NCC Group: DDoS Attacks Spiked in October While Ransomware Attacks Fell
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Lacework has also hired a new CFO, CMO and technical services leader.
Lacework partners have a new Americas leader. The company has hired Faraz Siraj, previously with Code42, as its vice president of Americas channels.
Lacework’s Faraz Siraj
Siraj has more than 25 years of industry experience. He most recently was vice president of channel sales at Code42. There, he led the company’s channel-first strategy and integration of channel programs.
Before Code42, he was president and chief advisor at FKS Channel Consulting. He also held channel leadership roles at RSA Security, ThreatQuotient, Cisco and more.
In his new position, Siraj will be integral in building and advancing Lacework’s accelerated partner-first strategy. He’ll also align Lacework’s channel team and go to market (GTM) strategy to support Lacework partners’ growth.
“I joined Lacework for a number of reasons and it all starts with the game-changing technology that Lacework is providing for securing the cloud,” he said. “Cloud security in general is a big task and I feel that Lacework is well-positioned to address this. Another reason is that this poses a tremendous opportunity for partners as we will want to work together to help solve customer challenges and change business outcomes. The revenue opportunity is off the charts. Finally, it was the people and culture at Lacework. This really means a lot to me and I feel working together we can accomplish anything.”
Siraj plans to assess Lacework‘s go-to-market strategy as he wants to “ensure we have the ability to execute with our partners with ease.”
“I want to quickly implement the positive changes to ensure scalable success for Lacework and all of our partners,” he said.
Lacework wants to lean into its partners to provide total services, Siraj said.
“This means Lacework will train and enable our partners for cloud security assessments/consulting services (before the sale) and services delivery (after the sale),” he said. “For partners, this is a tremendous opportunity to highlight partner value and create added revenue. Additionally, I want to evaluate all aspects of our partner profitability to ensure our partners will have the right incentives as they represent Lacework technology.”
Lacework also announced the following hires:
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Officials shared the road map for the new program during the company’s inaugural Marketplace Summit.
Microsoft’s ISV Success Program, created to let partners drive sales through digital marketplaces, is now available worldwide in public preview. At Microsoft’s inaugural Marketplace Summit this week, company officials shared their road map for the new program.
The ISV Success Program is a critical component of the new Microsoft Cloud Partner Program. Microsoft has built the program around shifting software sales and distribution through more efficient digital marketplaces. Since revealing the ISV program during this summer’s Inspire partner event, more than 1,000 ISVs have participated in the private preview.
Charlotte Yarkoni, Microsoft’s president for commerce and ecosystem, said the marketplace would help partners accelerate growth and cash flow.
Microsoft’s Charlotte Yarkoni
“We are putting marketplace at the center of our ISV and partner strategies,” Yarkoni said during Microsoft’s Marketplace Summit. “We are at an inflection point in marketplace adoption.”
Citing Bessemer Venture Partners’ research, Yarkoni said marketplaces will become mainstream in 2023. Bessemer Venture Partners forecasts cloud marketplace revenue to grow from $8 billion this year to $50 billion in 2025. At that point, 80% of all sales will transact through digital channels, Yarkoni noted.
“Once just an experiment, a side hustle between cloud providers and partner alliance teams, is now becoming a core go-to-market strategy, top of mind for CEOs, CROs investors and boards,” she said.
According to Yarkoni, Microsoft’s ISV Success Program gives access to Microsoft’s sales force of 35,000 people and 90,000 cloud services providers (CSPs), or they can sell direct via digital storefronts. The new program includes marketplace rewards, which give ISVs listing optimization, marketing support and cloud credits calculated on sales.
Yarkoni showcased a participant in the private preview, Wiz, a fast-growth startup that provides cloud-based threat detection services. The two-year-old startup has grown to over $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 18 months. The company’s co-founder and CEO, Assaf Rappaport, said Wiz couldn’t have grown ARR that fast without the Azure Marketplace.
“For us, this is the main distribution channel,” Rappaport said.
Initially, Rappaport didn’t expect that to be the case, but a major customer insisted on going through the marketplace.
“A CISO told us, ‘It’s going to go through the Azure Marketplace; otherwise, I’m not going to do business with you,’” he said. “That’s where our customers are.”
As Microsoft continues to roll out the ISV Success Program, four key teams must work together to drive cloud marketplace success for ISVs, said Techaisle industry analyst Anurag Agrawal. The teams are sales operations, partner marketing, business development and sales alliances.
Techaisle’s Anurag Agrawal
“And Microsoft has yet to demonstrate that it has built that cohesion within its organization,” Agrawal noted.
Microsoft announced that ISV Success Program participants would be eligible for up to 50 hours of business and technical consultations for applications with higher estimated cloud consumption. According to Anthony Joseph, Microsoft’s VP of marketplace and ISV journey, the offering is set to become available in private preview soon.
“The core package has a retail value of over $125,000 and offers valuable one-to-one consults, while the expanded package has a retail value of over $145,000, with up to 50 hours of one-to-one consults,” Joseph said.
Jake Zborowski, general manager of Microsoft’s commercial marketplace, outlined some of the program’s features that are now available. Among them are the ability to configure multiyear terms for both SaaS and virtual machine deployments. Both are available on Microsoft’s new private offers platform, which allows custom pricing.
Microsoft’s Jake Zborowski
“Enterprise sales and private are the areas where there is maximum traction,” Techaisle’s Agrawal said.
According to Techaisle research, 60-70% of enterprise deals are through private offers, midmarket is 40-60% private, and SMBs are predominantly public, Agrawal noted.
“And Microsoft has cleverly avoided focusing on SMB customers,” he said.
The private offers plan allows partners to offer customized programs and pricing configurable in the Microsoft Partner Center.
“Our aspiration is to extend beyond our own user experience and portal to allow you to actually manage and manage offer creation and deal-making and your own systems and tools,” Zborowski said.
Yarokoni said private offers are the key to closing seven- and eight-figure deals via the marketplace. Over the past year, Yarkoni said Microsoft saw a nearly 300% rise in build sales on SaaS apps, a 319% increase in customers buying with consumption commits, and a 200% increase in private offers sold through partners.
Microsoft has released APIs for publishing and creating private offers, Zborowski added.
“These APIs are fully documented and are directly available to our partners and to companies who build on top of our marketplace enablement,” he said.
During the past nine months, Microsoft has completed an overhaul of its lead generation platform. Now, Microsoft is generating more leads through those marketplaces, Zborowski noted. Zborowski said more than 4 million unique users visit its web storefronts each month, resulting in 1.7 million leads for partners.
Big-name tech vendors are cutting staff, but whether the cost-cutting will trickle down to end customers is another question.
Public cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) is eying minor staff cuts as its parent company and many big-name technology vendors announce layoffs in the thousands.
Fortune reported on Wednesday that AWS tasked its managers with identifying underperforming employees that belong to teams “that have grown too fast.” AWS remains in a hiring freeze, and it has prematurely ended many contractor contracts. However, the Amazon subsidiary is not currently planning layoffs.
In a meeting this week, an AWS executive said he’d be “shocked and flabbergasted” if there were any layoffs on the AWS side, and that there was no way for the company to execute layoffs inside the product teams without having a detrimental impact on AWS. https://t.co/qWAeAT33YS
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) November 16, 2022
The report comes amid a layoff of approximately 10,000 Amazon people, including those in its retail and human resources units as in addition to its services division that runs Alexa. Moreover, rival hyperscaler Microsoft Azure cut job openings earlier this year, and Oracle Cloud has slashed about 200 jobs.
But what does this news mean for the channel, in particular the MSP and agent sides of the market?
Dave Sobel
For MSP Radio founder Dave Sobel, the news certainly doesn’t spell devastation for partners. He said all projections point to IT services spending increasing in 2023.
“If I put my IT services/MSP hat on for a second, I’m much more concerned about whether or not my customers are trimming up than I’m worried about my vendors two levels back trimming up,” Sobel told Channel Futures. “Consumption from the end customer does not look like it’s going to be impacted.”
Opex’s Courtney Humphrey
Opex Technologies CEO Courtney Humphrey said news of hiring freezes and layoffs in the technology industry doesn’t come as a surprise to him and his team.
