Exabeam global channel chief on the Apex partner program relaunch

Craig Patterson speaks to CRN Australia exclusively on their partner program reinvention.

Security information and event management (SIEM) platform Exabeam has reinvented its global Apex partner program to reflect what the partners want.

Last year, the company merged with another SIEM platform, LogRhythm to bring “a best-of-breed alternative to the frustratingly complex options on the market today”.

This new partner program reflects the new merged entity.

Speaking exclusively to CRN Australia at Xchange Denver 2025, Exabeam discussed the major changes made to the partner program and how he views the APJ market.

Over the past eight months, Patterson said the SIEM company has been intentional with its reinvention of the partner program.

"We didn't rush, although, the C-suite at Exabeam was pushing me, I said, ‘we’ve got to be really intentional here. We get one chance to do this’,” he explained.

Patterson broke down the strategic moves they made to ensure this partner program met partner’s expectations.

The first thing the company did was hire a consultant to think through best practices.

“We looked at the overall macro trends, what's really happening in the market as it relates to this new framework,” he said.

They discovered that partners want to be incentivised across the entire customer lifecycle.

“You look at some of these traditional programs, and they're really good at incentivising you at the point of transaction, but that's where it stops,” Patterson explained.

“What happens throughout the rest of that journey when the customer is ready to upsell, cross sell, or move to a new capability, or what happens at the time of retention.”

When it comes to programs, Patterson said partners prefer a simplified approach, as many programs in his eyes have become “overly complex”.

“There's some out there that are just coming to market. I spent the last year or so relaunching and the framework is very overly complex, and they're getting a lot of blowback from the partner community,” he said.

“We wanted to be sure to bring a framework that partners really understood how to execute in.”

He also wanted to provide enablement for partners.

“Partners, especially in my domain, it's highly complex. You know, in the SIEM and user-based analytics base is very complex. They really want programs that provide value in terms of enablement,” he added.

On the post-sales side, Exabeam have rolled out three new certifications: analyst, administrator and deployment engineer.

“The key here, this is what really unlocks the value, so as partners click through the training and enablement, they achieve the higher level of certifications and they achieve a higher level discount,” he said.

With this refreshed program, Patterson said Exabeam have removed the complexity.

“You look at some of the legacy programs and there's a lot of turmoil happening in the partner space right through companies going through some level of integration,” he said.

“There's this whole pent up demand from partners coming from the IBM QRadar, side they're looking for another good option or also the Cisco Splunk integration.”

Patterson said it is a “perfect storm of opportunity”.

“Number one, we lead in terms of tech innovation. Number two, we've developed this amazing new program that's very partner centric,” he explained.

“We've removed the complexity. We built the program based upon value. I think it's a good opportunity for us.”

View on the APJ region

Comparing the APJ region with the rest of the world, one of the clear differences Patterson said he sees is customer segmentation.

“Australia is more of a commercial based market with smaller companies,” he said.

“That's the beauty of this integration with LogRhythm. So now we serve all the customers, whether they be commercial in size. For us, the way we define that segmentation is 2500 users and below.

“We have a product capability to serve the smaller customers as well as the larger customers through the legacy Exabeam program.”

Looking at the APJ sector, Patterson said it is a “really strong region”.

“Number one, Australia in general and number two, Japan is a very, very strong market for us,” he said.

“Japan's a hard market to get traction. It takes a very, very long time. We're doing quite well in that market. We're also starting to expand our geographies.”

Xchange is run by CRN Australia’s parent company, The Channel Company. Xchange is coming to Australia in 2026.