What kinds of partners are you looking for? Partners with a focus on managed services, with a deep knowledge and understanding of cloud-based services, including communication and collaboration offerings. Additionally partners that are currently selling premise-based solutions that would like to transition their customers into the cloud.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? 8x8 in Australia has been successful in securing our product into a number of prominent brands both locally and globally via our channel partner network in this region. These significant wins include customers such as Sibelco, Oaks Hotels, My Pet Warehouse, Vista Entertainment, Sebel Furniture, Endeavour Foundation and Red Balloon Group.

Anything else? 8x8 is the world's first communications cloud, combining unified communications, collaboration, contact centre, and analytics in a single, open and real-time platform. We have more than 15 global data centres servicing over 1 million business users in 150-plus countries, with global 24/7/365 follow-the-sun customer support. We are a six-time Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for unified communications as a service, worldwide. As 8x8 expands its Australian market footprint as the preferred choice of enterprise communications, our channel partners continue to play a critical role in helping our customers take employee and customer engagement to a superior level.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are looking for partners that want to be able to deliver hosted voice and UC services to their customer base.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Customer experience is critical for Access4. We have just completed our FY2019 survey and have delivered a +41% NPS rating from our partners. We aim to lift this above +80 and having invested in a dedicated training manager, additional marketing support resources, and partner success managers to help our partners.

Anything else? Access4 runs the largest BroadSoft platform in Australian not owned by a traditional telco. As a partner-only organisation we are only focused on supporting our partners so that they leverage hosted voice and UC services for their customers. We are committed to our partner support program and ongoing training and sales development in our channel.

Australian distributor: CommsPlus Australia

Greg Mikaelian, GM Channels & Marketing

What kinds of partners are you looking for? In 2019, we are looking at a re-invigorated drive to build stronger commercial channels. Channels offering value-added solutions and services, such as managed service providers targeting SMBs, SME and midmarket customers.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? I have only been back for two months. I'm looking at the current channel building blocks, support structures, tools and existing customers. Assessing our capability in the light of the current market and the competitor offering with the view of major launch plans in 2019. I am confident that you will see a lot of announcements coming through from Acer in the near future.

Australian distributors: Synnex, Bluechip Infotech, Ingram Micro

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Acronis is looking for partners with established distribution networks and active customer bases. We look for value-add partners and resellers both in the SMB and enterprise space. Cyber protection has become a necessity for every single organisation in Australia and New Zealand. We’re looking for partners who are able to explain the importance of protecting data to their customers and offer Acronis as a one-stop solution to protect all data, applications and systems.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We have established a number of strategic partnerships with distributors and cloud resellers. Acronis also signed strategic partnerships with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, allowing our partners to use their existing accounts to store backups protected by Acronis. Acronis offers a great level of control, management, and flexibility and it’s very attractive to our partners. In addition, Acronis offers AI-based ransomware protection and blockchain-data authentication with our solutions out of the box, making Acronis the most secure backup on the market.

Anything else? Acronis is renowned for introducing a new hybrid cloud architecture designed for greater flexibility and data privacy, including a host of innovative features that make cyber protection easier and more complete. It was the first company to add AI-based ransomware protection and blockchain-based data authentication to its products, making Acronis the most secure backup on the market. Acronis addresses the five vectors of cyber protection – safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) — offering easy, efficient, and secure products customers of any size.

Australian distributors: Synnex, rhipe, Ingram Micro

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Adobe has a large existing reseller base and we continue to be committed to growing our joint business together. From a new partner perspective, we're actively recruiting resellers and/or solution integrators that are focused on driving customer experience and/or digital transformation solutions into their customer base – building out a value proposition for them to take our digital experience and electronic signature offerings to market.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? The ANZ channel's relentless focus on customer renewals and satisfaction has resulted in ANZ becoming a top-performing global region for annuity in 2018

Australian distributor: Ingram Micro

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Our global strategy focuses our sales, marketing and product management resources on five key verticals: healthcare, government, education, transportation and hospitality. This is where ALE’s solutions provide most value for customers whose communications and network infrastructure are strategic and critical to their business operations. So we are looking for partnerships with system integrators and service providers who understand the unique requirements of these verticals, and compliment ALE solutions with their high-quality services and ability to integrate them into customers’ business systems and processes.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? This year has been a year of immense innovation for ALE, with introduction of breakthrough solutions in communications through our Rainbow cloud messaging and collaboration platform; as well as a new enterprise wi-fi solution and cloud network management platform. We’ve also introduced more vertical-specific solutions. Getting all our partners across Australia enabled on all these new capabilities has been a massive effort and great achievement by the whole local team ALE team.

Anything else? Next year Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise will celebrate the major landmark: 100 years of providing communications and networking solutions to the enterprise market. Watch this space for details of how we will celebrate with our customers and partners!

Australian distributors: VExpress, Integrated Products, Bluechip Infotech

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are seeking partners across ANZ who are looking to differentiate themselves from the competition. Our value to local partners is centered around developing more value and increased competitiveness whilst opening up more markets across Asia Pacific due to our strength and presence in this region.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Alibaba Cloud is one of the fastest-growing public cloud providers in the world moving into the number three position by market share. In Australia we implemented a world first ‘image search’ solution for our customer The Iconic enabling greater engagement for customers in Australia and the world. We have signed strategic partnerships with Westcon Comstor, Megaport and TAS helping local partners make use of innovative technology from local leaders.

Anything else? As the cloud computing arm and a business unit of Alibaba Group, Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive suite of global cloud computing services to help power and grow your business. According to Gartner, the company is also among the world’s top three IaaS providers. We are China’s largest provider of public cloud services and have expanded worldwide with international teams in Dubai, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, San Mateo, Seoul, Singapore (International HQ), Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Tokyo. We are supporting customers across Australia and New Zealand with two availability zones in Sydney. As of May 2018, Alibaba Cloud is one of only six vendors featured in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide.

Australian distributor: Westcon-Comstor

Corrie Briscoe, Head, Partnerships and Alliances

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

Amazon Web Services in Australia and New Zealand has a rich ecosystem of partners made up of global systems integrators, born-in-the-cloud partners, ISVs, local systems integrators, managed services providers and national telco partnerships. As we add more and more services to the AWS portfolio, our partnerships will continue to expand in areas like big data and analytics, artificial intelligence and IoT. The AWS platform will provide our partners the opportunity to build, deploy and manage a raft of innovative solutions that truly meet our mutual customers' needs, in ways we may have only dreamt possible in the past.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

With more than 125 AWS services, partners are even more equipped to optimise existing customers’ environments and extend on AWS solutions already implemented. A great example was at the end of 2017, AWS partner, Atlassian completed a two-year-long migration project that saw more than 100,000 Confluence and JIRA Cloud customers move from a single-tenanted data centre to a multi-tenanted solution on AWS. As a result, Atlassian has seen a five-fold reduction in customer service costs, and up to a 100-fold reduction in the severity of customer support cases. This has increased Atlassian’s ability to stay ahead of customer needs, and roll out fixes and functions quickly.

ANZ Bank has been able to rapidly deploy new innovations, including Polli, their chatbot using the Amazon Lex conversational interface service. With the help of Arq Group, ANZ Bank used the technology to help internal staff come to terms with internal policies. Now serving millions of active customers each month and tens of thousands of partners, AWS continues to offer innovative solutions that eliminate unwanted technical debt, improve the ability to fail fast, remove friction from IT management and go global in minutes.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Tech Data, Westcon-Comstor

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Partners that are big enough to invest but agile and skilled enough to be in the market quickly and grow sustainable business for the long term.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Growing the Anaplan Ecosystem from one partner in 2017 to 10 by the end of 2018, all fully enabled and skilled to be able to grow pipeline and delivery customer satisfaction

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Apple recently added Salesforce to its list of strategic partnerships with tech industry giants. The two companies will team up to give Salesforce and related apps a more-optimal experience on iOS. The partnership comes as Apple continues pushing into the enterprise market, with Salesforce joining other alliance partners including Cisco, IBM, HP Inc, SAP, Accenture and Deloitte.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Synnex, Tech Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? With a channel-first approach and through our Partner Ready for Networking program, we continue to onboard and welcome new partners to address a variety of verticals across Australia and New Zealand from SMB to Enterprise. With an increasing focus in security, IoT, software-defined and SMB, we continue to evolve our offerings and recently introduced a new security specialisation for our partners.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? So far this year, Aruba has had a number significant strategic wins in education, retail, large public venues, hospitality and health, all via the channel. Other achievements include additional investment in welcoming a number of new hires to address the growing demand and digital transformation within SMBs. We are already seeing a volume of new conversations being created with new customers across and quickly aligning and engaging partners. Another key achievement was seeing both an Australian distributor and Australian reseller take out the top partner of the year awards across all of Asia Pacific at our recent partner conference, Atmosphere Bangkok.

Anything else? I am personally excited for the year ahead with Aruba and for our partners as we continue to invest in our Partner Ready for Networking program and in people to create new markets, new solutions and incremental business. Having been in IT for over 20 years now, this for me is one of the most exciting times with digital transformation creating new discussions with new customers every single day.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Lynx Technologies, Nextgen Distribution

The construction, engineering and entertainment software company’s portfolio of creative design applications is so extensive now that the vendor’s motto has become “Create Anything”. Autodesk was recently named the 20th best place to work in Australia for companies with between 100-1000 staff by Great Place to Work.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Avaya is currently looking for channel partners that are experienced in selling SaaS into medium enterprise.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Launching our partner-hosted IP Office Cloud platform into the Australia and New Zealand channel, which received substantial demand in just a few months. This was possible through close collaboration with CTI Solutions, IPVS, and Pyrios.

Anything else? Avaya is at the forefront of changing the conversation when it comes to digital transformation. Through a high-touch relationship with our partners and customers, we have achieved accolades across UC and CC from the likes of Gartner (Leader in the 2018 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications Worldwide) and the 2018 Edison Awards (Gold Winner for our blockchain-based Happiness Index).

Australian distributors: VExpress, Arrow, Westcon-Comstor

Melanie Abrahams, Product Marketing Manager

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Belkin is traditionally strong in the consumer electronics channel but we are looking to continue our expansion through the private sector reseller channel.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Working closely with Dicker Data, key resellers and the private sector, Melanie has established Belkin Secure KVMs as the market leader in this space.

Anything else? Melanie's drive through brand awareness and product thought leadership for the Secure KVM product line, has opened up opportunities for Belkin and key resellers in the private sector, a space Belkin isn't traditionally known for operating in.

Australian distributor: Dicker Data, Linfox

What kinds of partners are you looking for? SaaS- or cloud-centric solution providers. Niche security partners who are looking to differentiate themselves through emerging technologies.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our successful channel program launch ("Altitude"); Australia becomes the first country to receive this program globally. Increased regional presence in the Asia Pacific region through the appointment of distributors in eight countries over the past six months. Wall Street Journal ranked "#1 Top Tech Company to Watch in 2018".

Anything else? Bitglass is a 100 percent indirect business, we run a two-tier partner-centric channel model in a market (cloud access security broker) that has immediate high-growth potential. The Altitude partner program is built based on the concept of mutual trust with a high degree of transparency and consistency.

Australian distributor: Orca Technology

What kinds of partners are you looking for? At BlueJeans, we’re looking to develop our partner ecosystem to support the growth in our business across APAC. With our recently released BlueJeans Microsoft Teams Gateway solution, we are targeting Microsoft cloud and SI partners across APAC to drive integration of meeting rooms into Microsoft Teams and drive additional revenue for these partners. We are developing an enterprise system integrator channel to leverage BlueJeans’ world-class integration capabilities, our new Microsoft Teams, and Dolby Rooms to drive a larger deal size for our partners around hardware, software and services as their businesses move to more of a cloud centric model. Finally, we are targeting specialist AV and video partners to assist in driving BlueJeans rooms through our integration capabilities, and to leverage our Rooms offer with Dolby Rooms through our APAC distribution network with Ingram and Polaris.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? BlueJeans launched its global partner program in July 2018 to support our current partners and to attract new ones. The BlueJeans partner program includes benefits, incentives and sales resources that are designed to help drive new opportunities and increase sales when selling BlueJeans services. BlueJeans partners can take advantage of BlueJeans sales and technical training, sales tools, marketing resources and collateral to ensure they’re equipped with the expertise to be the meetings partner of choice for their customers. We have also extended our relationship with Ingram into Asia to drive high engagement through BlueJeans, with Dolby Room offers available exclusively via the Ingram channel to drive significance growth across the Ingram cloud and hardware business.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Polaris

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are keen to engage with solution-based partners with a managed print service focus, who either cover a specific geographical area or specialise in a particular vertical such as retail, health, transport or hospitality.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Growth in our SMB machines categories, which can be attributed to our strong network of MPS and solutions partners

Australian distributors: Alloys, Dynamic Supplies, Leader Computers, Synnex, XIT Distribution, Sektor

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Our program addresses three key partner types: managed security service providers; incident response partners – specialist partners that use our technologies for post-breach and forensics services; and our VAR program for partners selling licences directly to customers.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Marco has nurtured and developed an ecosystem of partners that address all sections of the market. His channel ecosystem includes a distributor and partners addressing enterprise, midmarket and SMB customers along with MSSP partners leverage Carbon Black solutions within their service offerings. The MSSPs using Carbon Black span from enterprise to SMB. Marco has also developed programs to address Incident Response partners focused on post-breach forensic services. 100 percent of Carbon Black's business is delivered to market via this channel ecosystem.

Anything else? According to Marie Evans, Carbon Black’s marketing director, Asia Pacific and Japan, “Marco works his butt off for our channel partners!” He works hard to demonstrate real value to his partners by understanding the DNA of how each partner operates and then builds a strategy to help the partner achieve maximum profitability from integrating Carbon Black solutions into their sales and service go-to-market strategy.

Australian distributor: M.Tech

What kinds of partners are you looking for? As our customers are moving to more agile environments we are seeing the need for our partners, and ourselves, to be more dynamic in how we respond. Based on this, we are seeing our traditional partners being very consultative-led in this change and the appearance of more boutique specialist partners. For instance, born-in-the-cloud and mobile, which we are very much on the lookout for to meet these needs. Another area of growth from a Check Point perspective is managed security services providers who are vital as the complexity becomes unmanageable in today’s environment and to meet the desire for consolidation in avoiding security sprawl.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? The launch of the Infinity architecture, which has been really well received by enterprise organisations across ANZ who are looking for simplification and consolidation of security technologies. This aligns well as we move to more service-oriented offerings.

Australian distributors: Westcon-Comstor, Orca Tech, Arrow

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

The partners who will win in this complex market are those that innovate. These partners are capitalising on the benefits of programmability to create new recurring revenue streams with software- and services-led business models, enabling a more strategic and profitable relationship with their customers and creating unmatched competitive differentiation for themselves. Our focus is to keep things simple between IT and line of business, so partners can focus on the client.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

We have just wrapped up the FY18 year and I’m incredibly proud of the team across our channel business in Australia and New Zealand, which has grown into the double digits. One of the key factors in this growth was our channel ecosystem, which has undergone a major refresh recently. Twelve months ago, we created an Ecosystem Business Development Team focused on IoT, transport and consultants.

We realised in many instances we are dealing with multiple companies on one opportunity – all trying to protect their intellectual property, competing to extend their relevance with the customer and win the deal. We have to consider the value exchange, which is really different when some partners may influence deals but don’t result in sales. To tackle this, we developed a scorecard methodology to investigate new partners, qualify the opportunity and fit for Cisco, and understand if there a path to a sale.

Anything else?

The channel is and will continue to be an essential part of Cisco’s business, and as a result our commitment to our partners remains stronger than ever. We are continuing to listen to our partners and innovate in our portfolio, and are focusing on removing the complexity to keep things simple for IT vendors and line of business. Program simplification and ease of doing business continue to be key pillars of our partner program evolution.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Westcon-Comstor

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Cisco Meraki works with all different kinds of partners and service providers and can address a wide breadth of requirements. We have found that the most successful partners and SP’s we are engaging with are those that leverage Cisco Meraki as a platform to build services around, and leverage our open APIs to integrate ecosystem partner solutions or their own custom apps to meet and address specific business requirements.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Cisco Meraki has been experiencing huge growth in A/NZ over the past few years since entering this market and most recently saw significant overall partner revenue growth across the region and more than 100 percent revenue growth in our managed partners in A/NZ, resulting in some very big customer wins across the region.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Westcon-Comstor

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

As a partner-first company, our goal when looking for partners is to build a strong relationship and together land new customers to support Australian businesses as they transform their digital workplace. At Citrix we recognise the huge value of partners’ primary relationships with end customers — whether it’s a global systems integrator team at a large enterprise or a regional partner that has won the trust of their customer. We help foster these relationships with technical, marketing, sales, education and support resources.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

There has been so many highlights already this year, and just two that come to mind is firstly the launch of a new Citrix cloud management plane for Asia-Pacific South, located in Australia in April. This expanded cloud service was the third such instance in the world; following similar launches in the US and EMEA, I think this is a real highlight, not just for Citrix, but importantly for our partners and their customers. It talks to the global importance of Australia, our partner ecosystem and customers that this kind of investment was made in Australia and that this service will support our partners and customers especially those who operate in finance, government and other highly regulated industries in Australia.

The other achievement that I want to highlight is commitment and follow-through. This year at Citrix we made some bold statements and announcements at our end user conference in May. This event is called Synergy and many of our partners and customers attend. During this year's conference we announced a number of new products and promised that within 90 days all announced products would become generally available. I’m proud to say all products reached GA within the 90 days and our partners and customers are already starting to reap the benefits of these new and upgraded solutions.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Commvault invites into our ecosystem channel and alliance partners that are trusted technology advisors to their customers when it comes to delivering data protection strategies. Any progressive enterprise demands data management expertise across foundational technology needs today - such as backup and recovery, and hybrid cloud - without introducing cost or complexity, and we look for partners who can help deliver this. Commvault's simplified product portfolio also enables the company to focus on working with partners to create higher value-add engagement for customers, instead of operational or transactional aspects of business.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? With the complete transformation of go-to-market strategy for Commvault, this has meant rapidly enabling our partner ecosystem on the Commvault Advantage. In a short space of time, more than 220 sales and technical professionals have been certified across Australia, and work is underway to deliver lead development, architecture and design, competitive analysis, and demos with ease to the partner community.

Australian distributors: Tech Data, Dicker Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Crestron Australia New Zealand wholly operates via a 100 percent channel approach and invests heavily in supporting all partners, offering reward programs, certified design services and end-user lead generation activities. Crestron offers a range of partner programs to support the channel and its 200-plus partners. Crestron solutions are built using best-in-class technology that integrates unified communications, AV presentation, IT, lighting, audio and environmental systems.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Crestron Australia New Zealand has more than 200 partners, and its partner network has grown by 24 percent in the past year. This year, Crestron has continued its focus on enhancing the level of support and investment into its partner programs. Crestron’s Enterprise Partner Program is dedicated to providing partners with personal attention and technical expertise for their diverse workplace requirements. Crestron Australia New Zealand provides programs such as the Enterprise Partner Program imbuing corporates with personalised technical support expertise for their diverse requirements, or the A+ Education Partner Program offering classroom technology solutions, training and extended product warranties, to further enhance the investment in their technology choices.

Anything else? Crestron operates via a qualified channel approach, but affords its commercial and residential partners with access to now globally aligned reward programs, certified design services, cost structures and more. Crestron hosts numerous client hospitality events to build partner engagement and reward success. Crestron One is an annual event series across Asia Pacific, inviting partners to attend conferences and workshops detailing latest products and future developments. We also offer Crestron Experience Centres, which provide partners and end users with an immersive, in-depth look at our products by showcasing all of our solutions in real-world environments.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Geoff Swaine is responsible for all channel and alliances operation across Asia Pacific and Japan. The most important factor when partnering with CrowdStrike is investing in enablement and giving customers a great experience, and Geoff is looking for partners who will do just that. CrowdStrike takes a quality over quantity approach to channel partnerships to ensure CrowdStrike and its partners remain profitable in every deal. G

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our growth in partner sourced revenue. Partners in Australian and New Zealand and across the APJ region are contributing 40 percent and 60 percent, respectively, to the revenue of CrowdStrike’s field sales team. Deal registrations have grown by 500 percent from H1 2017 to H1 2018. Investing in our partners has been another significant milestone. Geoff has brought CrowdStrike’s global Falcon Allies program into Australia, which is designed to certify the best technical partners. It’s a deep dive on incident response and endpoint protection. CrowdStrike recently held its first Australian Falcon Allies event in Sydney, which was oversubscribed. Based on this success, Falcon Allies is being rolled out widely across Australia. In the past 12 months Geoff and his team have achieved seven figure deals with key system integrated partners, including Telstra, BT and DXC.

Anything else? Geoff joined CrowdStrike in April 2017. By the end of the year he’d won global channel MVP for CrowdStrike. This was awarded based on the number of deals driven by Geoff as well as expansion of CrowdStrike’s channel program into new markets like Hong Kong. (Channel partners were only in Australia when Geoff first joined). CrowdStrike’s APJ business is outperforming EMEA in terms of the volume and value of deals and time to close. CrowdStrike’s Australian corporate business registered more deals in Q1 of any APJ region, the third-highest globally.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We primarily focus on partners that have a good track record and domain expertise in enterprise identity and access management (IAM) solutions. We’ve been very satisfied with the calibre of our local partners that have built privileged access management (PAM) practices around CyberArk’s solutions over the past 12 months. Looking ahead, CyberArk will focus on building capabilities with organisations in Federal government, critical infrastructure and healthcare across ANZ.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We’ve had a record-breaking year in Australia and New Zealand across every metric. All of our partners have executed very well, not only in terms of sales but also in delivering the right outcomes for our customers. This is a result of the fantastic advances that CyberArk has made in its technical training and certification program, and our partners’ investment in developing their skillsets.

Anything else? Globally, CyberArk is sitting at the intersection of number of key trends. Compliance requirements, persistent attacker innovation and escalating cyber threats, the execution of digital transformation strategies, the complexities of cloud migration and protecting hybrid environments – all of these mean that privileged access security (PAS) is now broadly recognised as critical to security strategies; a project that reduces the most amount of risk and has the largest business impact. It’s an exciting time for CyberArk as the understanding and adoption of PAS is evolving rapidly in the Australian market. There are also macro drivers highlighting the importance of addressing PAS in Australia, including the ASD Essential 8, new mandatory breach reporting legislation, and increased focus on the space by industry analysts.

Australian distributors: M.Tech

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are very lucky to have a loyal and successful partner base, nurtured over the past nine years in Australia. Our distributors are key to this success and the personal approach they take with our partners.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? After a record quarter in 2018, we are on track for strong growth in the Oceanic channel. This includes new wins into government, telco, retail and the electrical channel.

Anything else? The retail business has been very important for our branding, but the growth into SMB, corporate and enterprise has been even greater. We now manufacture everything from single to three-phase UPS, PDUs and ATS, high-end rack/cabinets with more models launching in Q4, plus a range of surge and mobile devices. Our recent launch of 1.0 power factor rack mount products, sees us ahead of a lot of the competition.

Australian distributors: Bluechip Infotech, Certa One, Ingram Micro, Tech Data

McPhillips joins Cylance from Symantec, where he held the position of Pacific channels director. Phillips had joined Symantec when it acquired BlueCoat in 2016.

The new channel chief will take a key role as the AI-powered cybersecurity vendor embarks on its next phase of growth, driving partner sales across the region, including the developing markets of South East Asia and Korea. He will be based in Sydney.

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Our most successful value-added resellers are comfortable in advocating end-to-end solutions based on the Dassault Systèmes Professional Solutions leading global portfolio. Potential partners with well-developed end user networks are looking at best in class margins when helping the ANZ manufacturers to navigate the shift to digital value based approach.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our solutions have seen double-digit growth of global and local market share. In ANZ this is thanks to our currently expanding VAR community, positive market outlooks reflecting the Dassault Systèmes long-term commitment to innovation. Recently, we have through our VAR Intercad, secured a significant order with an mining equipment manufacturer, looking to further create value to their customer through innovation while reducing time to market.

Anything else? In Australia and New Zealand we have a very exciting spring ahead of us, currently preparing for a series of SOLIDWORKS Innovation Day events. This conference will visit all capital cities and interactively showcase the latest digital trends and developments which are preparing our user community for the next industrial revolution. For more information please visit our blog: https://blogs.3ds.com/apsouth/swid2019/

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Datto’s target partners are MSPs who typically service the SMB marketplace, with their customers ranging in size from 25-200 employees. We like to partner with companies that are focused on creating and driving their business forward and that aren’t afraid to leverage cutting-edge technology and business models in the way they deliver new solutions to market. The ideal Datto partner is open-minded to new ways of working that will give them and their customers a competitive edge.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Datto’s partner, Mangano IT, was the Working Together category winner in the 2018 CRN Impact Awards – and we were thrilled to have been part of the team on this project. Mangano IT deployed a Datto disaster recovery and backup solution for Whitsunday Regional Council’s sites at Proserpine and Bowen. The project was kicked into overdrive when cyclone Debbie was forecast to hit the region near the council’s main site. As danger approached, Mangano IT, Telstra Business Technology Services (BTS) and Datto demonstrated true collaboration by working together to deliver a business continuity solution to protect all of WRC’s on-premise IT infrastructure. The team held twice-daily meetings to make hour-to-hour decisions on when the final backup would be sent and when a virtualised environment would be switched on.

Anything else? Australia is Datto’s fastest-growing business unit globally. Vista Equity Partners acquired Datto and simultaneously merged it with its portfolio company, Autotask, at the end of 2017. The result is a single entity designed to empower MSPs with Datto’s award-winning data protection solutions and Autotask’s in demand IT business management offerings. Datto is now better positioned than ever to be the optimal choice for SMBs in need of the best technology solutions at the most competitive price – and we believe this is a key driver of our success in Australia.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Ruckus Networks is always looking for innovative and progressive partners, who challenge the accepted norm, and understand that not all network vendors are created equal. As a challenger brand Ruckus Networks is expanding with new partner acquisition into all geographies and verticals

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Stabilising the channel and distribution ecosystem to deliver growth during a time of change as the Arris acquisition was finalised.

Australian distributors: Hills, Ingram Micro

What kinds of partners are you looking for? As Dell EMC continues to grow its channel ecosystem by investing in existing and new partners, in particular those who are focused building their transformation skills as part of their go-to-market strategy. This could be around hybrid cloud integration, digital transformation, security, big data, IoT as well as a range of industry vertical specialists.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Since the inception of the new Dell EMC partner program we have seen many successes. From successfully integrating the Dell and EMC teams, launching a new program, taking it to market, and continuing to make updates, all the while growing the business. This year, we have focused on taking this global program and making it relevant to each geography within APJ. We want to ensure that all partners benefit from the simple, predictable and profitable model. We’ve also made incremental investments to our storage offering. Channel partners now have access to three times more storage experts and can receive additional benefits when driving storage sales. We provide comprehensive training and support throughout the sales cycle ensuring success for our partners.

Anything else? As part of the new partner program, we hosted a series of partner events in Australia. These are local, regional and global events that encourage the feedback loop between Dell EMC and its partners. Over the past 12 months we have tripled our headcount of storage specific channel resources. We have introduced the Enterprise Preferred Program, which offers a dedicated Dell EMC channel expert to help drive sales for partners with growth potential. We have dedicated ISV resources who work closely with partners to ensure that Dell EMC is the infrastructure underpinning their solutions. At Dell Technologies World in May, we launched Dell Technologies Advantage, a framework that enables partners to transact across the full Dell Technologies portfolio. We have streamlined training and certifications to remove any channel training overlap across the brands.

Australian distributors: Tech Data, Ingram Micro, Dicker Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? At Eaton, we are looking for partners that bring value to our mutual customers through distinct offerings and experience across many different technologies. Over the past year we have seen great opportunity in edge computing services, particularly edge data centre deployments. We are looking to expand partner relationships to leverage these services to new and established customers.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Since taking over the role as national channel manager of Eaton’s power quality business, I have been able to achieve significant growth and identify new opportunities in power quality. The focus has been placed on expanding our existing partner base by increasing support through registration and lead programs, as well as focused marketing activities. Key to this success and continued strategy involves building a team that values face-to-face time with our customers. Extending beyond my direct team we have joined forces with our services team to enhance customer experience and engagement by leveraging the tremendous in-house engineering and technical capability of our electrical engineers, field staff and customer service team.

Anything else? Eaton’s channel program ensures our partners receive the support they need to recommend Eaton’s full range of products. Our team works in the field to speak with partners and help them uncover traditional hardware business around developing critical infrastructure on the edge. These interactions help our partners open new opportunities within existing accounts. Eaton has exciting changes coming in 2019 for our partner program. We’ll be launching an enhanced program that supports our partners from training to deal registration, and technical information whilst ensuring they are aware of the promotional activities that reward partner engagement. We’re looking forward to this enhanced program and strengthening our relationship and support even further.

Australian distributors: Bluechip Infotech, Ingram Micro, Synnex

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Enghouse Interactive is looking for Microsoft integrators who need to fill two white spaces in the Skype for Business and Office 365 solutions: contact centre and operator. Without these covered, integrators risk losing business as prospects are likely to either remain on a legacy PBX platform or move to a Microsoft cloud competitor.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? In 2018, Kath drove a major new opportunity for our partners with the recent release of our award-winning cloud contact centre solution, CC:SP, in the ANZ region. Already offered in Europe and North America by Enghouse partners, including British Telecom, CC:SP is the world’s largest cloud contact centre platform. The CC:SP platform in Australia is hosted by our long-time partner Voitec, under the brand “CX Cloud”, transforming Voitec from a distributor to a managed service provider, enabling them to wholesale a branded cloud Contact service to all Enghouse channel partners to resell on a pay-as-you-go basis. We have provided significant technical and marketing investment to Voitec in developing the offer, including brand establishment and a new website at www.CXCloud.com.au. This unique solution significantly transforms Voitec’s own go-to-market offering, while supplying the entire Enghouse Interactive partner community with a ready-to-sell cloud contact centre service.

Anything else? My MO at Enghouse Interactive is to offer a 100% channel model to our Australia partners. We do not sell direct, so unlike many other providers we won’t compete with our own partners. My team of channel managers train and support partners to recognize opportunities that could make or break their communications solution deal, since the contact centre is at the heart of the company’s coms.

Australian distributors: VExpress, Voitec

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Our portfolio touches many different industry verticals. We are particularly interested in partners that focus on education, government, healthcare and corporate enterprise applications. We sell both hardware and software, so companies that are IT savvy are desired to be able to adequately support our products on an ongoing basis.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We have many major wins globally for our company. One major win was in our Authentication segment, landing the authentication business for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories. We were awarded a platinum award from Secure Campus Security and Life Safety Magazine for innovation in ID Badging surrounding our TruCredential web-based ID Enrollment and Issuance Suite. We also were selected as a Gold Winner for the Products and Solutions for USA category of the 2018 Info Security PG's Global Excellence Awards for our new Pigment Ink based Retransfer ID Badge printer.

Anything else? Entrust Datacard is reinventing modern Identity with a portfolio that encompasses hardware and software that enables secure identity across physical and logical form factors. From industry leading ID card printing technology, to innovative ID issuance and management software, to logical and mobile ID technology - Entrust Datacard is changing the way the world engages with secure identity. With a robust new product pipeline and several major acquisitions during the last year, Entrust Datacard is taking modern identity to the next level. Let us show you how!

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, CardServ, ABCorp

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Experienced ERP resellers, particularly those who understand and have embraced IOT and Industry 4.0

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? In FY18, Epicor VARs increased market share in new business by 26 percent over the previous FY. The percentage of deals channel were responsible for increased by 23 percent over the previous FY.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Cloud and system integrators, MSPs and carriers with a laser-like focus on building cloud-ready solutions encompassing data management, multi-cloud, SDN, security, SaaS, Iaas and PaaS – all sitting within the world's number 1 data centre company, adjacent to every major and minor cloud provider.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? As the hyperscalers and the adjacent technology companies business models continue to evolve, we worked in the trenches alongside them to identify, recruit and onboard partners that matter. Together we have enjoyed mutually beneficial success across industries, geographies and company sizes.

Anything else? I believe we're starting to see a level of cooperation and a willingness to investigate new business models like never before. As technology themes, adoption and architectures are increasingly influenced by the major platforms, I've enjoyed helping companies build new services, find new customers and see new success. It certainly shows no signs of slowing down.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We’re looking for partners across a number of verticals and industries who have a key understanding of software security demands in the market. We’ve seen an unprecedented growth in cyberattacks on devices and we believe it is important to empower our partners with all the resources and enablement so they can become advocates for cyber security.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Being named as the only challenger in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms. ESET was evaluated based on its ability to execute the complete security vision, which reflects ESET’s consistently improving competence to offer maximum protection for enterprises and consumers.

Anything else? We’re focusing on a channel-first approach. We provide added resources to our channel partners to help them grow and succeed while enabling them to become a trusted security advisor. ESET Australia is currently in talks with some of the major cloud distributors for potential partnership to further strengthen our distribution and channel alliances.

Australian distributors: Microbe, Chilisoft

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

Extreme Networks delivers software-driven wired and wireless networking solutions from the enterprise edge to the cloud that are agile, adaptive, and secure to enable digital transformation. We are a 100 percent indirect business in Australia via a two-tier distribution model and look to work with partners with expertise in networking and security or a willingness to expand their portfolio to deliver wired and wireless networking along with software tools. Those partners with capabilities in a particular market segment, vertical, territory or systems integrators with national reach who are looking to make money from networking will find Extreme Networks offers healthy margins and protects partners in deals.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

Extreme Networks has deepened its networking portfolio and expanded its business over the past two years. It is now No.3 vendor globally with the acquisition of Avaya’s networking business, wireless specialist Zebra Technologies and Brocade’s data centre networking business. We are positioned as a worldwide leader in Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN. This level of industry validation along with a deeper portfolio has brought new routes to market for us.

It has also increased the opportunities for our partners, making it easier for them to meet an increasing breadth of customer requirements. With a 100 percent indirect business, we are focused on our Australian partners’ growth, profitability and competitiveness, and our partners' capability to sell, implement and support Extreme’s entire portfolio.

Anything else?

We work with several distributors in ANZ. Arrow and Hills provide significant value to our partners across the entire Extreme portfolio. Westcon and Tech Data address the needs of our heritage partners from the acquisitions of Avaya data networking and Brocade data centre business units, respectively.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Hills, Westcon-Comstor, Tech Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? The last 12 months have been fantastic at F5 for business transformation on product sales from hardware and perpetual licensing to subscription and cloud marketplace consumption. At each individual partner this has been a great opportunity for consulting and services revenue for customers that need to be helped on this application migration journey. We have been proud to have invested significantly in this space and look forward to further growth in the next 12 months.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Westcon-Comstor

Chris Barton, Head of Channel & Alliances

FireEye plans to debut a marketplace that will serve as a single source of tools, applications and expertise for customers and partners. The cybersecurity vendor said the initial version of the FireEye Market would be available in the second half of 2018.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Exclusive Networks

Forcepoint has recently created a new business unit specifically to meet the security challenges faced by critical infrastructure providers. The Forcepoint Critical Infrastructure business will leverage capabilities from the vendor’s global governments and enterprise security businesses to deliver defence-grade cybersecurity offerings for insider threat detection, enhanced data security, and advanced threat protection.

Australian distributors: Tech Data, Orca Tech, M.Tech

Fitzgerald was named Fortinet's new Australian channel chief in November. He joined Fortinet in September 2016 as channel partner manager based in Adelaide, coming over from Check Point Software when he was its South Australian territory manager.

Australian distributors: Exclusive Networks, Ingram Micro, Wavelink

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Looking for better coverage in South Australia and Western Australia.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our continued relationships with our partners.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, MMT

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Genesys continues to seek business partners that service the small- to midsize contact centre markets. These partners would lead with a consulting and digital transformation approach to help customer organisations benefit from implementing the technology we offer.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our channel partners have embraced the cloud services offered by Genesys and have been very successful at providing them in the Australian market. In 2018, the indirect business has dominated our business model and has confirmed our partner-led approach. Our consolidated AppFoundry approach has also enabled technology partners to extend their reach worldwide, offering our customers many exciting innovations and applications to enhance their customer experience.

Anything else? At Genesys we have diligently worked to build our partner network and recognise that our partners are key to our success. We are seeing greater emphasis on our solution partners working with technology partners to deliver modern solutions to address the most important challenges our customers face.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Google Cloud is growing at a rapid rate so our channel strategy is building quality partnerships for our coverage rather than having a volume acquisition strategy. Deep relationships are key to our success. We are looking for partners with ambitious goals that want to grow with us. There is a huge opportunity in the market to address customers hybrid and multi cloud strategies and Google Cloud can help organisations with solid cloud practices today address those. needs.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Seeing our partners achieving Google Cloud specialisations has been a highlight for me. They needed to go through a rigorous assessment, employ certified technical professionals, and have demonstrated customer success in their areas of expertise. Servian, OniGroup, GrowthOps and Practiv all achieved specialisations this year with Servian achieving two.

Australian distributors: Synnex (Chrome channel)

Fronek took on the channel chief position at HPE in October 2017, having served as HPE’s commercial and public sector director since 2014. Prior to that, she had been sales director for HP Enterprise Services.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Lynx Technologies, Arrow, Nextgen Distribution

What's new? Hitachi Vantara recently announced its first all-NVME hyperconverged system, which the company said would deliver dramatically improved performance and efficiency for Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC customers.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Lynx Technologies

What kinds of partners are you looking for? HP looks to continue to work very closely with a diverse range of partners with different capabilities, locations, and customer/industry strengths. As we move forward, partners strong in combining services and hardware together, as well as others with security, mobility, or managed print capabilities will be HP's focus areas

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? With the help of our partner community, HP's biggest achievement has been the outstanding growth of our channel business for joint success. This growth has enabled HP to continue to grow its market share for PC and Print, allowing us to remain in number one position in Australia

Anything else? HP continues to expand its channel business through continued investment in coverage, programs, customer welcome centres and marketing. We would love to discuss how we can help grow your business. Give us a call or contact your preferred distributor.

Australian distributors: Bluechip Infotech, Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Sektor, Synnex

The former Dell EMC channel chief joined Huawei in October, and will no doubt be tasked with getting the vendor’s enterprise servers and storage kit to market against well-dug-in incumbents.

Australian distributors: Synnex, iCITA

TBC

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Currently we have two key focus areas for our partner recruitment programs. The first is to look to build on our existing skills in general manufacturing and distribution. The second looks to leverage our significant development investment in both solutions – Business Intelligence and Analytics (Birst), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM); and industry verticals – with a focus on public sector, retail and healthcare.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Our first quarter this financial year saw triple-digit year-on-year growth compared to the same period last year. Our goal is to achieve strong double-digit growth year-on-year for the remainder of FY19. FY19Q1 saw a gold partner, EMD Advantage, sign a significant ERP opportunity with a NZ-based technology and manufacturing company that will underpin their digital strategy for years to come.

Anything else? Infor has seen significant growth in our partner revenue in Pacific over the last 18 months. This can be credited to two main areas. Firstly, a change in engagement. A move to focus our partners back in hunting areas of new business has seen a significant increase in licence revenue growth. This will only snowball as the model is improved. Second is a recognition from customers and prospects that Infor’s micro-verticals strategy to deliver finely-tuned industry specific capabilities in the cloud, as well as a focus in areas such as AI, advanced analytics and EAM, is enhancing a return on investment. We will look to grow on our current strong results by continuing to invest in partner enablement, ensuring that our partners have the tools and skills to support and enhance digital growth strategies for our customers.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? While we maintain a strong focus on the growing market for our gaming and enthusiast products, we’re also concentrating on expanding our data-centric business, through partners that bring experience with server products, IoT solutions and storage solutions.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Intel Extreme Masters Sydney returned bigger and better for its second year in 2018. Our dedicated Channel Pavilion Showcase featured 23 partners and was a huge hit with the many thousands of e-sports fans who attended the event. It’s great to be able to include our channel partners in the excitement and opportunity that comes with IEM Sydney. Another highlight this year has been the success that Intel and our channel partners have seen with the popularity of our Hades Canyon NUC, a powerful and versatile mini-PC.

Anything else? Intel will be making new additions to its ANZ channel team later this year.

Australian distributors: Braemac, Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Synnex

What kinds of partners are you looking for? HR Consultants, Business Consultants, Accountants and Professional Resellers all around Australia.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? The launch of the partner program in March, with a referral deal closing within a couple of weeks of the first meeting for our partner. One of our active resellers has organised over 5 meetings within the last 3 months.

Anything else? We are in the initial stages of our partner program and looking to rapidly scale.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Juniper Networks has always been a channel-led company, and we’ve differentiated our program by focusing our resources that fuel the business of building industry-leading Networking and Security solutions. One specific area of focus for us at Juniper Networks Australia has been that of widening our scope and depth of security-specific partners. Also, Juniper’s strength in the Data Centre provides scope for a vast array of partners harnessing switching, routing and security skill sets.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? The biggest accomplishment I am personally most proud of is the channel team we have built at Juniper. Eighteen months on and we have such a strong group who offer many varied capabilities for our partners. We believe strongly in enabling our partners but we also take a 'sell-with' culture to ensure partners are supported both commercially and technically.

Anything else? The channels team here in Australia have invested in areas of growth and created a team structure that gives our partners better access to technical and commercial resources – all while implementing a go-to-market model that is highly scalable. This is a model in which we are confident will provide Juniper and its partners with a greater return on investment, and a clear path to success.

Australian distributors: Westcon-Comstor, Dicker Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? One of the common qualities I look for when working with new and existing partners is our mutual respect and loyalty not only to our business but also our objectives and values. Partners that are loyal and wanting to work closely with us results in a great development of partnership growth.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Home to 1300 young people in Melbourne, using Kaspersky Lab Cybersecurity Awareness Training Platform, KLANZ has secured and supported 300 dedicated teachers and staff at Yarra Valley Grammar School, one of the top 10 percent Victorian Schools for academic achievement.

Anything else? In the last 12 months, Kaspersky Lab has supported its channel partners and distributors alike in their end-user roadshows such as Exclusive Networks' first launch event in New Zealand, and Data#3 Juice IT, which target 1000-plus prospects and customers across multiple states, generating over opportunities valued over $120,000 with the likes of Data#3.

Australian distributors: Exclusive Networks, Synnex

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Kensington has seen strong results partnering with different agencies within the NZ government to supply docking stations. Docking stations are our fastest-growing category, with the latest releases our diverse range presenting an opportunity to replicate our success in NZ by partnering with Australian government and enterprise partners.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Definitely the relationship growth between Kensington and Microsoft. Our brand has been working closely with Microsoft to develop products such as the SD7000 SurfacePro Dock, scheduled to launch in Australia later this year. The SD7000 SurfacePro Dock is the first time Microsoft has allowed another vendor use their proprietary connection, which is a testament to the quality of Kensington products.

Anything else? Kensington is committed to development and product innovation, we attribute our success and continued year-on-year growth to our strong partners and global investment in R&D.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Dicker Data.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? RedShield provides its customers with an innovative security as a service platform. In Australia our target partners are ones that have an existing security practice looking to compliment their solutions set with a globally unique offering.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Over the past 15 months Kordia has launched its channel program into market and secured a number of partners. The Missing Link is one of these with a reference customer now secured.

Anything else? Globally unique platform, being used by client like Australia Post, Viva Energy and Star Track express. Pure security with a service offering, cloud-based consumption model makes up skilling for channel very fast.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Lenovo Data Centre Group in Australia and New Zealand is focussed on building our value channel. We are looking to engage more partners that are looking to embrace the growing SDI trend with our ThinkAgile range.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Lenovo Data Centre Group has been focused on building and refining the channel program and reward structure in 2018. This has resulted in growth of the Nutanix HX partnership across all segments, delivering new hyperconverged appliances built on Lenovo’s industry-leading enterprise systems and powered by Nutanix software to deliver invisible infrastructure for next generation data centres.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Synnex, Tech Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Lenovo is fortunate to have a very diverse coverage of channel partners with long-standing and strong relationships. On the PCSD side of the business, we’re not only looking for partners that can promote Lenovo’s range of innovative technologies, but those we can strategically align with to foster mutually beneficial relationships. As we identify the high growth markets and verticals, which include those such as midmarket, smart office and monthly managed subscription models (DaaS), we are working with partners that have the ability to deliver an effective end-to-end experience for our customers by leveraging the expertise of both our organisations.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Over the last year, we have worked hard to strengthen our partner alignment by improving business processes and programs that deliver the best customer experience to the partner community. This has included investing in new tools to make it easier for partners to manage all their technology needs online through our portal, helping them to drive efficiencies and productivity. We’ve invested time in our partner relationships and expertise, hosting our partner advisory council in Tokyo as a forum to gain a deeper understanding of market challenges and opportunities, allowing us to work together more closely and develop the innovative solutions our partners need.

Anything else? Lenovo is the only IT vendor to offer the complete range of technology devices and services, securing its position as an easy and convenient one-stop-shop for all our partners’ technology needs. We constantly innovate to develop best in class products to serve our partner community. We recently launched the X1 Extreme, an lightweight powerhouse, packed with premium specs, including NVIDIA GeForce graphics, RapidCharge technology and 4K HDR display. We also launched the ThinkPad P1, our thinnest and lightest mobile workstation to date.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Synnex

What kinds of partners are you looking for? LogMeIn is looking at a variety of new partners, across geographies and verticals. Partner types include referral partners who send business to us, where we engage with the end customer to close the deal and the partner receives a rebate. Resellers, whom we engage with to provide a solution to our mutual customer, or MSPs with whom we can partner around their offerings.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Launching a new proactive channel program within ANZ has certainly been our biggest achievement in the year so far. This positions LogMeIn and our partners to take full advantage of the market trends that are driving growth within our business.

Anything else? As one of the top 10 largest SaaS vendors globally, with a portfolio covering unified communications, digital engagement and identity, we are uniquely positioned to unlock the potential of the modern workforce. Whether it is helping organisations to evolve as millennials become a driver for change in how people work, securing the credentials they use to access the cloud or helping businesses to better service their customers.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are actively looking for MSP partners, partners focusing on education, local government and healthcare verticals.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Quite a few to talk about. In short, launching MSP program within ANZ, which is going very well; signing up key strategic partners in Australia; signing up DNA Connect as a second distributor in Australia; and tripled the channel headcount to support all partners.

Anything else? Since joining Malwarebytes in 2016, my focus has been on building out the channel ecosystem. I spearheaded the launch of Malwarebytes MSP Program and have seen a steady 20 percent month-on-month increase in partners signing up. In the past financial year, the number of unique transacting partners has doubled. Built strong strategic relationships with key partners and have tripled the channel team to support the partner ecosystem.

Australian distributors: Cloud Distribution, DNA Connect

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are looking to re-engage our existing partner base and leverage our combined portfolios to go deeper and wider with a more focused set of partners.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Micro Focus is the seventh largest global pure play software business bought about in part due to the acquisition of HPE's software business. Over the last eight months we have been working hard to consolidate that position and bring together and combine the strengths of both heritage organisations and their channels through the combine solution portfolios.

Australian distributors: NextGen, Meier Business Systems, Ingram Micro

What kinds of partners are you looking for? 

One of the hardest things we do each year is match our channel capacity with our business aspirations. We are always looking at ways in which we can expand our partner ecosystem to adapt to market shifts and help Australian organisations transform. However, if we are to call out two priorities, business applications and artificial intelligence are key areas of focus right now and there is a real opportunity there for the channel.

When we look at industries, following our investment in AU Central Regions and achieving Protected Status, government, critical infrastructure, financial services, retail are a priority for us. From a geographic perspective, we’re constantly looking at how we can increase capacity across all corners of Australia, but expanding our capability in South Australia and Western Australia is an example area of focus.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

Our biggest achievement in the past year has been transforming our channel operations to the One Commercial Partner model. This means we now have 150 people managing our channel resources from the one central point. The OCP transformation has enabled us to achieve some significant results. For example, our Australian business has led the world in IP Co-Sell, which has meant working with our partners to sell repeatable intellectual property (IP). Our Australian partners also won seven of 33 global awards at Microsoft Inspire, demonstrating our momentum globally.

Our Cloud Service Provider channel now has 3,500 CSP partners. We're also extremely proud of the Wiise partnership with Commonwealth Bank of Australia and KPMG – this was a global first partnership, taking world-class enterprise software to small and medium-sized businesses. In addition, the Telstra voice partnership for (Telstra calling for Office 365) that was announced earlier this year.

Anything else?

Microsoft has a large and complex channel ecosystem with almost 11,000 partners across Australia. Together they employ 300,000 people and generate about 1.2 percent of Australia’s gross domestic product.

We feel privileged as a channel focused business to have so many resources focused on the Australian channel and we continue to invest significantly in this ecosystem including channel incentives and developing marketing programs. We also continue to focus our structure under three core areas: Build, Go-to Market and Sell-With, ensuring our 11,000 partners are equipped to fuel this shared success.

Australian distributors: Synnex, Ingram Micro, Dicker Data, rhipe, Arrow, Tech Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Mimecast is continuing to strengthen channel operations across Australia with security partners that are looking for a holistic email resilience solution. In particular, partners seeking to service their customers migrating from on-premise Exchange platforms to Office 365 with cloud flexibility and essential security. Mimecast is also building out the channel landscape in New Zealand as we expand operations across A/NZ.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? This year Mimecast launched its global partner program, enabling partners to lock-in long-term revenue streams by attracting new customers into lasting business relationships. To support the partner program, Mimecast expanded its local channel team five-fold, including the appointment of channel director Rema Lolas. Driven by increased demand for holistic cyber resilience solutions, Mimecast has also doubled its local customer base and signed 40 new reseller partners. Testament to the strength of the client, vendor and partner relationship, Mimecast signed a deal with the South Australian government led by Dimension Data – the biggest in Mimecast history.

Anything else? Mimecast is a 100 percent channel company in A/NZ and supports its channel partners through a dedicated local delivery model with local implementation team, Legendary Customer Success program, customer experience and support teams, and local data centres, which ensures the pre- and post-implementation and smooth operation of its technologies. In 2019, Mimecast plans to launch its MSP program. Watch this space!

What kinds of partners are you looking for? For our sophisticated tailorable solutions I am after partners with integration skills and a track record in UC, contact centre, network integration, cloud migration and security. However, we also have cloud-based solutions that are easily deployable which non-UC partners can sell as agents for Mitel. This opens up new possibilities for non-telephony IT partners to offer their customers what was once the exclusive province of traditional PBX integrators.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? As part of a global partnership, Mitel Australia and New Zealand has centralised its distribution function with Westcon in this region as well as other geographies. Not only does Westcon provide us with their well established distribution practices but it also brings its integration services, highly organised and systematised channel support mechanisms, synergies with other vendors and a reputation in the ANZ market second to none.

Anything else? Mitel has a large installed base in Australia and New Zealand accumulated over four decades of sales to mid and large enterprise customers. The partnership with a highly experienced and driven distributor in Westcon will ensure these customers are well served whilst allowing the Mitel team to double down on strategically growing its cloud hosted solutions to these loyal customers and new ones as well. These changes in 2018 to the ANZ operations and globally are the most far-reaching strategic enhancements to Mitel in its history and heralds our intent and drive to be the leader in the global cloud UC&C market.

Australian distributors: Westcon-Comstor

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Establishing a new channel for NBNco from the ground up. Six months from launch, the ICT channel program now has an experienced team in place, has more than 600 partner companies registered, and has signed alliances with leading vendors, distributors and NBN retail service providers to provide a comprehensive support ecosystem for participating partners.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Dicker Data, Westcon-Comstor, Aria Technologies

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Partners who are looking to build cloud services, managed services and those go to markets that utilise hyperscale cloud providers in a hybrid outcome for end-user customers

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Achieving No.1 market share for the past two quarters in the flash market segment according to IDC's regular survey and the launching of cloud volumes with Azure, AWS and Google.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Westcon-Comstor

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are looking for partners across Australia that have a solid presence in secondary and tertiary education, federal, state and local government and healthcare.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

Anything else? So far we have seen a tough start to the financial year, but now starting to see a few more projects turning up. This will prove well for the ICT sector as a whole. IoT has not hit us as hard as expected, but will no doubt be the next driver for the ICT community.

Australian distributors: Secnet, Pacific Datacom, Anixter, Plexnet

What kinds of partners are you looking for? NEXTDC has built one of Australia's largest eco-systems of industry partners and works with businesses across the ICT industry spectrum who provide their customers with data centre as a service offerings, including cloud, colocation, integration and managed services or who are deploying their own aaS offerings.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? NEXTDC has successfully recruited many new strategic partnerships and more than doubled our partner-led enterprise wins over the last 12 months. Our ecosystem of ICT partners provides us with numerous unique partner stories and even more end customer case studies, further demonstrates our commitment as the only "channel first" data centre provider across Australia. Some significant news regarding our cloud partnerships include new Google Cloud interconnects, Oracle cloud infrastructure fast connects and Amazon Web Services, uniquely positioning NEXTDC as 'where the cloud lives.' Our NEXTworking series has greatly strengthened the channel and become a partner community success, giving partners the opportunity to connect one on one, with a room full of our most influential partners and alliances.

Anything else? In addition to supporting partners who engage with small business, midmarket, government and enterprise customers, NEXTDC is providing more services to make it easier for partners to support their customers. Whether it's simplifying cloud connectivity, advanced management systems for their data centre space, or simply making every interaction a seamless, customer focused experience. NEXTDC is where the cloud lives.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Nuix is all about solving our customers’ data problems. We work together with our partners to solve customers’ challenges in security (whether that is cybersecurity or national security), risk (such as litigation and fraud cases) and compliance (for example regulatory compliance). We are looking for new partners that can help expand our geographical footprint in Australia and Asia. As a proud Australian software company with customers across 70 countries, we have proven technology and capability to help accelerate revenue and growth for partners.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Nuix has recently launched a new partner program. This has been a year’s worth of work to ensure that our program has differentiation to competing channel programs, and is simplified to make it easier to do business with us and to achieve our joint revenue plans. It includes investments into new tools to quickly enable partners to reach a revenue-ready state, and new margins and incentives. We are proud to achieve some big wins with current partners this year including a multimillion-dollar deal into a hard-to-win defence agency in the US. We have competed together with partners on major tenders in Australia and globally with great success. We are most proud of the solutions where we are working together to solve complex issues that affect society including helping law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to solve cases faster.

Anything else? Nuix has achieved phenomenal growth in the last 10 years. Our channel is an important next phase of that growth and we are in recruitment phase to ensure we have lined up the right partners build a sustainable business and ensure the Nuix platform is a critical component across every corporate business and government department in Australia.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We’re looking for partners who will engage with us strategically. Our combined success will come from forging an exclusive and unique ecosystem built on shared values, mutual benefits and strong relationships.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We’ve relaunched our program. The Power to the Partner Charter stands out from traditional programs by providing unique emphasis on partner investments in Nutanix, not just revenue targets.

Australian distributors: Tech Data, Arrow, Exclusive Networks

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Okta is looking for cloud-centric, forward-thinking partners who understand identity and access management or the market opportunity. Focus regions for growth are Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Auckland.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Okta has had some great wins recently in the education space, specifically with customers such as Monash University and Flinders University. Okta also has a strong partnership with Deloitte focusing on customer identity access management (CIAM) into the financial services vertical. Recent partnerships include Dimension Data, Solista and Infotrust.

Gosling had only just been announced as Oracle’s new channel leader as CRN went to press. The appointment sees Oracle promote a heavy-hitter to the channel role – Gosling has had a long and distinguished career with the software vendor, most recently as managing director of the New Zealand business, and before that VP of technology sales.

Australian distributors: NextGen, Tech Data, Westcon-Comstor

What kinds of partners are you looking for? NetSuite partners are sales as well as fulfilment. These organisations attract new customers regularly, understand business and innovate with their customers to grow their businesses. While we don't actively recruit partners we are open to a discussion with business partners who work with small businesses across the country.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Four of the top 10 partners worldwide came from ANZ region experiencing really strong growth. There were a number of significant wins across the region across retail, digital, distribution and professional services. JCurve's growth was significant last year and doubled their team across the ANZ region. Fusion5 won the JAPAC partner of the year award.

Anything else? The NetSuite partner program is industry leading, offering exceptional enablement programs, training, new business and trailing commissions and customer engagement. Our partner community is unique in the way partners collaborate together and the engagement with our channel organisation with the partners. Attrition rates from partners who leave the program and partner employees who leave the ecosystem and extremely low.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? PagerDuty is always on the lookout for partners who specialise in cloud migration, digital transformation and real-time operations management. We're seeking partners who specialise in DevOps, ITOps and in particular industrial IoT. Organisations that are partners of many of our key alliance partners such as Sumo Logic, New Relic, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Puppet, Ansible, Docker, Atlassian and Slack have proven to work well in the PagerDuty ecosystem.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? PagerDuty formally launched our global partner program in March of this year after soft launching in Australia and the broader APJ region in October of 2017. PagerDuty has onboarded around 20 partners in ANZ and is actively working with many of our more than 300 integration partners across the region. We're seeing great success with the likes of Vibrato, Manatalus, Data#3, Avocado, Katana1, JDS, Infosys and many more in Australia.

PagerDuty launched on the AWS Marketplace in July with our first transactions taking place with a leading Melbourne-based financial entity in August. In the first six months of the 2018 calendar year, the PagerDuty partners were involved in more than 50 percent of the regional revenue and grew net new customer revenue by 370 percent between the first and second calendar quarters of this year.

Anything else? PagerDuty continues to go from strength to strength in the A/NZ region . We continue to focus on building out our targeted and successful partner ecosystem to support our customers.

Taking the role of director of channels and alliances for Australia and New Zealand in February, Stibbard has been promoted from his role as national sales manager for enterprise and federal, a job he’d held for three years.

"I’m in a privileged position after running the federal and enterprise business. I’ve been able to speak to our clients about the vast number of security challenges in their organisations as they move from on-premises into the cloud. Now I can take that expertise to our channel partners as well as support them and their Palo Alto offerings through their transition plans," Stibbard told CRN.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Westcon-Comstor

What kinds of partners are you looking for? The ideal Pitney Bowes partner really understands information management and data analytics. They appreciate how the relationship between people, places and things can provide powerful insight for their customers.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Pitney Bowes launched a new partner program in 2017. PB ANZ has grown partner participation from 8 percent to 36 percent of revenue in the past 12 months. The aim is to hit 50 percent by the end of 2019.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are looking for partners who are truly invested in the partnership and are looking to invest and work with us jointly on accounts.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? It has been a great year for Polycom, from a growth perspective as we have signed up more than 170 new partners over the last 12 months. The highlight of the year has been the Polycom Ascend Partner Summit where we were able to share our vision and strategy with our key partners.

Anything else? The channel team will continue to invest in our partners as their success is our success. We will continue to run customised and open partner enablement sessions to ensure our partners are equipped with the latest product and solution knowledge to allow them to successful executive in the ANZ market.

Australian distributors: Transition Systems, Ingram Micro

What kinds of partners are you looking for? With the relaunch of our new partner program Pure Storage is looking to focus on a smaller number of key partners rather than expand our partner base. As our new AI-enabled infrastructure stack (AIRI) continues to grow we are seeing a new group of partners from outside the traditional players focus on these new products and markets.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? This year Pure Storage unveiled its new channel partner program, which comes with two tiers and a host of fresh training, certifications, support, standardised discounts and incentives. Other new features under the new program include greater partner empowerment, with a key enhancement to the new program being standardised discounts and price lists available to partners. Partners are critical to Pure Storage’s and our ability to enable our customers to quickly adopt next-generation technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to help maximise the value of their data for competitive advantage.

Anything else? Pure Storage has always been committed to a 100 percent channel business model, in which our partners are critical to our success and reaching new customers. With the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, data has shifted from informational asset to the core of innovation. It’s no longer enough to just be data-driven: ANZ enterprises must be data-centric. We are committed to working with our network of distributors and technology partners to help our customers unlock the value of their data to improve performance and customer experience.

Australian distributors: Arrow, Dicker Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Rackspace is uniquely positioned in the market in that our existing partner portfolio includes the world’s biggest cloud platforms, AWS, Google, Microsoft and VMware. They provide an outstanding portfolio of technologies that help customers modernise their IT and realise the power of digital transformation without the complexity of managing it on their own.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We are a key partner for the recent ANZ launch of VMware Cloud on AWS. Rackspace’s capability across both VMware and AWS can assist organisations accelerate their VMC adoption.

Anything else? It’s an exciting time for Rackspace as we continue to grow our partner offerings and our ability to provide unbiased expertise across the world’s leading public and private cloud platforms.

Australian distributors: Tradewinds

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

We are continuing to look for both strategic partnerships and partners across Australia and New Zealand to support our continued growth and mutual success. Partners with a strong focus on emerging technologies including containers, automation and DevOps, along with skills in applications development, and strong customer delivery experiences are desired. Red Hat partners complement one another, empowering the global network and fostering our open, collaborative environment.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

2018 has seen many major partner announcements, including Microsoft and IBM, just to name a few. More recently, we have been celebrating two A/NZ Partners: Leonardo Consulting, our partner who won the 2018 Red Hat APAC “Innovation” Partner Award, and Deloitte Consulting, our partner who won our 2018 Red Hat APAC ANZ Partner of the Year Award at our Asia-Pacific Partner Conference.

Leonardo Consulting is one of the founding members of our OpenShift Practice Builder Program and its MD, Adam Mutton, has praised the OpenShift Container Platform as it plays an vital part of delivering end-to-end solutions to their customers.

Anything else?

Red Hat continues to invest heavily in our partners and the growth and development of our Australian and New Zealand partner ecosystem, upskilling and lifting partner capabilities from a sales, technology understanding, pre-sales and delivery perspective.

One of the things we recognise in the adoption of open source by the business community is that a lot of the skills that are required to be in the marketplace simply aren't there. To support the development of those skills in the marketplace and for the A/NZ business environment we are investing in our partners and their people to better serve our customers and the market.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data, rhipe

What kinds of partners are you looking for? RingCentral is actively seeking Australian partners aligned to our referral-based partner program, Channel Harmony: One to Infinity Program. This program awards partners 100 percent commissions on all deals, while providing them the benefit of working alongside a vertical- and segment-specific subject-matter expert. Our target partners are managed service providers, system integrators and consultants, seeking to increase their wallet share with their current customers.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Since our Australian launch in March 2018, RingCentral has recruited and enabled more than 30 strategic partnerships, delivering increased recurring revenue streams to their businesses in the SMB, midmarket and enterprise segments. This early success has come from hiring an experienced leader, Ben Swanson, with a long-standing history of the unified communications channel within Australia. Prior to joining RingCentral, Swanson led channel-aligned UC vendors, ShoreTel and Avaya, across Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Africa.

Anything else? RingCentral is a best-of-breed provider of UCaaS solutions or unified communications-as-a-service, delivers voice, video and messaging collaboration as a global cloud platform. Our platform is uniquely positioned to solve for mobile and remote workers, running on 4G and NBN internet services. RingCentral is recognised as a leader in UCaaS with industry analysts, such as Gartner, IHS Markit, and Frost & Sullivan.

Australian distributors: Tradewinds

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Riverbed has had a traditional partner base tied to networks and whilst we continue to see growth through this partner eco-system, our new digital experience platform provides a new opportunity to drive momentum in the newer cloud/digital born partner ecosystem, such as consulting and outsourcing partners as well as partners with a focus on how applications can assist customers transforming into the digital world and capitalizing on the emergence of IoT in our industry.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? This year, Riverbed launched a new disruptive partner program, Riverbed Rise. Since launch, we have seen an increase in partners transacting with Riverbed and more revenue delivered to partners across ANZ. We’ve also had some great customer wins across industries such as retail, healthcare and manufacturing among many others.

Anything else? In 2018, more than ever, we have focused on shedding the perception of Riverbed as “that WANop company” to a business which supports digital performance across a spectrum of solutions. We’ve grown our client base for our products that manage and measure the digital experience, looking beyond SD-WAN, and are proud to be helping organisations such as GHD, Snooze and MAX Solutions lead their industries and deliver enticing experiences to customers and employees.

Australian distributors: Arrow (Riverbed), Bluechip Infotech (Xirrus)

Appointed to the new position in June, Allesch steps up from the role of channel sales manager, a title he had held since the beginning of 2016. Allesch first joined security vendor RSA in 2013 and has worked across sales, channel and enterprise account management for the company.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We’re seeing increasing demand for our Sage 300 Cloud, Sage Enterprise Management, Sage Financials and Sage People BMS products. We are keen to speak to solution providers with strong professional services capabilities. Unlike many of our competitors, Sage does not compete against our partner channel on services so there is a good PS opportunity available. Our cloud-based products such as Sage Financials and Sage People are built upon the Salesforce platform. Partners with existing Salesforce PS capabilities would be a good fit for these solutions.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We have brought to market many new cloud offerings this year. Enterprise Management privately hosted by Sage as well as launching Sage 300 Online as a SaaS offering. Our other cloud products, Sage People and Sage Financials are growing at an exponential pace. Locally we created a brand new solution, Sage Data Hub, and have had dozens of sales in its first months of becoming available. As soon as customers see it, they want it for their organisations due to it's power for managing data, fast start up and tremendous ROI.

Anything else? Sage Business Cloud has allowed us to transform from an on-premise company to a cloud-based organisation over the last year. The success of new products such as Sage Data Hub has accelerated this transformation and it will continue as we continue to introduce new cloud solutions to our region over the next year delivered to market via our channel partners.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? As the fastest growing enterprise software company to hit US$10 billion, Salesforce has a greater demand for partners then ever before. We continue to see unprecedented partner growth with vertical expertise, in particular we have seen financial services, state government, federal government and digital agency focused partners substantially expand their footprint.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We had multiple milestones for the ecosystem this year It was a great moment for the team crossing the 70 percent engagement rate for partners on Salesforce new business across the region and then seeing this reflected across the whole of APAC. Partners growing practices in commerce, marketing and services clouds with increased focus on the Lightning experience and Einstein artificial intelligence was also extremely rewarding.

Anything else? I am excited that Salesforce continues to invest into the ecosystem to best serve our customers. Our partners continue to address multiple customer challenges leveraging Salesforce the world's No.1 CRM globally. We are focused on customer success and an integral part of this journey is the Salesforce Ohana – this encapsulates our employees, communities, partners and customers together as one.

SAP named Mark Hettler as its new channel chief for Australia and New Zealand in June. He replaced Sam Henderson, who was promoted to an Asia-Pacific and Japan role. Hettler has been with SAP for more than a decade. He stepped into the channel chief role after serving as SAP’s head of cloud delivery.

Australian distributors: NextGen, ACA Pacific, Dicker Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Today, SAP Concur runs a partner referral model, however, as we expand, SAP Concur appreciates the need to become more deeply engaged with partners and are in the process of opening up a global-first resell model in region to a limited set of partners. Partners will be profiled heavily to avoid channel conflict.

Australian distributors: Nextgen Distribution

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are constantly looking for new ways to work with established partners and recruit new partners from both the IT and ET space, focussing on edge solutions and data centre modernisation. This could comprise VARs, MSPs and SIs. We are most successful with partners who are driven to become key influencers, open to collaboration and willing to invest in solutions.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? The “Amplify” program. We showcased Schneider Electric’s R&D facilities in Denmark to 13 partners, who were a mix of Elite, Select and Registered partners from both IT and ET backgrounds. We educated them about Denmark’s culture of sustainability which has helped them create a sustainable and secure society filled with opportunity.

Anything else? I took this position with APC by Schneider Electric because of their commitment to the channel and continued efforts to create a rewarding experience for their partners. My team and I are invested in: one, creating opportunities and new revenue streams for our partners; two, optimising our systems and processes to deliver a simpler and more convenient experience; and; three, driving a culture of sustainability through education.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Pacific Datacom

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Managed service providers specialising in Office 365 deployments and security services.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? 2018 has been a great year for building a channel business from the ground up. While SMX has had great success in New Zealand, Australia was a completely new market for us. I have built a new go-to-market plan around a channel-enabled strategy and brought on key partners. We are now seeing the fruits of these relationships.

Anything else? SMX is a IP Co-Sell ready Partner for Microsoft with our advanced security offering. We offer an added value service which works in conjunction with Microsoft-based solutions and acts as a wrap around for customers looking for a cloud based email security service and archiving on the Azure Platform.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We work with partners who have a focus on helping customers optimise their IT estate. This covers a variety of service providers and resellers across verticals and geographies.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? The biggest achievements are the great results Snow and our partners have achieved for our joint customers in terms of optimised spend, reduced risk and improved visibility and control.

Anything else? Snow's business has grown in region between 50-100 percent year-on-year for the last three to four years. Our channel contribution grew 258 percent last year. This translates to many Australian customers seeing the benefits.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? Looking for niche vertical partners in security, healthcare and education.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Expanding geographical reach partnering with major few electrical wholesalers.

Anything else? Socomec is one of the faster growing UPS company in Australia and we continue to make inroads both breadth and depth of coverage.

Deveaux has been with the IT service management vendor for more than five years, through a period of fast-paced change, including its acquisitions of N-Able and LogicNow. The company is now plotting further changes, as it plans to go public via a US$500m IPO, three years after going private under private equity owners Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo.

Australian distributors: M.Tech, NextGen

What kinds of partners are you looking for? we work with all types of partners, from SMBs through to large integrators, resellers through to MSPs. Our focus is on the SMB and midmarket customer segments, however, our portfolio happily scales up into the enterprise segment.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We had an amazing FY18 with some significant customer wins. We added more than 1000 Sophos certified people into our partner community last year across sales & technical, which is a testament to the belief the partners have in us and their desire to work with us as a 100 percent channel-only vendor

Australian distributors: Arrow, Bluechip Infotech

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

Splunk is expecting aggressive growth rates within APAC over the next couple of years. As such, partners who adopt similar growth mindsets and are prepared to double down on their investment with Splunk will be well positioned to ride the growth wave with us. In particular, we have accelerated MDF investment plans for new customers and prescribed new logo acquisitions through our partners. This helps Splunk land new business which will eventually give way to deeper adoption and expansion opportunities.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

Since I joined Splunk in May 2018, I’ve advocated for three top priorities. Firstly, I drove our partner-sourced business, which is a clear indication of partners lifting the business for Splunk. As a pre-condition for driving partner sourced business, we laid out clear ‘rules of engagement’ within the channels, and ensured partners have trust in the deal registration system.

Since we provided clarity, Splunk saw a three-fold increase in partner-sourced business bookings over FY17. The second priority was building a velocity-based business, minimising friction in the market for selling Splunk solutions. In this arena, we worked closely with our distribution partners in developing bundles around key use cases with our technology alliances, with a meet-in-the-channel mode of selling.

The final priority surrounded leveraging different routes to market and partnerships helping Splunk reach untapped markets. Examples of these are cloud partnerships with AWS, driving the MSP and OEM business models.

Anything else?

The ANZ partner business has been on the same rapid growth trajectory as the overall Splunk business, and consequently the Partner Team continues to grow. The ongoing adoption of Splunk at our key partners is a critical element to driving and executing on Splunk’s ANZ strategy in delivering customer success further across the region, and adding a lot more values to our partners.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? StorageCraft is a 100 percent channel organisation, so partners are critical to our success. Helping transition our existing partners to a MSP model and working with current MSPs via our distributors is fuelling our double digit growth in cloud services (eg, DRaaS) and cloud backup products. We are looking for partners in the midmarket and SMB who want to make significant margins with a technology that differentiates them and adds value to our customers.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? StorageCraft's strength has been in the SMB segment of the market, where we have been very successful. In August this year we introduced our new ShadowXafe platform which will allow our partners to leverage our new technologies into the mid-market segment. These new technologies are specifically designed to give MSP partners better service to their customers. The recent launch of StorageCraft's ShadowXafe and OneXafe Platforms are a major inflection point in our history and allows our partners to benefit with innovative technology and exceptional margins.we are looking for existing and new partners in the midmarket to take these new platforms to customers.

Anything else? StorageCraft are a 100 percent channel organisation locally and worldwide. So even though my title doesn't include the word "channel", it is a channel dedicated role.

Australian distributors: ACA Pacific, Dicker Data

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

Telstra is looking is looking for partners that: can provide complete transformational technology solutions rather than point-product providers for mid-tier customers; have deep customers relationships that bring a holistic view of our customers’ technical and business environment; and are trusted advisers to our customers, as the market transitions to consumption-based buying in new areas.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

Telstra’s major achievements in 2018 include the launch of the industry-leading accreditation program, the ‘Telstra Partner Academy’, which delivers our partners access to more than 90 learning modules (accessible 24/7 on any internet device) to custom-build learning content that enables them to become technical specialists and solution designers with training across products, networks and customer-centric solutions that is industry wide recognised and certified.

Also, the implementation of Telstra’s first digital partner relationship management tool delivered on the leading CRM Salesforce platform as part of Telstra’s enhanced digitisation experience for both our partners and customers. Partners now have a streamlined end-to-end process for identifying, managing and closing opportunities. This will drive real-time collaboration with the direct sales team, simplified more agile selling experience for our partners, real time reporting and performance management.

Australian distributors: Aria Tech, Dicker Data, Exltech, TBS Distribution.

Tenable appointed Raven as the company’s first ANZ channel manager in October 2016, tasked with building out the security vendor’s reach into the Asia Pacific Region. Raven’s experience includes roles at Samsung and Cisco-owned security vendor SourceFire.

Australian distributor: Arrow

What kinds of partners are you looking for? TIBCO is looking to work with a mixture of partners across verticals and geographies, including value-added resellers, OEM partners, systems integrators and consulting practices. We’re looking to expand our reach in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth by establishing larger partnerships, and have a particular focus on building our presence in Canberra and New Zealand. Our key local verticals are financial services, government, utilities, mining and retail.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Since coming on board with TIBCO in May, my first priority and key achievement has been designing and implementing a new go-to-market strategy, which re-aligns direct and channel sales and supports the team in building our enterprise partner base. In addition, TIBCO will soon launch a new partner portal and announce a new partnership with a value-added distributor in ANZ.

Anything else? Investment in the channel is one of TIBCO’s top three global priorities, accompanied by a big channel recruitment push, as the company moves from a direct sales focus to an integrated channel approach.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro

What kinds of partners are you looking for? TPG is looking for MSPs, SIs, distribution channels, and small and medium technology resellers who are looking to build a high-margin annuity telecommunications business.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? TPG has built four separate channel models to fit the needs of our channel partners. TPG channel has taken away the complexity of working with a large telco. TPG will support its partners regardless of the channel model that works best for them.

Evan Thomas joined Trend Micro in July 2018 as a regional account manager before being promoted to the head of channel in January 2019.

"Evan is a 20-year industry veteran who has a strong understanding of the channel, and was the logical choice to drive the evolution of Trend Micro’s channel this year and beyond," a Trend Micro spokesperson said at the time. 

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We value partners who invest effort with Unisys in the pursuit of strategic initiatives in public sector, financial services, travel and transport, health and life sciences. Unisys brings deep industry expertise and IP to the market. Having an ecosystem of partners who work closely and openly with ourselves and others is vital to deliver solutions that have significant and measurable results for our clients.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Over the last 18 months we have built our partner and alliance strategy for the Asia Pacific business and have quickly developed close and committed partnerships in ANZ built upon trust, energy and high standards of business conduct. In January, Unisys announced Dell EMC as the 2017 strategic alliance partner of the year. In May Unisys received the Dell EMC global alliances growth partner of the year and marketing partner of the year.

Anything else? Unisys is proud to be official information technology and cybersecurity supporter of the Invictus Games Sydney 2018. Under the partnership, Unisys will build and support the technology infrastructure at Victoria Barracks, Sydney Olympic Park and Games venues as well as provide information security using Unisys Stealth software and services.

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

At Veeam, it is my team's role to build a mutually profitable business for us and our partners. Part of our responsibility is to identify and look at mutual areas of growth and build pipelines with partners, into new and existing segments of the business. We want to work with partners who are looking for ways to grow their business, where Veeam is the best solution. The ideal partner for us, sees the opportunity and customer need for data protection and back up and has the desire to work with Veeam in upskilling and further understanding the concept of hyper-availability.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

Our biggest achievement has been driving mutually profitable growth for ourselves and our partners, by implementing three very important principles: being visible, being easy to do business with, and knowing profitability is key to our partners business. Being visible means being accessible and available both in the office and on the phone, making sure partners know we are here to help them grow. Being easy to do business with means ensuring that ourselves and our distributors are contactable and responsive.

Profitability for the partner – this is seen in how we do work with our partners in executing strong marketing programs, which ultimately results in delivering new business to ourselves and our partners. Profitability also comes through co-selling and identifying if there are ways to maximise the opportunity through our alliances and services. These principles have really been the groundwork of everything that we have executed this year.

Anything else? At Veeam, we are a 100 percent channel-focused company. With our partners' help, we continue to bring on net new business. This year, we brought in more than 300 new customer logos to the business.

As we move into a more complex customer space, we are working really closely with our partners to leverage their services capabilities. As a 100 percent channel-based solution, we rely on and need our partners to deliver the Veeam solution and ensure customer satisfaction.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data, rhipe

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We look for partners who will show commitment to Veritas across key capabilities including sales, technical compatibility and delivery. Veritas has recently launched the revamped Veritas Partner Force program that offers expanded revenue opportunities to attract a new generation of resellers, service providers, system integrators and distributors.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? Veritas launched an enriched Veritas Partner Force program in April 2018 focused on helping our channel partners grow and remain profitable. It is designed to create higher earnings potential for our partners who want to capitalise on Veritas’ 360 data management portfolio and multi-cloud data management solutions, in addition to Veritas’ flagship data backup and recovery solutions. The program has been dramatically redesigned to simplify how we work with partners and vice versa, to help increase their revenue and reap more benefits and rewards.

Anything else? With the latest Veritas Partner Force program, we look to provide partners with greater rewards for their technical skills, along with educational and training opportunities, to deliver greater value to our customers. Customer user experience is a critical priority that Veritas is focusing on to reinforce its global leadership position in data protection and software-defined storage. The recent launch of the Veritas NetBackup 8.1.2 is the first step in this journey – to radically simplify world-class data protection for customers. Veritas NetBackup 8.1.2 to remain the market-leading data management solution that enable customers to harness the power of their information.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Tech Data

It has been more than a year since critical infrastructure vendor Emerson Network Power rebranded as Vertiv following its sale to a private equity firm. Singapore-based Daniel Sim has worked in channel roles across the company under its current and former guise for more than a decade.

Australian distributors: Anixter, Arrow, Comsol, Orion, Synnex

The big news for VMware over the past year has been the announcement and then progressive rollout of its partnership with Amazon Web Services. After the first region for VMware on AWS went live during during VMworld 2017, the vendor brought it down under in August 2018.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data

Vocus made the decision in January to spin out its wholesale and enterprise division into two separate business units, dividing the company’s operating segments in four: enterprise and government, wholesale and international, consumer and New Zealand.

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We are seeking new partners, especially in regional centres such as Geelong, Newcastle, Ballarat and Cairns. We are also looking for MSPs that are growing their managed security business.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We appointed Bluechip Infotech as our third Australian distributor in July. We have grown the number of partners in our WatchGuard ONE program by nearly 100 percent in eight months.

Anything else? We are offering pay-by-the-month options for MSPs that don't want to make a big investment upfront. We have introduced a formal deal registration program which will reward partners with much bigger margins when registering a new deal.

Australian distributors: Bluechip Infotech, Dicker Data, Exclusive Networks

What kinds of partners are you looking for? We work with managed service providers that service IT security as part of their offerings to small-to-medium sized customers throughout Australia and New Zealand. We have a key focus in the healthcare and finance sectors. Since the introduction of Australia’s Notifiable Data Breach scheme in February this year, we’ve seen significant growth in our security awareness Training solution, offering continual training to significantly reduce the risks businesses face due to user error.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far? We’ve increased our channel footprint through the use of our integration partnerships, which has helped us achieve overall double digit growth year-over-year. We were also awarded the Continuum strategic partner of the year award for 2017 in March.

Australian distributors: Bluechip Infotech, DNA Connect

New Zealand-born cloud software vendor Xero’s channel is dominated by accountants and bookkeepers. The company in 2018 appointed a new chief executive with serious partner credentials in Steve Vamos, the former boss of Microsoft Australia, who stepped in to replace Xero founder Rod Drury. Xero also consolidated its listing on the ASX.

What kinds of partners are you looking for?

Zscaler looks to partner with leading service providers and system integrators to help our joint customers become cloud-first enterprises. Partners need to demonstrate their ability to take customers on a true transformational journey, and focus on the Zscaler “Secure, Simply, Transform” methodology.

A fundamental part of becoming a cloud-first enterprise is to provide users with fast, secure, and direct access to applications. This is where the need for a true global, multi-tenanted cloud-based solution providing a full security stack such as Zscaler’s is pivotal to a customer transformation. By partnering with Zscaler, service providers gain new business opportunities and revenue streams, while their customers save time and money and enjoy a higher level of service.

What has been your biggest achievement in the year so far?

We have almost 100 percent partner participation rate in Australia! Almost every Zscaler partner has seen an increase in year-on-year Zscaler revenue, and this is certainly no small feat. Working with our A/NZ partners, the team at Zscaler has been successful in attracting new and retaining existing customers across government, large enterprise, multi-national, local and small businesses.

In addition, we have signed global reseller contracts with Australia’s top two service providers, Telstra and Optus. In the coming months Zscaler will be making further announcements as we launch productised solutions through these and our other global service providers that also service this region.

Anything else?

Back in the day when your users were all on the network and your applications resided in your physical data centre, it made sense to establish a secure perimeter around the network. But those days are over, the perimeter is gone, and network security is all but irrelevant. Instead, customers now need to put their defences and controls where the connections occur – the internet – so that every connection is fast and secure, no matter how or where users connect or where their applications reside. By moving applications and infrastructure to the cloud and untethering employees from their desks, Zscaler customers can realise tremendous advantages in productivity, agility, and cost containment.