“The Australian channel is changing”: Rapid7 APJ channel director on its new partner program

David Quist discusses why the cyber vendor made changes to its partner program and what he loves about the channel.

Cybersecurity vendor Rapid7 recently relaunched its new Pact partner program globally after receiving a lot of partner feedback.

David Quist, APJ channel director at Rapid7 told CRN Australia that for a moment, the program became stale and they needed to change the company’s “one size fits all” strategy.

“When you also look at the partner community, there are resell partners, there are MSSPs. There's a breadth of different kind of partner types. You can't necessarily move forward with a one size fits all sort of strategy,” he said.

“We've had to build up different levels of content depending on the partner type, so at least we kind of recognise what they are, as opposed to everybody who just fits into one bucket.”

Quist noted that acknowledging partner’s expertise and specialisations is important.

“As opposed to just treating everybody as ‘you're a partner, therefore you will learn this way’,” he said.

“That's been a big step for us, particularly in terms of how we educate, because like a lot of vendors, we've always been able to educate our own staff, but then got to replicate that in the channel.

“That's probably been one of the big steps forward for us in terms of our investment in technical resources to make sure that our partners have got a good opportunity to succeed within the platforms and technologies that we have.”

Quist explained that Rapid7 measured partners differently to what they do now in the partner program.

“We applied a blanket rule of ‘we're going to measure you based on revenue’, but when we then look at who are the partners that are leading with Rapid7, what does their technical capability look like? What are their certifications look like?

“It became a program that's far more rounded, as opposed to having a single metric as well.”

Outlook on the channel

Looking at the Australian IT channel, Quist, says it is changing a lot and it doesn’t stand still.

“When we look at what Infosys for example have done in the market with [the Telstra] acquisition, when we look at news with Accenture and CyberCX, so the channel doesn't stand still,” he said.

“We've gone from being a large number of small, boutique providers to consolidated, then multinational stepping in, and customers saying, ‘either I'm happy to be part of that, or I would like to go back to somebody who's boutique and understands me intimately’.”

Quist added, “In the channel, there's certainly a place for everybody, and it continues to change, and that's one of the exciting things.”

Posture towards cyber

Looking at cyber attitudes within the channel space, Quist believes channel leaders haven’t changed their view.

“Partners have always had, in my experience anyway, the customer’s outcomes and best interests at heart,” he said.

He said breaches tend to unlock funds, because that is what they’ve always done.

“It does mean that sometimes programs get accelerated because there's been compromise, or because there's greater awareness of compromise,” he said.

“I don't think that they've necessarily made fundamental changes. It's more where there's a good cybersecurity strategy, we understand that you can't do everything at once.

“There's a place for Rapid7 that fits depending on what the other priorities are. Then partners typically behave well in terms of understanding those programs.”

Next steps for rapid7

For his next stage of the journey, Quist is already eying off what success looks like to them at Rapid7.

“We're certainly seeing a significant growth in the number of people at Rapid7 since I joined seven years ago, where we all fit into a very small office,” he explained.

“The growth in Asia, just what we're doing at a product level, which is led by [chief product officer] Craig Adams, is super exciting in terms of the rate that we're able to bring things to market.”