Trend Micro Sales Accelerate in AWS Marketplace, Others Rushing to Get Into Marketplaces
There's a rush by 4,300 companies to get into marketplaces.
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Trend Micro‘s Louise McEvoy said the vendor built its AWS team in 2020. Trend Micro was named AWS Marketplace Partner of the Year at AWS Reinvent last year.
“We are very closely tied to all the AWS teams around the world and we lean in pretty heavily with our partners,” she said. “This is not just a one-layer model where it’s our customers to AWS. We strategically put a focus around consulting partner private offer (CPPO) to allow our partners to still sell to their end customers through the marketplace. And we put a strategic focus on it because it’s not as though a partner can just [say], ‘OK, I’m open for business on CPPO.’ They have to be enabled with Trend Micro and they have to be signed up with AWS. And what we were seeing sometimes is that a customer was looking to purchase through marketplace and their incumbent partner wasn’t set up or enabled on CPPO, so now we were backtracking, trying to get through that. If that customer wanted to procure right away, that partner got cut out of their own end-customer deal.”
Trend Micro wants to ensure partners are involved in AWS Marketplace sales because the vendor is “channel-first” and isn’t set up to go massively direct, McEvoy said.
“We rely on our partners as an extension of our sales team, and I would say actually as an extension of Trend Micro because it’s not just sales that they’re doing, but it is that licensing, that provisioning, [those] services that enable to the end customers,” she said. “There’s a whole lot of value that they add. So it’s not in our best interest to go direct. We very quickly had to put a team of people together to get our partners. We went through our platinum partners first, our national partners, those who held the majority of the end-customer contracts. We went to them and said, ‘OK, let’s get you signed up and enabled to transact on that first CPPO deal because it’s not enough that you sign a contract. You actually have to be enabled and you have to have that licensing capability. So we did that.”
Trend Micro offers different ways to license and procure, and “we wanted to be flexible to our end customers and with our partners,” McEvoy said.
“Marketplace has opened up those opportunities versus a traditional license model sale,” she said. “There are now opportunities where we can offer a bundle on the AWS Marketplace listing. We can add the services component and we can add all different types of products. And it’s just like going to any other marketplace where you might want to buy something, you can buy direct now, but through your partner. So it’s a win-win for our customers, for our partners. And because of our alliance and that strategic partnership with AWS, it’s been really good for both parties as well.”
Increasing partner interest in AWS Marketplace is due to the fact that the market is changing, McEvoy said.
“At first, partners were a little bit resistant to the change because they didn’t know what that meant for them as a reseller — because technically their end customer can buy without them,” she said. “But I think the more the partners embrace this change, because it’s coming whether they want it or not, the more opportunities they actually can have with AWS now as one of their strategic partners. I think the change is going to happen and it’s going to be around ecosystems, bundles, services, all as a direct marketplace. So it’s not so much about the traditional reseller or license sale that we’re seeing. Now, it really is what additional value can you add. So the partners are reinventing themselves and I really encourage them to do so because customers are looking for that value-add, because it’s very simple for them to just go to a marketplace, click on that listing and purchase it direct.”
Cloud marketplaces are another route to market, and it’s a big and simple route to market with a lot of different licensing and procurement options, McEvoy said.
“We do see customers who are still buying through a traditional on-premises model and others who are going hybrid,” she said. “So yes, the growth in the market is large and it’s growing in marketplace. But that’s not to say the other two markets are declining so rapidly. They are still at a steady state. It’s just that marketplace growth is big and the cybersecurity space is really large, so that exponential growth is usually happening through marketplace. But we can’t dismiss those other customers who are on premises or hybrid.”
Trend Micro’s products are available on a number of marketplaces, not just AWS Marketplace, McEvoy said.
“We have vendors or actual partners who have set up their own marketplace, and of course we have our distributors who have their marketplace,” she said. “There’s all different types of marketplaces, whether it be hyperscalers, whether it be niche marketplaces; it’s not just a one-size-fits-all through Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure or AWS. There are a number of different marketplaces. So yes, our listing footprint is growing, but it’s also growing because of our partners. Because our partners are setting up marketplaces or have set up marketplaces, we have listings there. But we also have partners who are bundling Trend Micro security solutions layered on top of their services, and they might layer on top of another ISV solution like a compliance solution. And now you have this bundle that they can set up as a listing with that bundle, and you can go to another ISV who has a bundled listing that has Trend Micro built in. So our footprint is getting broader and broader, but it’s not a direct result of us placing those products on marketplace. It’s through other vendors who we work with.”
A lot of partners are having to transition their business models from a traditional reseller to something else, McEvoy said. And that something else is most likely going to be a services model.
“Or they might get into a niche-type business or consulting- professional services,” she said. “They might get into migration-type opportunities. We have a number of different partner types within our U.S. channel, and I look at it every day and I see there are some partners who are transitioning to this new era. There are other partners who are transforming themselves. They were this partner type and now they’re transforming into a different partner type.
“I’m seeing other partners who are exploring … new opportunities, new ways of going to business, new ways of going to market, different niches, verticals, etc. The fourth type of partner transition are those that are accelerating into those new opportunities, that new model, that new way of going to market. So it’s transition, transformation, exploration and acceleration, all due to services, bundles, ecosystems and marketplaces.”
It’s not a one-size-fits-all like it has been in the past, McEvoy said.
“It’s very different now,” she said. “I think it’s a lot better because it gives customers a lot more options and I do think it gives partners more options, but it is also a change. So they have to accept that there are changes there and figure out what their specific focus, niche opportunity or differentiator is.”
Partners have voiced concerns that marketplace is taking over their business, McEvoy said.
“No, I don’t think marketplace is going to take over,” she said. “There’s space for everyone, but they do need to evolve in where the market is and in ways in which the customers are buying. They do have to evolve just because the customers have evolved and just the market in general, business has changed.”
Canalys‘ Jay McBain said the channel has never died after 43 years of prognosticators saying that it’s going to die.
“All boats are rising,” he said. “Resell of all this stuff is rising. It’s just not rising as quickly. And partners are really smart entrepreneurs. Over 43 years, they will find the areas of profit. They’ll leverage their customer relationships, and marketplaces will be a net benefit for the channel, at least those that recognize this where those are because they’re in different places than where they were over the last few decades.”
Partners have voiced concerns that marketplace is taking over their business, McEvoy said.
“No, I don’t think marketplace is going to take over,” she said. “There’s space for everyone, but they do need to evolve in where the market is and in ways in which the customers are buying. They do have to evolve just because the customers have evolved and just the market in general, business has changed.”
Canalys‘ Jay McBain said the channel has never died after 43 years of prognosticators saying that it’s going to die.
“All boats are rising,” he said. “Resell of all this stuff is rising. It’s just not rising as quickly. And partners are really smart entrepreneurs. Over 43 years, they will find the areas of profit. They’ll leverage their customer relationships, and marketplaces will be a net benefit for the channel, at least those that recognize this where those are because they’re in different places than where they were over the last few decades.”
Trend Micro saw a massive surge in sales in the AWS Marketplace during the pandemic — and that acceleration continues, providing a lot of opportunities for channel partners.
That’s according to Louise McEvoy, Trend Micro’s vice president of U.S. channel. Trend Micro has been on the AWS Marketplace for at least five years.
AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog that customers can use to find, buy, deploy and manage third-party software, data and services to build solutions and run their businesses. Customers can launch preconfigured software, and choose software solutions in Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), SaaS and other formats. Professional services are also available to help customers configure, deploy and manage third-party software.
Trend Micro Had Head Start on AWS Marketplace
Jay McBain, chief analyst at Canalys, said Trend Micro had a “very significant head start” in marketplaces among cybersecurity vendors. Trend Micro has said marketplaces are its fastest-growing route to market, and AWS Marketplace is its fastest-growing marketplace.
Canalys’ Jay McBain
“Louise and the team there were very thoughtful in these early trends,” he said. “And what they did with AWS as well as Microsoft, and concurrently doing with Google and others, is saying that for a 35-year-old security company, they’re being very future friendly in their routes to market and they’re also being partner-friendly. They understand that 80%-plus of the security market is resold today. So if the customer does tag it on to a marketplace deal, they’re full of private offers, they’re full of distributor offers, there’s money to be had whichever way the money changes hands. So it’s not meant to be channel-unfriendly. It’s meant to be less friction for the customer and still an indirect sale. Whether they sell through Larry in the white van or whether they sell through AWS, it’s still an indirect sale for Trend Micro.”
Demand for Trend Micro on AWS Marketplace is being driven by customer preference, McEvoy said.
Trend Micro’s Louise McEvoy
“But I do want to make it clear that we still see a lot of on-premises customers and there are a lot that are hybrid,” she said. “We launched our Vision One platform and … that really is opening up that platform for our on-premises customers, for our hybrid and for those who want to go to the cloud. Before, we really heavily leaned into the cloud, but we recognize there are still a number of customers who are very much on premises and they plan to stay there for a period of time, and those who are looking to go on premises and cloud. So there is an incline for marketplace, but I think it’s an incline in the market in general for cybersecurity. So where is that going to go? It’ll likely go into this new modern world, and modern in so many ways is really through the cloud. Marketplace is how we buy, how we procure, how we license just in our everyday lives. And we’re seeing that in the IT space or software.”
Rush to Marketplaces
While marketplaces are growing at 86% compounded, security in marketplaces is growing in triple digits, McBain said.
“So there’s a rush by 4,300 companies to get into marketplaces,” he said. “The 17th fastest-growing company in the world last year, which is Tackle.io, all they do is they help companies, especially security companies, get on marketplaces. And they grew their business last year by [nearly 8,000%].”
Skyflow is the latest to join the AWS Partner Network and is now available through the AWS Marketplace. With its zero-trust vault architecture, Skyflow allows businesses to protect sensitive data without compromising its utility, supporting a wide range of use cases across industries such as health care, finance and e-commerce.
Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Trend Micro on AWS Marketplace.
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