Neil Morarji, General Manager A/NZ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Acronis is looking for partners with established distribution networks and active customer bases. We look for value-add partners and resellers both in the SMB and enterprise space. Cyber protection has become a necessity for every single organisation in Australia and New Zealand. We’re looking for partners who are able to explain the importance of protecting data to their customers and offer Acronis as a one-stop solution to protect all data, applications and systems.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We have established a number of strategic partnerships with distributors and cloud resellers. Acronis also signed strategic partnerships with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, allowing our partners to use their existing accounts to store backups protected by Acronis. Acronis offers a great level of control, management, and flexibility and it’s very attractive to our partners. In addition, Acronis offers AI-based ransomware protection and blockchain-data authentication with our solutions out of the box, making Acronis the most secure backup on the market.

Anything else? Acronis is renowned for introducing a new hybrid cloud architecture designed for greater flexibility and data privacy, including a host of innovative features that make cyber protection easier and more complete. It was the first company to add AI-based ransomware protection and blockchain-based data authentication to its products, making Acronis the most secure backup on the market. Acronis addresses the five vectors of cyber protection – safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) — offering easy, efficient, and secure products customers of any size.

Australian distributors: Synnex, rhipe, Ingram Micro

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Amazon Web Services

Corrie Briscoe, Head, Partnerships and Alliances

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Amazon Web Services in Australia and New Zealand has a rich ecosystem of partners made up of global systems integrators, born-in-the-cloud partners, ISVs, local systems integrators, managed services providers and national telco partnerships. As we add more and more services to the AWS portfolio, our partnerships will continue to expand in areas like big data and analytics, artificial intelligence and IoT. The AWS platform will provide our partners the opportunity to build, deploy and manage a raft of innovative solutions that truly meet our mutual customers' needs, in ways we may have only dreamt possible in the past.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? With more than 125 AWS services, partners are even more equipped to optimise existing customers’ environments and extend on AWS solutions already implemented. A great example was at the end of 2017, AWS partner, Atlassian completed a two-year-long migration project that saw more than 100,000 Confluence and JIRA Cloud customers move from a single-tenanted data centre to a multi-tenanted solution on AWS. As a result, Atlassian has seen a five-fold reduction in customer service costs, and up to a 100-fold reduction in the severity of customer support cases. This has increased Atlassian’s ability to stay ahead of customer needs, and roll out fixes and functions quickly.

ANZ Bank has been able to rapidly deploy new innovations, including Polli, their chatbot using the Amazon Lex conversational interface service. With the help of Arq Group, ANZ Bank used the technology to help internal staff come to terms with internal policies. Now serving millions of active customers each month and tens of thousands of partners, AWS continues to offer innovative solutions that eliminate unwanted technical debt, improve the ability to fail fast, remove friction from IT management and go global in minutes.

Australian distributor: Arrow, Tech Data, Westcon-Comstor

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Cisco

Tara Ridley, Director, Partner Organisation Australia & NZ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? The partners who will win in this complex market are those that innovate. These partners are capitalising on the benefits of programmability to create new recurring revenue streams with software- and services-led business models, enabling a more strategic and profitable relationship with their customers and creating unmatched competitive differentiation for themselves. Our focus is to keep things simple between IT and line of business, so partners can focus on the client.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We have just wrapped up the FY18 year and I’m incredibly proud of the team across our channel business in Australia and New Zealand, which has grown into the double digits. One of the key factors in this growth was our channel ecosystem, which has undergone a major refresh recently. Twelve months ago, we created an Ecosystem Business Development Team focused on IoT, transport and consultants. We realised in many instances we are dealing with multiple companies on one opportunity – all trying to protect their intellectual property, competing to extend their relevance with the customer and win the deal. We have to consider the value exchange, which is really different when some partners may influence deals but don’t result in sales. To tackle this, we developed a scorecard methodology to investigate new partners, qualify the opportunity and fit for Cisco, and understand if there a path to a sale.

