As technologies and business models continue to evolve within our industry, it’s only natural that our channel partnerships evolve as well. These podcast interviews, co-hosted by ChannelE2E’s Content Czar Joe Panettieri and CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux, talk with channel chiefs to get their perspective on how these relationships are shifting in the presence of innovation.
Brooke Cunningham, AVP of global partner programs and operations at Splunk, shares how partners are helping customers make machine data accessible, usable and valuable; and how the company’s partner ecosystem is evolving.
Q: Is there a profile for the typical partner that’s adopting Splunk?
A: We see partners across the ecosystem, but one particularly strong play is in security. We see partners both in our technology partner ecosystem as well as in our reseller and MSPs that really focus on that security use case and have Splunk as a key component of the SIM solution they’re providing.
Q: Where do you see your partner ecosystem evolving in the next few years?
A: Earlier last year we launched a technology alliance partner program. We’re seeing a lot of growth there. We’re seeing a lot of ISVs that want to do technology add-ons, apps, connectors, etc., to Splunk, and it really lends itself well to our platform play where we see that partner ecosystem helping to drive a lot of exciting use cases where the technology comes together successfully.
Q: Have you found there is a particular type of skill-set that makes partners successful with Splunk?
A: Partners that are successful are on the leading edge of adopting new technology and are investing in enablement to make sure that their teams understand the cloud and IoT and these use cases that their customers are struggling with. I don’t necessarily think it’s a particular segment or focus, but more that approach to technology and enthusiasm to learn and grow with our innovation.
