What practical changes will this mean for the hundreds of partners that will now purchase two tier?
What we’ve done, even before the ink had dried, is to reach out to all those partners to explain what the partnership could mean to them.
We’re very pragmatic [about acknowledging] we do not have an IT workflow background. That isn’t us, and these partners already understand that.
What they don’t understand is how do they connect cyber to what they do today, and those are the conversations we’re having. They see the opportunity. I think some are a little bit reticent because, obviously, it’s change. And it’s a big change. But once we’re having these partner conversations, they really start to understand this opens up a huge line of opportunity for them to go deeper and wider with the customers they already have.
The launch was officially 1 October, but clearly we’ve been speaking to partners since July.
If they’ve got a customer they’re talking to, and there is an AE [account executive] attached to that opportunity, which generally there is, they’ll still be speaking to them about shaping the deal, understanding the modelling of what that customer needs and what products they should be buying.
The practical difference is that the order form, which would have gone straight to a partner or ServiceNow, now comes to distribution for Indirect partners.
We are effectively managing the quote – sending the quote to the partner, and the partner would then send that quote onto the end user.
Do you have access to the whole ServiceNow portfolio, and are there certain technologies you’re focusing on?
We have access to the whole portfolio. Because we’re that growth accelerator, we are focused on driving the Armis and the Veza proposition into both existing ServicNow partners who are doing the IT workflow, and into Exclusive Networks partners who can see the joint message they’ll be able to put out there.
In the product set Armis and Veza cover, we don’t have a huge amount in terms of that IoT identity space, so it’s a really natural fit for us to go out to market with.
How have the first couple of days of the partnership gone?
Crazy, but crazy good. We’ve had a lot to do because they are very committed to this multi-tier approach. They have set very strict rules around the points at which it no longer goes through the route that it does. Ultimately, from 1 October, we are their quoting engine. We have to build our skill set around IT workflow – I think we would have struggled to spell ITSM a few weeks ago, and also build our services capability around both the IT workflow and also that connection of the security piece to the IT workflow.
Interview concludes on final page…