Anything else? The channel is and will continue to be an essential part of Cisco’s business, and as a result our commitment to our partners remains stronger than ever. We are continuing to listen to our partners and innovate in our portfolio, and are focusing on removing the complexity to keep things simple for IT vendors and line of business. Program simplification and ease of doing business continue to be key pillars of our partner program evolution.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Westcon-Comstor

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Citrix

Brian McColm, Director of Channels ANZ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? As a partner-first company, our goal when looking for partners is to build a strong relationship and together land new customers to support Australian businesses as they transform their digital workplace. At Citrix we recognise the huge value of partners’ primary relationships with end customers — whether it’s a global systems integrator team at a large enterprise or a regional partner that has won the trust of their customer. We help foster these relationships with technical, marketing, sales, education and support resources.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? There has been so many highlights already this year, and just two that come to mind is firstly the launch of a new Citrix cloud management plane for Asia-Pacific South, located in Australia in April. This expanded cloud service was the third such instance in the world; following similar launches in the US and EMEA, I think this is a real highlight, not just for Citrix, but importantly for our partners and their customers. It talks to the global importance of Australia, our partner ecosystem and customers that this kind of investment was made in Australia and that this service will support our partners and customers especially those who operate in finance, government and other highly regulated industries in Australia. The other achievement that I want to highlight is commitment and follow-through. This year at Citrix we made some bold statements and announcements at our end user conference in May. This event is called Synergy and many of our partners and customers attend. During this year's conference we announced a number of new products and promised that within 90 days all announced products would become generally available. I’m proud to say all products reached GA within the 90 days and our partners and customers are already starting to reap the benefits of these new and upgraded solutions.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data

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Crestron

Brendan Doyle, National Sales Manager, Channel, Crestron ANZ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Crestron Australia New Zealand wholly operates via a 100 percent channel approach and invests heavily in supporting all partners, offering reward programs, certified design services and end-user lead generation activities. Crestron offers a range of partner programs to support the channel and its 200-plus partners. Crestron solutions are built using best-in-class technology that integrates unified communications, AV presentation, IT, lighting, audio and environmental systems.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Crestron Australia New Zealand has more than 200 partners, and its partner network has grown by 24 percent in the past year. This year, Crestron has continued its focus on enhancing the level of support and investment into its partner programs. Crestron’s Enterprise Partner Program is dedicated to providing partners with personal attention and technical expertise for their diverse workplace requirements. Crestron Australia New Zealand provides programs such as the Enterprise Partner Program imbuing corporates with personalised technical support expertise for their diverse requirements, or the A+ Education Partner Program offering classroom technology solutions, training and extended product warranties, to further enhance the investment in their technology choices.

Anything else? Crestron operates via a qualified channel approach, but affords its commercial and residential partners with access to now globally aligned reward programs, certified design services, cost structures and more. Crestron hosts numerous client hospitality events to build partner engagement and reward success. Crestron One is an annual event series across Asia Pacific, inviting partners to attend conferences and workshops detailing latest products and future developments. We also offer Crestron Experience Centres, which provide partners and end users with an immersive, in-depth look at our products by showcasing all of our solutions in real-world environments.

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

CrowdStrike

Geoff Swaine, Channel and Alliances Director, APJ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Geoff Swaine is responsible for all channel and alliances operation across Asia Pacific and Japan. The most important factor when partnering with CrowdStrike is investing in enablement and giving customers a great experience, and Geoff is looking for partners who will do just that. CrowdStrike takes a quality over quantity approach to channel partnerships to ensure CrowdStrike and its partners remain profitable in every deal. G

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our growth in partner sourced revenue. Partners in Australian and New Zealand and across the APJ region are contributing 40 percent and 60 percent, respectively, to the revenue of CrowdStrike’s field sales team. Deal registrations have grown by 500 percent from H1 2017 to H1 2018. Investing in our partners has been another significant milestone. Geoff has brought CrowdStrike’s global Falcon Allies program into Australia, which is designed to certify the best technical partners. It’s a deep dive on incident response and endpoint protection. CrowdStrike recently held its first Australian Falcon Allies event in Sydney, which was oversubscribed. Based on this success, Falcon Allies is being rolled out widely across Australia. In the past 12 months Geoff and his team have achieved seven figure deals with key system integrated partners, including Telstra, BT and DXC.

