New Darktrace ANZ VP Wendy Komadina on her two-pronged approach to the channel

Komadina has spent most of her career in the channel sphere and said this role was a “marriage made in heaven”.

New Darktrace ANZ VP Wendy Komadina has a two-pronged go-to-market strategy up her sleeve centred around verticalisation for territories and partnerships.

Speaking to CRN Australia, Komadina highlighted why verticalisation is necessary.

“I believe it's important that we create expertise in specific areas that are in critical infrastructure and highly regulated industries, so we can be experts,” she explained.

“It's not that we're not experts, but that we can lean into having deeper knowledge to help support customers and partners through the next wave.”

She began her role late last year, following the recent hire of Abhijit Abhyankar, the APJ head of partnerships, alliances and channel.

Another focus for Komadina at Darktrace is partnerships, something she is “super passionate” about.

“I've been working with partners for many decades, and I truly see the value that partners bring to customers, but also to vendors,” she said.

“They're able to support vendors in scaling and reaching more customers, but they're also able to provide choice and they're able to build trust with customers, they're able to provide that consultation, and those managed services that create a really unique experience for customers.”

For Komadina, she wants to attract new partners into their current ecosystem that are focused on cloud security and operational technology (OT).

“In terms of where I see us in 12 months, success, for me means that we've been able to attract partners who have got expertise in vertical sectors, who've got unique skills and experience around cloud security and OT and are able to deliver on customer expectations,” she said.

Looking at the role, she said one of the exciting parts about it was the opportunity to manage Australia and New Zealand.

“In my previous couple of roles, I was responsible for Asia Pacific, including Japan and China,” she said.

“When I thought about what I wanted to do next, I wanted to focus on the Australia and New Zealand market because I'm an Aussie.

“I'm based out of Sydney, and I see an enormous amount of opportunity and growth potential in ANZ. Leaning into ANZ became something that was important to me.”

The channel is close to Komadina’s heart with several of her previous roles at Cloudflare, AWS, and Cisco to name a few, being focused on GTM and partnerships.

When she was offered the role at Darktrace, Komadina said she was excited for two reasons.

“One, it was an ANZ specific role. It gave me that opportunity to focus on the ANZ region,” she said.

“But secondly, it had a very strong lean into and lens on partnerships. And so, having had a very strong partnerships background, I saw this as a marriage made in heaven.”

The current landscape

A hurdle for partners this year according to Komadina is to try and make themselves stand out from the crowd.

"The challenge that partners face, and what's going to make them stand out in the future is what makes them unique,” she said.

“Do they have that vertical focus and industry expertise to solve some of the unique problems that the retail industry or manufacturing sector or government sector are facing?”

She added, “If you're a partner, that's a one size fits all, that's probably going to disadvantage you. In this world where there are very unique challenges in specific to sectors.”

Komadina acknowledges that this is also a concern for her at Darktrace, ensuring that her go-to-market strategy has a particular focus.

"Some of the things that I'm thinking about in my go-to-market strategy is, how do we strengthen our focus, both from our own organisation, here in Australia and New Zealand, but also when I'm speaking to partners.

“What's going to give you that unique expertise that you have to solve problems in that particular vertical or sector, or adjacent sector.”

"AI saturation point”

As conversation continues around AI, