Palo Alto Networks Ignite: New Role for Karl Soderlund, NextWave Program Updates
Karl Soderlund will now focus on North America's channel ecosystems.
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During the Partner Summit, Karl Soderlund, senior vice president of North America ecosystems, announced numerous enhancements to the company’s NextWave partner program. And Palo Alto Networks will be rolling out more enhancements every month for the foreseeable future.
The company has gone through 12 months of evolution with its partner program, receiving input from partners, looking at competitors’ programs and formulating guiding principles, Soderlund said.
The program’s guiding principles are: drive simplicity, partner choice, future proof, value-based compensation and services-led model.
NextWave is now one holistic program with multiple paths, include services partners, solution providers, MSPs, distribution and cloud service providers (CSPs), Soderlund said.
The new services provider path is for partners that don’t resell or offer managed services, but provide a service to mutual customers, such as consulting, risk and liability, and would like to refer security business to Palo Alto Networks.
Soderlund said by embracing all types of partners, NextWave aims to: enable partners to differentiate; expand opportunities; enhance partner profitability; and empower partner success with frictionless selling.
In addition to the services partner path, Palo Alto Networks is rolling out improved partner-delivered service attach. It plans to lean on partners heavily to deploy products and drive customer adoption of its technology.
The company is also improving its post-sales partner enablement to ensure partners are equipped to “deliver on this ask,” and establishing perimeters for partners to engage in deals without competition from the company.
Soderlund also announced the MSSP Partner-to-Partner program, which allows NextWave partners to resell the complete offering of products as a managed service from authorized Partner2Partner MSSPs.
“Some partners may be managed services, but not the full breadth and depth of services, and they need to partner with others,” he said.
Palo Alto Networks’ Don Jones said partners played a massive role in the company’s success in fiscal year 2022. For example, partners were responsible for $4 billion in deal registration pipeline creation.
In addition, partners also logged 62,000 sales learning completions, a 130% increase year over year.
Palo Alto Networks also saw 96% growth in CSPs and 225% year-over year growth in emerging sales.
“A year ago, we talked about an amazing opportunity in front of you and Palo Alto Networks … and boy, did you deliver,” he said.
BJ Jenkins, Palo Alto Networks’ president, said there’s massive opportunity ahead for his company with partners.
He said customers want to have more strategic, holistic, long-term conversations about cybersecurity.
“Cybersecurity projects are still a top priority,” Jenkins said. “There may be more scrutiny, but they’re not going away. They want to simplify, drive high security efficacy and lower cost of ownership, and they’re looking for us to drive that. So this coming year, there’s a huge opportunity for us with consolidation.”
Customers see an opportunity if “we can present it to them,” he said.
“They want a trusted brand and trusted partner, and that’s what we’re going to bring,” Jenkins said. “Our partners are side by side on all of our accounts. We can’t scale without you, that’s why we’re here today.”
Jenkins issued the following call to action for 2023:
Engage in a secure access service edge (SASE) conversation with every customer.
As the transition to cloud continues, “let’s secure it together.”
Be on the “innovation forefront” with Palo Alto Networks with customers’ security operations center (SOC) transformations.
Palo Alto Networks partners like what they heard during the partner summit. For example, Stephanie Hagopian, vice president of cybersecurity at CDW, said the fact that zero trust was mentioned 65 times during the partner summit “falls right inside of our strategy as well.”
“We’re leading with zero trust and our goal is to build out an end-to-end managed capability for Palo Alto Networks’ entire platform,” she said. “We’re seeing in the market it’s a platform play and it’s a best-of-breed plus platform play. That’s exactly what we’re doing from an investment perspective, working with Palo and partnering with Palo, and we want to build that capability to provide both professional services, as well as managed services end to end with our clients through the entire platform. That’s the way our customers want to consume these services and that’s essential for building zero trust in a zero-trust solution and framework as we work with our clients.”
Blake Odenheimer is supply manager with ImmixGroup, a public sector distributor for Palo Alto Networks. He said the partner program enhancements are a step in the right direction.
“It will definitely enhance the low-touch solution selling model for the community, so all and all I think it’s a great step in the the right direction,” he said.
Palo Alto Networks closed out its partner summit with it Partners of the Year awards, honoring those who have “made the most significant impact” on its customers and business in 2022.
2022 Global Partners of the Year Winners are:
Global NextWave Partner of the Year: WWT
Global Distributor of the Year: TD Synnex
Global SI Partner of the Year: Deloitte
Global Service Provider (SP) Partner of the Year: AT&T
Global Cortex Partner of the Year: CDW
Global Prisma Cloud Partner of the Year: Google Cloud
Global SASE Partner of the Year: IIJ Global Solutions
Global Social Impact: Nexus Technologies (ASEAN)
Global ASC Award Winner: Ingram Micro
Global CPSP Award Winner: Verizon
Technology Partner of the Year: HashiCorp
Technology Partner Collaboration Award: Zoom
Technology Partner Innovator Award: Red Hat
2022 Americas Partners of the Year Winners include:
Partner of the Year – Next Wave: WWT
Distribution Partner of the Year: TD Synnex
SI Partner of the Year: Deloitte
SP Partner of the Year: AT&T
Cortex Partner of the Year: CDW
Prisma Cloud Partner of the Year: Google Cloud
SASE Partner of the Year: SHI
Social Impact Award: ePlus
ASC Partner of the Year Award: Ingram Micro
CPSP Partner of the Year Award, North America: Norlem
CPSP Partner of the Year Award, Latin America: Neosecure
Palo Alto Networks closed out its partner summit with it Partners of the Year awards, honoring those who have “made the most significant impact” on its customers and business in 2022.
2022 Global Partners of the Year Winners are:
Global NextWave Partner of the Year: WWT
Global Distributor of the Year: TD Synnex
Global SI Partner of the Year: Deloitte
Global Service Provider (SP) Partner of the Year: AT&T
Global Cortex Partner of the Year: CDW
Global Prisma Cloud Partner of the Year: Google Cloud
Global SASE Partner of the Year: IIJ Global Solutions
Global Social Impact: Nexus Technologies (ASEAN)
Global ASC Award Winner: Ingram Micro
Global CPSP Award Winner: Verizon
Technology Partner of the Year: HashiCorp
Technology Partner Collaboration Award: Zoom
Technology Partner Innovator Award: Red Hat
2022 Americas Partners of the Year Winners include:
Partner of the Year – Next Wave: WWT
Distribution Partner of the Year: TD Synnex
SI Partner of the Year: Deloitte
SP Partner of the Year: AT&T
Cortex Partner of the Year: CDW
Prisma Cloud Partner of the Year: Google Cloud
SASE Partner of the Year: SHI
Social Impact Award: ePlus
ASC Partner of the Year Award: Ingram Micro
CPSP Partner of the Year Award, North America: Norlem
CPSP Partner of the Year Award, Latin America: Neosecure
PALO ALTO NETWORKS IGNITE — New NextWave partner program enhancements and a new role for channel leader Karl Soderlund were all unveiled during the Partner Summit on the eve of Palo Alto Networks Ignite 2022.
This is the 10th anniversary of Palo Alto Networks Ignite. The company expects some 2,500 cybersecurity professionals in person with thousands more joining virtually. The theme of this year’s Ignite is “securing the way forward.”
Soderlund (pictured above) has stepped down from his role as Palo Alto Networks’ senior vice president of worldwide channel sales to take on the new role of senior vice president of North America ecosystems.
Palo Alto Networks’ Karl Soderlund
Tom Evans, vice president of worldwide channel sales strategy, is taking over Soderlund’s responsibilities on the global channel side.
Don Jones, Palo Alto Networks’ senior vice president of global ecosystems, is the company’s global channel leader.
Driving North America’s Ecosystem
“I’ve been on board for five years driving the channel structure, the programs, the growth and the strategy,” Soderlund said. “At the global role, you’re in a position of influence to all of the theaters to make sure they are consistent. Now with the dramatic growth of the business, I’m going into the North America role to drive the overall ecosystem. So that’s all routes to market. That includes GSIs, service providers, solution providers, cloud service providers (CSPs) and distribution, driving growth in that business, which is a multibillion-dollar business and growing at close to 30% year over year.”
Palo Alto Networks’ Don Jones
His new North America role includes building strategy. He’ll also manage the North America team, and align with partners and customers to drive growth.
“Tom’s been in my organization on the global side for a long time,” Soderlund said. “It just made natural sense for him to be enabled and empowered now to continue what we built there and continue to grow it.”
‘Significant’ Investments in Ecosystems
Palo Alto Networks‘ ecosystems of partners have never been more critical to the company’s success, Jones said. And the company is making “significant” investments to support them. That includes creating ecosystems lead roles in each theater (EMEA, Americas and Japan Asia-Pacific).
Palo Alto Networks’ Tom Evans
“Patricia Murphy recently joined us to lead the ecosystems business in EMEA,” he said. “And Karl will lead the ecosystems business in the Americas. As senior vice president of North America ecosystems, Karl will have responsibility for the sales execution across all partner types (distribution, VAR, MSP, service provider, SI etc.). With Karl taking on this role, Tom Evans will continue his role as vice president of worldwide channel strategy. [He’ll] assume responsibility globally for the long-term strategy regarding our NextWave program, as well as global distribution.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Palo Alto Networks Ignite Partner Summit.
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