“Keep in mind, the industry experienced explosive growth throughout the ‘COVID years’ in regards to headcount, revenue and stock prices. We have been expecting layoffs, as many of these firms’ stocks prices are down over 50%. This being said, we are still bullish on the industry and our ability to help our clients leverage the technology solutions they require in order to drive transformation and cost savings within their organizations,” Humphrey told Channel Futures.
Layoffs in the tech industry have dominated news headlines in November. Meta laid off 11,000, and other household names like Salesforce and Intel are shedding workers. And for many of these stories, the news carries the somber undertone – or overtone – of a looming recession that will ripple throughout the channel ecosystem.
Sobel said many of these layoffs reflect more on businesses correcting course than an actual macroeconomic trend. Take for instance, Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that their 13% workforce reduction came from a missed forecast on his part.
“At the start of COVID, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended,” Zuckerberg wrote in a public letter. “I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.”
Opkalla’s Jim Campbell
Sobel added that many of the “tech companies” making the headlines for layoffs aren’t truly tech companies in a way that matters to the channel. For example, Meta does social media, and Uber does transportation. He added that in the case some of these layoffs – Meta for example – take the companies back to where they were in the summer in terms of headcount.
“We’re just talking about a handful of Silicon Valley companies that got ahead of themselves. But I don’t spend my time worrying if Zuck, Jeff Bezos or someone like that made a correct call. I spend my time worrying about IT services companies,” Sobel said.
Jim Campbell, managing partner at technology advisory firm Opkalla, said large technology vendors “absolutely overspent” during the last two years. But Campbell said he’s taking note of where these providers are making their cuts.
“A lot of their cuts are in the staffing or HR departments which indicate …
Using an expletive to describe it, the CEO also said those who think as-a-service is good for customers are “smoking dope.”
CANALYS FORUM 2022 — Computacenter CEO Mike Norris has criticised the as-a-service business model, labelling it as, well, “sh**.”
Norris (pictured above) was speaking Wednesday at Canalys Forum 2022 in Barcelona.
He said: “As a Microsoft shareholder, as-a-service is brilliant. As a vendor, as-a-service is brilliant. As a channel partner, as-a-service is pretty good. [For] a corporate customer, I think it’s sh**.”
He continued: “Anybody that thinks that as-a-service is great for customers, I think they’re smoking dope. I really do. I think they’re just on the wrong planet. It’s a factor. It’s great. We have to embrace it. The vendors want to do it. I’m not saying it’s not going to conquer the world. It’s [just] not very good for customers.”
While not echoing Norris’ sentiments directly, the analysts at Canalys also pointed to as-a-service as overhyped.
Canalys’ Jay McBain
“Subscription, consumption product-led growth, as-a-service, will make up less than a third of our industry,” said Jay McBain, Canalys’ chief analyst for global channels. “Look at the $4.3 trillion that was bought by businesses and governments around the world. We get a little overhyped, a little over-excited based on all these commitments. But every analyst and every journalist that ever predicted the death of something in the last 40 years has been wrong.
“Our industry is very nuanced,” McBain continued. “We’re watching as 30% of our end customers are outsourcing some or all of their IT. We’re watching the resiliency of the telco agent recurring model. And we’re watching SaaS grow at 20-30%, hyperscalers growing 40-50%. We’re watching with interest as Dell just reported 78% growth on Apex, in hardware. HPE GreenLake isreporting three straight quarters of triple-digit growth this year, but of a very low baseline. This in total is going to make up a smaller percentage of what we do every day than we think.”
Canalys has previously said that vendors push consumption-based IT services on their partners, creating tension.
Norris also pointed to the cost challenges around cloud.
“Cost control is the biggest challenge with the cloud,” he said. “Because it’s not software as a service, it’s software as a ‘hostage.’ You have no choice; you can’t get out of it. The vast majority of my customers, [we ask] ‘What can we do for you in the cloud?’ [They answer is], ‘Get control of my cost base.’ That is that is the biggest single demand.
“There is huge opportunity [in] the cloud. You should be there and you need to be there. It can’t be cloud first; it can’t be cloud everywhere. But it’s part of the infrastructure. It’s not cheap,” added Norris.
Norris declined to comment on the introduction of Microsoft’s controversial new points-based program for partners. This was despite sitting right next to David Smith, VP, worldwide channel sales, Microsoft U.S.
As Canalys’ CEO Steve Brazier wryly noted, “Mike Norris is the longest-serving public CEO in the UK across all categories. When you get to that stage, you can say what you like.”
Computacenter is quoted on the London FTSE 250 and employs more than 17,000 people worldwide.
“When I talk to partners, I don’t talk about points. I just talk about being customer obsessed,” says Microsoft’s David Smith.
CANALYS FORUM 2022 — Microsoft’s U.S. channel leader says the company’s new points-based program is merely a mechanism to be more customer-centric.
“In my mind when I talk to partners, I don’t talk about points. I just talk about being customer obsessed,” said David Smith, vice president, worldwide channel sales, Microsoft U.S. “We’re just trying to find value. I could look at each individual partner here and each is unique. I have four kids, and none of them is the same. We’re trying to make sure that there’s a way for you to differentiate and really show your superpower.
“This approach allow the partners to differentiate in a unique way,” Smith continued. “Points is a mechanism to do that, but it’s not the primary pivot.”
The exec was speaking as a panellist at Canalys Forum 2022 in Barcelona. He told attendees that the previous Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) “served us well” with gold and silver tiers. But partners were demanding more.
Microsoft revealed the transition from the MPN to the new program just over six months ago. The firm introduced six partner designations and partner capability scores required to achieve each designation. Microsoft now tabulates those scores based on performance, skills and certifications and customer success.
Despite partner complaints, the company maintained its Oct. 3 launch date.
Smith (pictured on stage above) maintained it was “one of the more exciting, most well thought out changes” that Microsoft has made for the channel.
Smith also said the new program is “doing amazing things to help skill the channel.”
“Via the new programmatic changes, we’re investing more than ever before,” said Smith. “Frankly, massive amounts into the skilling that needs to happen within the channel partners,” he said.
“It’s extremely important, not only from a customer perspective, because they’re going to receive the benefit of that scaling. But also within your own organisation. What we’re hearing, especially during COVID and post-COVID, is it’s hard for you to retain talent. We’re going to invest in your people so that you can do great things with your customers.”
Insight’s Joyce Mullen
Joyce Mullen, president and CEO of Insight, on the same panel, said she thought “the direction is exactly right.”
However, she said, “We need to figure out how to make sure we’re building creating more value for our clients. And we do that by focusing on the fastest growing areas of the industry.”
Computacenter CEO Mike Norris, also on the panel, declined to comment on the new program.
Oracle customers and partners convened in Las Vegas for the first time in two years. See what happened.
ORACLE CLOUDWORLD — It’s almost as though COVID-19 never happened. On Tuesday, thousands of people converged on the Venetian Convention and Expo Center in Las Vegas for Oracle’s much-anticipated cloud event.
The day started with a series of keynote conversations between CEO Safra Catz and a range of key Oracle customers. Each discussed how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is changing and elevating how they do business. (We deliver the specifics in the slideshow above.)
Along the way, we took some miscellaneous photos of the activity happening outside of the keynote room. People could lounge while a DJ played music, or they could attend sessions, or they could get lunch on the CloudWorld show floor and check out the many, various booths.
Then, the first afternoon of Oracle CloudWorld wrapped up with a keynote speech from Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison. Hint: Ellison has an extremely big vision for Oracle and Cerner, and, frankly, the whole world’s health care systems.
“What we are trying to do has never been attempted before,” he said.
(He also talked a little bit about multicloud interconnectivity — we cover that, too.)
See our slideshow above for a roundup of Oracle CloudWorld’s first day back after a two-year break.
Some vendors had been partnering with AppDirect to build a cloud marketplace of their own.
Channel-facing B2B commerce platform AppSmart is aligning its brand more closely with parent company AppDirect.
The AppSmart marketplace will carry AppDirect branding starting in early 2023. That includes its URL and name. Moreover, other AppSmart web experiences and products will adopt AppDirect branding. The transition will take place over the first two quarters of 2023, chief marketing officer Adam Christensen told Channel Futures.
AppDirect’s Nicolas Desmarais
“We believe that the future of B2B commerce is in relationship-based marketplaces. We’re seizing the opportunity to leverage our digital ecosystem and the relationships that have been built on our world-class platform between business buyers, advisors and technology providers to fuel growth in the technology market on an unprecedented scale,” AppDirect chairman and CEO Nicolas Desmarais said.
