Elastic partner VP Andrew Habgood discusses new promotion and overseeing 140 countries

Began new role as VP global partner sales international at Elastic on May 1.

Andrew Habgood has been promoted to VP global partner sales international at Elastic where he will be continuing to build and grow with their partners across 140 countries.

Since May 2023, Habgood has been leading the partner ecosystem team in APJ. With his new role, he will bring his ideas and strategies they implemented in APJ to the international region.

Speaking to CRN Australia exclusively, Habgood said what they try to do as a company is basically grow with partners.

“I was brought in to build our Asia Pacific partner strategy a few years ago. We did a lot of investment and we pioneered a lot of elements of our partner program and elements of our go-to-market in Asia that has led to us now, in me, taking that to international,” he said.

“We are bringing a lot of the Asia Pacific goodness that we've been doing to international, while also blending in a lot of the good things that we have in EMEA and those regions.”

Habgood officially began his new role on May 1 where he will bring together the international partner organisation across Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Middle East and Africa, UK and Ireland.

He said his role entails making sure that Elastic is staying relevant and adaptable to the local regions.

While he is managing regions that encompass 140 countries, Habgood said there may be cultural differences but the goals from each of those regions are similar.

“The partners names might be different, the objectives that partners are trying to achieve and that Elastic is trying to achieve do align,” he explained.

Habgood noted there is an opportunity for Elastic to bring consistency and scale to a partner experience across the international region.

“Making it easier for them to be enabled, making it easier for them to access programs, making it easier and simpler for them to find support from distribution partners or other things in the region,” he said.

But there is a nuance to working across various regions.

“There's local language, local currency, and some unique innovations that we see in each market. How do we adapt those things, allow for that and where it makes sense, double down on some of those unique local things in certain markets,” he added.

Earlier this year, Elastic hired Jeremy Pell as its country area VP in ANZ. Habgood said Pell is taking advantage of a significant investment we're giving him to hire a lot more salespeople, a lot more presales people, and just expand the team.

"We believe even in these markets where historically, you would see them as mature, Elastic is under penetrated. We think we can grow if we do the right things,” he explained.

Habgood said this leads to the partner side where he needs to put the right partnerships in place, manage service providers, deliver outcomes, and build practices around Elastic.

“We're a unique platform built on the search AI platform, but provide unique personas for security, for observability, for Gen AI, for search. Which means we reach so many different buyers in an organisation for one platform and so many different parts of a partner for one platform.

“It makes it challenging sometimes, but it also gives us a big opportunity to go after.”

The differences between markets

Working in his previous APJ role and now an international position, Habgood explained the differences between each region.

He said the Australian market is quite often a high touch enterprise sell, where the customers are fairly rapid adopters of technology.

"They don't tend to wait or have to do too much planning. When they get at the impetus and they've got the budget, they can move forward with initiatives,” he said.

Looking at Japan, Habgood said it is a different market with more incubation, POC and preparation.

“Adoption of cloud for a customer was probably a two-year journey from the start of the planning to doing large load migrations. So quite different there,” he explained.

“Then you've got markets in between, like Korea, which are incredibly fast adopting but used to building up themselves, local technologies, home grown solutions.”

He said in this new role, he is learning the same about the other regions in Africa and Europe.

“I'm going to Saudi Arabia for the first time in two weeks, and hearing about what's happening in some of those markets, in Africa and in Europe,” he said.

Habgood noted there are slight differences and some unique innovations in those areas.

“My job is to make sure that I can give a consistent experience,” he said.

“I can accelerate what's valuable to the partners across the broad ecosystem, but I can find ways to double down, place bets and support partners, wanting to do unique things in each of those markets.”