Anything else? Geoff joined CrowdStrike in April 2017. By the end of the year he’d won global channel MVP for CrowdStrike. This was awarded based on the number of deals driven by Geoff as well as expansion of CrowdStrike’s channel program into new markets like Hong Kong. (Channel partners were only in Australia when Geoff first joined). CrowdStrike’s APJ business is outperforming EMEA in terms of the volume and value of deals and time to close. CrowdStrike’s Australian corporate business registered more deals in Q1 of any APJ region, the third-highest globally.

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

CyberArk

Bruce Nixon, Channel Manager A/NZ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We primarily focus on partners that have a good track record and domain expertise in enterprise identity and access management (IAM) solutions. We’ve been very satisfied with the calibre of our local partners that have built privileged access management (PAM) practices around CyberArk’s solutions over the past 12 months. Looking ahead, CyberArk will focus on building capabilities with organisations in Federal government, critical infrastructure and healthcare across ANZ.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We’ve had a record-breaking year in Australia and New Zealand across every metric. All of our partners have executed very well, not only in terms of sales but also in delivering the right outcomes for our customers. This is a result of the fantastic advances that CyberArk has made in its technical training and certification program, and our partners’ investment in developing their skillsets.

Anything else? Globally, CyberArk is sitting at the intersection of number of key trends. Compliance requirements, persistent attacker innovation and escalating cyber threats, the execution of digital transformation strategies, the complexities of cloud migration and protecting hybrid environments – all of these mean that privileged access security (PAS) is now broadly recognised as critical to security strategies; a project that reduces the most amount of risk and has the largest business impact. It’s an exciting time for CyberArk as the understanding and adoption of PAS is evolving rapidly in the Australian market. There are also macro drivers highlighting the importance of addressing PAS in Australia, including the ASD Essential 8, new mandatory breach reporting legislation, and increased focus on the space by industry analysts.

Australian distributors: M.Tech

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Datto

James Bergl, APAC Sales Director

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Datto’s target partners are MSPs who typically service the SMB marketplace, with their customers ranging in size from 25-200 employees. We like to partner with companies that are focused on creating and driving their business forward and that aren’t afraid to leverage cutting-edge technology and business models in the way they deliver new solutions to market. The ideal Datto partner is open-minded to new ways of working that will give them and their customers a competitive edge.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Datto’s partner, Mangano IT, was the Working Together category winner in the 2018 CRN Impact Awards – and we were thrilled to have been part of the team on this project. Mangano IT deployed a Datto disaster recovery and backup solution for Whitsunday Regional Council’s sites at Proserpine and Bowen. The project was kicked into overdrive when cyclone Debbie was forecast to hit the region near the council’s main site. As danger approached, Mangano IT, Telstra Business Technology Services (BTS) and Datto demonstrated true collaboration by working together to deliver a business continuity solution to protect all of WRC’s on-premise IT infrastructure. The team held twice-daily meetings to make hour-to-hour decisions on when the final backup would be sent and when a virtualised environment would be switched on.

Anything else? Australia is Datto’s fastest-growing business unit globally. Vista Equity Partners acquired Datto and simultaneously merged it with its portfolio company, Autotask, at the end of 2017. The result is a single entity designed to empower MSPs with Datto’s award-winning data protection solutions and Autotask’s in demand IT business management offerings. Datto is now better positioned than ever to be the optimal choice for SMBs in need of the best technology solutions at the most competitive price – and we believe this is a key driver of our success in Australia.

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Dell EMC

Shant Soghomonian, General Manager (Acting), Channel

What kinds of partners are you looking for? As Dell EMC continues to grow its channel ecosystem by investing in existing and new partners, in particular those who are focused building their transformation skills as part of their go-to-market strategy. This could be around hybrid cloud integration, digital transformation, security, big data, IoT as well as a range of industry vertical specialists.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Since the inception of the new Dell EMC partner program we have seen many successes. From successfully integrating the Dell and EMC teams, launching a new program, taking it to market, and continuing to make updates, all the while growing the business. This year, we have focused on taking this global program and making it relevant to each geography within APJ. We want to ensure that all partners benefit from the simple, predictable and profitable model. We’ve also made incremental investments to our storage offering. Channel partners now have access to three times more storage experts and can receive additional benefits when driving storage sales. We provide comprehensive training and support throughout the sales cycle ensuring success for our partners.

Anything else? As part of the new partner program, we hosted a series of partner events in Australia. These are local, regional and global events that encourage the feedback loop between Dell EMC and its partners. Over the past 12 months we have tripled our headcount of storage specific channel resources. We have introduced the Enterprise Preferred Program, which offers a dedicated Dell EMC channel expert to help drive sales for partners with growth potential. We have dedicated ISV resources who work closely with partners to ensure that Dell EMC is the infrastructure underpinning their solutions. At Dell Technologies World in May, we launched Dell Technologies Advantage, a framework that enables partners to transact across the full Dell Technologies portfolio. We have streamlined training and certifications to remove any channel training overlap across the brands.

Australian distributors: Tech Data, Ingram Micro, Dicker Data

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Eaton Industries

Gavin Swadling, National Channel Manager ANZ – Power Quality

What kinds of partners are you looking for? At Eaton, we are looking for partners that bring value to our mutual customers through distinct offerings and experience across many different technologies. Over the past year we have seen great opportunity in edge computing services, particularly edge data centre deployments. We are looking to expand partner relationships to leverage these services to new and established customers.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Since taking over the role as national channel manager of Eaton’s power quality business, I have been able to achieve significant growth and identify new opportunities in power quality. The focus has been placed on expanding our existing partner base by increasing support through registration and lead programs, as well as focused marketing activities. Key to this success and continued strategy involves building a team that values face-to-face time with our customers. Extending beyond my direct team we have joined forces with our services team to enhance customer experience and engagement by leveraging the tremendous in-house engineering and technical capability of our electrical engineers, field staff and customer service team.

Anything else? Eaton’s channel program ensures our partners receive the support they need to recommend Eaton’s full range of products. Our team works in the field to speak with partners and help them uncover traditional hardware business around developing critical infrastructure on the edge. These interactions help our partners open new opportunities within existing accounts. Eaton has exciting changes coming in 2019 for our partner program. We’ll be launching an enhanced program that supports our partners from training to deal registration, and technical information whilst ensuring they are aware of the promotional activities that reward partner engagement. We’re looking forward to this enhanced program and strengthening our relationship and support even further.

Australian distributors: Bluechip Infotech, Ingram Micro, Synnex

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Enghouse Interactive

Kath Murphy, ANZ Partner sales director

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Enghouse Interactive is looking for Microsoft integrators who need to fill two white spaces in the Skype for Business and Office 365 solutions: contact centre and operator. Without these covered, integrators risk losing business as prospects are likely to either remain on a legacy PBX platform or move to a Microsoft cloud competitor.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? In 2018, Kath drove a major new opportunity for our partners with the recent release of our award-winning cloud contact centre solution, CC:SP, in the ANZ region. Already offered in Europe and North America by Enghouse partners, including British Telecom, CC:SP is the world’s largest cloud contact centre platform. The CC:SP platform in Australia is hosted by our long-time partner Voitec, under the brand “CX Cloud”, transforming Voitec from a distributor to a managed service provider, enabling them to wholesale a branded cloud Contact service to all Enghouse channel partners to resell on a pay-as-you-go basis. We have provided significant technical and marketing investment to Voitec in developing the offer, including brand establishment and a new website at www.CXCloud.com.au. This unique solution significantly transforms Voitec’s own go-to-market offering, while supplying the entire Enghouse Interactive partner community with a ready-to-sell cloud contact centre service.

Anything else? My MO at Enghouse Interactive is to offer a 100% channel model to our Australia partners. We do not sell direct, so unlike many other providers we won’t compete with our own partners. My team of channel managers train and support partners to recognize opportunities that could make or break their communications solution deal, since the contact centre is at the heart of the company’s coms.

Australian distributors: VExpress, Voitec

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Extreme Networks

Julian Critchlow, ANZ Channel Manager

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Extreme Networks delivers software-driven wired and wireless networking solutions from the enterprise edge to the cloud that are agile, adaptive, and secure to enable digital transformation. We are a 100 percent indirect business in Australia via a two-tier distribution model and look to work with partners with expertise in networking and security or a willingness to expand their portfolio to deliver wired and wireless networking along with software tools. Those partners with capabilities in a particular market segment, vertical, territory or systems integrators with national reach who are looking to make money from networking will find Extreme Networks offers healthy margins and protects partners in deals.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Extreme Networks has deepened its networking portfolio and expanded its business over the past two years. It is now No.3 vendor globally with the acquisition of Avaya’s networking business, wireless specialist Zebra Technologies and Brocade’s data centre networking business. We are positioned as a worldwide leader in Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN. This level of industry validation along with a deeper portfolio has brought new routes to market for us. It has also increased the opportunities for our partners, making it easier for them to meet an increasing breadth of customer requirements. With a 100 percent indirect business, we are focused on our Australian partners’ growth, profitability and competitiveness, and our partners' capability to sell, implement and support Extreme’s entire portfolio.

Anything else? We work with several distributors in ANZ. Arrow and Hills provide significant value to our partners across the entire Extreme portfolio. Westcon and Tech Data address the needs of our heritage partners from the acquisitions of Avaya data networking and Brocade data centre business units, respectively.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Hills, Westcon-Comstor, Tech Data

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Infor Global Solutions

Liam Ryan, Director, Specialist Sales & Channel

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Currently we have two key focus areas for our partner recruitment programs. The first is to look to build on our existing skills in general manufacturing and distribution. The second looks to leverage our significant development investment in both solutions – Business Intelligence and Analytics (Birst), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM); and industry verticals – with a focus on public sector, retail and healthcare.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our first quarter this financial year saw triple-digit year-on-year growth compared to the same period last year. Our goal is to achieve strong double-digit growth year-on-year for the remainder of FY19. FY19Q1 saw a gold partner, EMD Advantage, sign a significant ERP opportunity with a NZ-based technology and manufacturing company that will underpin their digital strategy for years to come.

Anything else? Infor has seen significant growth in our partner revenue in Pacific over the last 18 months. This can be credited to two main areas. Firstly, a change in engagement. A move to focus our partners back in hunting areas of new business has seen a significant increase in licence revenue growth. This will only snowball as the model is improved. Second is a recognition from customers and prospects that Infor’s micro-verticals strategy to deliver finely-tuned industry specific capabilities in the cloud, as well as a focus in areas such as AI, advanced analytics and EAM, is enhancing a return on investment. We will look to grow on our current strong results by continuing to invest in partner enablement, ensuring that our partners have the tools and skills to support and enhance digital growth strategies for our customers.

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Lenovo PCs and Smart Devices Group

Frank Eagleton, PCSD Channel Sales Manager, Australia

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Lenovo is fortunate to have a very diverse coverage of channel partners with long-standing and strong relationships. On the PCSD side of the business, we’re not only looking for partners that can promote Lenovo’s range of innovative technologies, but those we can strategically align with to foster mutually beneficial relationships. As we identify the high growth markets and verticals, which include those such as midmarket, smart office and monthly managed subscription models (DaaS), we are working with partners that have the ability to deliver an effective end-to-end experience for our customers by leveraging the expertise of both our organisations.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Over the last year, we have worked hard to strengthen our partner alignment by improving business processes and programs that deliver the best customer experience to the partner community. This has included investing in new tools to make it easier for partners to manage all their technology needs online through our portal, helping them to drive efficiencies and productivity. We’ve invested time in our partner relationships and expertise, hosting our partner advisory council in Tokyo as a forum to gain a deeper understanding of market challenges and opportunities, allowing us to work together more closely and develop the innovative solutions our partners need.

Anything else? Lenovo is the only IT vendor to offer the complete range of technology devices and services, securing its position as an easy and convenient one-stop-shop for all our partners’ technology needs. We constantly innovate to develop best in class products to serve our partner community. We recently launched the X1 Extreme, an lightweight powerhouse, packed with premium specs, including NVIDIA GeForce graphics, RapidCharge technology and 4K HDR display. We also launched the ThinkPad P1, our thinnest and lightest mobile workstation to date.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Synnex

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Microsoft Australia

Mark Leigh, General Manager, One Commercial Partner

What kinds of partners are you looking for? One of the hardest things we do each year is match our channel capacity with our business aspirations. We are always looking at ways in which we can expand our partner ecosystem to adapt to market shifts and help Australian organisations transform. However, if we are to call out two priorities, business applications and artificial intelligence are key areas of focus right now and there is a real opportunity there for the channel. When we look at industries, following our investment in AU Central Regions and achieving Protected Status, government, critical infrastructure, financial services, retail are a priority for us. From a geographic perspective, we’re constantly looking at how we can increase capacity across all corners of Australia, but expanding our capability in South Australia and Western Australia is an example area of focus.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our biggest achievement in the past year has been transforming our channel operations to the One Commercial Partner model. This means we now have 150 people managing our channel resources from the one central point. The OCP transformation has enabled us to achieve some significant results. For example, our Australian business has led the world in IP Co-Sell, which has meant working with our partners to sell repeatable intellectual property (IP). Our Australian partners also won seven of 33 global awards at Microsoft Inspire, demonstrating our momentum globally. Our Cloud Service Provider channel now has 3,500 CSP partners. We're also extremely proud of the Wiise partnership with Commonwealth Bank of Australia and KPMG – this was a global first partnership, taking world-class enterprise software to small and medium-sized businesses. In addition, the Telstra voice partnership for (Telstra calling for Office 365) that was announced earlier this year.

Anything else? Microsoft has a large and complex channel ecosystem with almost 11,000 partners across Australia. Together they employ 300,000 people and generate about 1.2 percent of Australia’s gross domestic product. We feel privileged as a channel focused business to have so many resources focused on the Australian channel and we continue to invest significantly in this ecosystem including channel incentives and developing marketing programs. We also continue to focus our structure under three core areas: Build, Go-to Market and Sell-With, ensuring our 11,000 partners are equipped to fuel this shared success.

Australian distributors: Synnex, Ingram Micro, Dicker Data, rhipe, Arrow, Tech Data

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Nuix

Harry Linggoputro, Head of Channels, APAC and Japan

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Nuix is all about solving our customers’ data problems. We work together with our partners to solve customers’ challenges in security (whether that is cybersecurity or national security), risk (such as litigation and fraud cases) and compliance (for example regulatory compliance). We are looking for new partners that can help expand our geographical footprint in Australia and Asia. As a proud Australian software company with customers across 70 countries, we have proven technology and capability to help accelerate revenue and growth for partners.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Nuix has recently launched a new partner program. This has been a year’s worth of work to ensure that our program has differentiation to competing channel programs, and is simplified to make it easier to do business with us and to achieve our joint revenue plans. It includes investments into new tools to quickly enable partners to reach a revenue-ready state, and new margins and incentives. We are proud to achieve some big wins with current partners this year including a multimillion-dollar deal into a hard-to-win defence agency in the US. We have competed together with partners on major tenders in Australia and globally with great success. We are most proud of the solutions where we are working together to solve complex issues that affect society including helping law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to solve cases faster.

Anything else? Nuix has achieved phenomenal growth in the last 10 years. Our channel is an important next phase of that growth and we are in recruitment phase to ensure we have lined up the right partners build a sustainable business and ensure the Nuix platform is a critical component across every corporate business and government department in Australia.

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Red Hat

Garry Gray, Director of Partners & Alliances (Channels), A/NZ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are continuing to look for both strategic partnerships and partners across Australia and New Zealand to support our continued growth and mutual success. Partners with a strong focus on emerging technologies including containers, automation and DevOps, along with skills in applications development, and strong customer delivery experiences are desired. Red Hat partners complement one another, empowering the global network and fostering our open, collaborative environment.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? 2018 has seen many major partner announcements, including Microsoft and IBM, just to name a few. More recently, we have been celebrating two A/NZ Partners: Leonardo Consulting, our partner who won the 2018 Red Hat APAC “Innovation” Partner Award, and Deloitte Consulting, our partner who won our 2018 Red Hat APAC ANZ Partner of the Year Award at our Asia-Pacific Partner Conference. Leonardo Consulting is one of the founding members of our OpenShift Practice Builder Program and its MD, Adam Mutton, has praised the OpenShift Container Platform as it plays an vital part of delivering end-to-end solutions to their customers.