AppDirect, the 13-year-old B2B subscription commerce platform, entered the technology advisor (agent) channel in 2018 with the acquisition of WTG and later a host of well-established tech services distributors (TSDs). It spun up its AppSmart division with the help of the various agents that worked with those TSDs, partnering with them to bring end customers into the AppSmart marketplace.
For Mark Venuto, chief operations officer at AppSmart partner US Network, the announcement represents an official unification of two worlds — that of software in AppDirect and telecommunications in AppSmart.
US Network’s Mark Venuto
“It’s going to be a great thing because you’re going to combine software solutions and telco solutions under one umbrella. It just creates a better environment for the TSB community with more product segments for all the TSBs and their subagents to sell from one company. It gives you a greater reach, breadth, and depth globally, versus just in the continental U.S.,” Venuto told Channel Futures.
Christensen said the AppDirect and AppSmart businesses had run distinctly from one another, despite AppSmart leveraging the AppDirect platform.
“This really just brings the business into one and makes it simpler and easier to do business with,” Christensen said.
AppSmart partners with some of the largest telecommunications vendors through its TSD business. At the same time, AppDirect has been partnering with big-name channel vendors like Comcast and Verizon to help them build their own cloud marketplaces. And those companies see the value in unifying the brands, AppDirect executives said.
Comcast Business’ Cary Tengler
Cary Tengler is vice president of indirect sales for Comcast Business. He said his team is excited to see AppSmart integrate more deeply into AppDirect.
“For years, telecom and IT solution selling has been on the verge of convergence, but still remain largely separate. AppDirect has the unique combination of technology, tools and people to finally make that convergence happen,” Tengler said. “We’re both a customer and a partner of AppDirect, and we’re excited about the potential for AppDirect to leverage its marketplace and its vast ecosystem of suppliers and partners to dramatically shift how end users acquire and deploy IT and telephony solutions.”
Christensen said integrating all of sales, marketing and operations can bring all AppDirect resources “directly to bear for our advisors.”
AppSmart’s Adam Christensen
“This will result in faster development of innovative tools and experiences for our advisors and their end businesses,” Christensen said.
Christensen added that agents can now think of AppDirect as an offering they can deliver to their customers. That’s in addition to the offerings on the AppSmart marketplace.
“This also paves the way for advisors to be able to sell the AppDirect platform itself to their enterprise customers, who are in need of either a marketplace to create their own external ecosystem or to build an internal procurement marketplace,” Christensen told Channel Futures.
We’re thrilled to share our plans to unify @AppDirect & AppSmart under a single brand, opening up tremendous opportunities for all advisors to continue fueling innovation throughout the channel community. Learn more about our latest milestone in our blog: https://t.co/nYDnxtVvfl pic.twitter.com/SVzCMUBXf7
— AppSmart (@AppSmartcom) October 18, 2022
AppSmart this summer announced the consolidation of its U.S. channel sales programs into one. Christopher Shubert, who joined AppSmart from its purchase of MicroCorp, accepted the position of vice president of channel sales. He said the appointment signified AppSmart’s efforts to move multiple teams and processes from the acquired companies into a single system. The “teams” had embraced a single philosophy, he said.
AppSmart’s Chris Shubert
“Me moving into this role is just the next piece of that: AppSmart moving into [a place] where we’re not a many-tentacled beast, but a streamlined, focused organization dedicated to helping our advisers achieve the next step in their evolution,” Shubert told Channel Futures in July.
Venuto said the integration gives his team a single pane of glass.
“When we go to order any products or services, request codes, or any level of software, the process is completely streamlined,” Venuto told Channel Futures. “It’s more effective and robust across the board.”
AppSmart differs from the tech services distributors (TSDs) it competes against, in part because it provides a marketplace that end user customers can shop (using their technology advisor partner’s tag). Nevertheless, the company still leverages the systems associated with the legacy TSD (formerly known as a master agency) model. And Christensen stressed that AppDirect’s TSD efforts are not simply a means to an end but a core route-to-market for the subscription commerce company.
Christensen emphasized the health of the business in an interview with Channel Futures…