Infoblox: Professional Services a Big Opportunity for Partners

INFOBLOX PARTNER SUMMIT — Cloud/SaaS, security and driving new customer acquisition are Infoblox‘s core focus growth areas for fiscal 2020, and partners will play a big role in the company reaching its goals.

That’s the message shared with partners during this week’s Infoblox Partner Summit in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Infoblox has more than 50% market share in the DDI networking market with 8,000 customers, including 350 of the Fortune 500. Its partners include MSPs, resellers and technology alliance partners.

At the summit, Infoblox unveiled its new professional services program, which allows partners to go to market with Infoblox services using its enablement tools, methodology and documentation.

Infoblox’s Sandy Janes

In a Q&A with Channel Futures, Sandy Janes, Infoblox’s senior director of global partner programs and operations, talks more about the new program and new opportunities for Inflobox partners.

Channel Futures: How will the new program help Infoblox partners?

Sandy Janes: They have a complete view into everything we have within our own professional services organization. So we’re giving them all of the tools to be successful.

CF: What prompted the need for the new program?

SJ: The need for it is really around a few things. One of them is our commitment to partners. Partners can make good margin and a lot of them see services as a critical component of their business where they continue to grow, and we really want to extend that to the partners and make sure we’re setting them up for success. We are also seeing an increase in demand from our customers, especially as they’re increasing their security solutions. They’re really looking for partners to help them bring that together from a services perspective, so we want to make sure that we’re working with our partners to increase that customer success.

CF: How does the program fit into Infoblox’s 2020 core focus areas of cloud/SaaS, security and tech refresh?

SJ: We’re going to have a phased approach to the program. In phase one … partners will be able to introduce legacy Microsoft and bind (associates a local address with a socket), and then we have advanced tracks. And the way the advanced tracks work really aligns with how partners go to market. So if a partner is focused on a particular legacy solution, that’s what they’ll become accredited on. They’re not required to do absolutely everything in the advanced program. We want to make sure we’re setting them up for success in the ways that they go to market already.

CF: Did partner input come into play when establishing this new program?

SJ: It was the partner feedback that I’ve received over the last few months that allowed us to build what we call a professional services activation package. So when they come on, we require two professional services (PS) consultants to become accredited within the PS program, and that includes a three-day professional services class, exclusive access to the tools, documentation, methodology, [and] a fast track to our technical support team within services, but it also includes 40 hours per consultant, so 80 hours in total of mentoring, white glove, ad hoc assistance or remote shadow. We really want to make sure we’re setting the partners up for success. And it was based on the feedback and the conversations that we had with partners that we put this package together to give them the consulting hours. So as they’re starting to onboard or offer more services, we’re going to be with them to help to make sure that we have a fantastic customer experience.

CF: Will this program give partners a competitive advantage?

SJ: We do believe yes, and in a couple of ways, not just in terms of being able to augment the way that they’re offering Infoblox services, but because domain name system (DNS) is the heartbeat of the network, we believe that that sets the partners up to do other service jobs. Because they’re in the core of the network, they can leverage …

… that understanding and being in the heartbeat of the network to really branch out and start to offer other services. So we’ve worked with the partners on not only the return on investment (ROI) to get into the program, but also with how to make money, and that extends beyond what they’ll do initially with the Infoblox services.

CF: How is BloxOne DDI, a cloud-managed service that extends network services to branch offices that launched in August, creating new opportunities for partners?

SJ: Part of BloxOne DDI is ease of doing business for partners. It also allows you to extend it in different ways in different use cases. And the cloud migration will be one of the elements that we’ll have as part of the advanced professional services programs. So that will be something that partners will have as a future module that they can add on.

CF: Is there an overall message for the partner summit here, and does the message evolve from year to year?

SF: It does. We’re very excited about the stories we’ve heard from partners with regards to security. From a programs perspective, we’ve really matured. We’ve used the BuildingBLOX partner program as the foundation and we’ve continued to build on that with expanded modules. We have a dozen partners in the United States within our federal program that we’ve added, and half of them have grown over 200% since the program launched; it’s been fantastic, and that’s just since February. And now with the launch of the services for professional services, we’re really looking to expand more and then you’ll see a future track that will be announced shortly on cloud and security.

CF: Is the professional services program now up and running?

SF: It’s being announced officially here … and it’s by invitation; it is open to platinum and gold partners, and you have to have a professional services practice in place, and in addition to that you have to have the ability to do the technical and service delivery capabilities so you already have the methodologies in place. And together we’ll vet the engineers to make sure that they have the right background and skills to make sure that the partner is successful. The training will start after the new year so in March we’ll be announcing the first classes.

CF: What do you hope partners, when they leave the summit, can take back and make use of?

SF: Identifying new opportunities, looking for those net-new logos, and embedding us into their security architectures, ensuring that we’re part of the bigger solution. Our partners are doing many things already today in many of the security plays and we really want Infoblox to wrap around that. We complement and can enhance a lot of the solutions that are out there today, and we believe that not protecting the DNS is a current gap, and we’re looking for partners to help us scale both in terms of net new logos and also security.