Anything else? Red Hat continues to invest heavily in our partners and the growth and development of our Australian and New Zealand partner ecosystem, upskilling and lifting partner capabilities from a sales, technology understanding, pre-sales and delivery perspective. One of the things we recognise in the adoption of open source by the business community is that a lot of the skills that are required to be in the marketplace simply aren't there. To support the development of those skills in the marketplace and for the A/NZ business environment we are investing in our partners and their people to better serve our customers and the market.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data, rhipe

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Splunk

Pauline Tng, Head of Channels, APAC

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Splunk is expecting aggressive growth rates within APAC over the next couple of years. As such, partners who adopt similar growth mindsets and are prepared to double down on their investment with Splunk will be well positioned to ride the growth wave with us. In particular, we have accelerated MDF investment plans for new customers and prescribed new logo acquisitions through our partners. This helps Splunk land new business which will eventually give way to deeper adoption and expansion opportunities.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Since I joined Splunk in May 2018, I’ve advocated for three top priorities. Firstly, I drove our partner-sourced business, which is a clear indication of partners lifting the business for Splunk. As a pre-condition for driving partner sourced business, we laid out clear ‘rules of engagement’ within the channels, and ensured partners have trust in the deal registration system. Since we provided clarity, Splunk saw a three-fold increase in partner-sourced business bookings over FY17. The second priority was building a velocity-based business, minimising friction in the market for selling Splunk solutions. In this arena, we worked closely with our distribution partners in developing bundles around key use cases with our technology alliances, with a meet-in-the-channel mode of selling. The final priority surrounded leveraging different routes to market and partnerships helping Splunk reach untapped markets. Examples of these are cloud partnerships with AWS, driving the MSP and OEM business models.

Anything else? The ANZ partner business has been on the same rapid growth trajectory as the overall Splunk business, and consequently the Partner Team continues to grow. The ongoing adoption of Splunk at our key partners is a critical element to driving and executing on Splunk’s ANZ strategy in delivering customer success further across the region, and adding a lot more values to our partners.

Australian distributors: DNA Connect

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Veeam

Belinda Jurisic, ANZ Channel Sales Manager

What kinds of partners are you looking for? At Veeam, it is my team's role to build a mutually profitable business for us and our partners. Part of our responsibility is to identify and look at mutual areas of growth and build pipelines with partners, into new and existing segments of the business. We want to work with partners who are looking for ways to grow their business, where Veeam is the best solution. The ideal partner for us, sees the opportunity and customer need for data protection and back up and has the desire to work with Veeam in upskilling and further understanding the concept of hyper-availability.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our biggest achievement has been driving mutually profitable growth for ourselves and our partners, by implementing three very important principles: being visible, being easy to do business with, and knowing profitability is key to our partners business. Being visible means being accessible and available both in the office and on the phone, making sure partners know we are here to help them grow. Being easy to do business with means ensuring that ourselves and our distributors are contactable and responsive. Profitability for the partner – this is seen in how we do work with our partners in executing strong marketing programs, which ultimately results in delivering new business to ourselves and our partners. Profitability also comes through co-selling and identifying if there are ways to maximise the opportunity through our alliances and services. These principles have really been the groundwork of everything that we have executed this year.

Anything else? At Veeam, we are a 100 percent channel-focused company. With our partners' help, we continue to bring on net new business. This year, we brought in more than 300 new customer logos to the business. As we move into a more complex customer space, we are working really closely with our partners to leverage their services capabilities. As a 100 percent channel-based solution, we rely on and need our partners to deliver the Veeam solution and ensure customer satisfaction.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data, rhipe

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Veritas Technologies

Janet Docherty, Director – Channel Sales ANZ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We look for partners who will show commitment to Veritas across key capabilities including sales, technical compatibility and delivery. Veritas has recently launched the revamped Veritas Partner Force program that offers expanded revenue opportunities to attract a new generation of resellers, service providers, system integrators and distributors.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Veritas launched an enriched Veritas Partner Force program in April 2018 focused on helping our channel partners grow and remain profitable. It is designed to create higher earnings potential for our partners who want to capitalise on Veritas’ 360 data management portfolio and multi-cloud data management solutions, in addition to Veritas’ flagship data backup and recovery solutions. The program has been dramatically redesigned to simplify how we work with partners and vice versa, to help increase their revenue and reap more benefits and rewards.

Anything else? With the latest Veritas Partner Force program, we look to provide partners with greater rewards for their technical skills, along with educational and training opportunities, to deliver greater value to our customers. Customer user experience is a critical priority that Veritas is focusing on to reinforce its global leadership position in data protection and software-defined storage. The recent launch of the Veritas NetBackup 8.1.2 is the first step in this journey – to radically simplify world-class data protection for customers. Veritas NetBackup 8.1.2 to remain the market-leading data management solution that enable customers to harness the power of their information.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Tech Data

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know - bookmark it!

Zscaler

Dilshan Sivalingam, Manager, Global Alliances and Channels, A/NZ

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Zscaler looks to partner with leading service providers and system integrators to help our joint customers become cloud-first enterprises. Partners need to demonstrate their ability to take customers on a true transformational journey, and focus on the Zscaler “Secure, Simply, Transform” methodology. A fundamental part of becoming a cloud-first enterprise is to provide users with fast, secure, and direct access to applications. This is where the need for a true global, multi-tenanted cloud-based solution providing a full security stack such as Zscaler’s is pivotal to a customer transformation. By partnering with Zscaler, service providers gain new business opportunities and revenue streams, while their customers save time and money and enjoy a higher level of service.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We have almost 100 percent partner participation rate in Australia! Almost every Zscaler partner has seen an increase in year-on-year Zscaler revenue, and this is certainly no small feat. Working with our A/NZ partners, the team at Zscaler has been successful in attracting new and retaining existing customers across government, large enterprise, multi-national, local and small businesses. In addition, we have signed global reseller contracts with Australia’s top two service providers, Telstra and Optus. In the coming months Zscaler will be making further announcements as we launch productised solutions through these and our other global service providers that also service this region.

Anything else? Back in the day when your users were all on the network and your applications resided in your physical data centre, it made sense to establish a secure perimeter around the network. But those days are over, the perimeter is gone, and network security is all but irrelevant. Instead, customers now need to put their defences and controls where the connections occur – the internet – so that every connection is fast and secure, no matter how or where users connect or where their applications reside. By moving applications and infrastructure to the cloud and untethering employees from their desks, Zscaler customers can realise tremendous advantages in productivity, agility, and cost containment.

Check out the 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs digital hub with an easy-to-navigate portal covering all the Australian channel leaders you need to know!

The 2018 CRN Channel Chiefs

CRN unveils our 2018 list of the people you need to know across the top vendors in the channel.

Putting partners first

8x8

Access4

Acer Computer Australia

Acronis

Adobe Systems

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise

Alibaba Cloud

Amazon Web Services

Anaplan

Apple

Aruba a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

Autodesk

Avaya

Belkin International

Bitglass

BlueJeans

Brother International Australia

CA Technologies

Carbon Black

Check Point Software Technologies

Cisco

Cisco Meraki

Citrix

Commvault

Crestron

CrowdStrike

CyberArk

Cyberpower Systems

Cylance

Dassault Systèmes

Datto

Dell EMC

Eaton Industries

Enghouse Interactive

Entrust Datacard

Epicor

Equinix

ESET Software Australia

Extreme Networks

F5 Networks

FireEye

Forcepoint

Fortinet Australia

Fujitsu Australia Limited

Genesys

Google Cloud

Hitachi Vantara

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

HP

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Infor Global Solutions

Intel

intelliHR Systems

Juniper Networks

Kaspersky Lab

Kensington

Kordia

Lenovo PCs and Smart Devices Group

Lenovo Data Centre Group

LogMeIn

Malwarebytes

Micro Focus

Microsoft Australia

Mimecast

Mitel

NBNco

NetApp

Netscout Systems

NEXTDC

Nuix

Nutanix

Okta

Oracle

Oracle NetSuite

PagerDuty

Palo Alto Networks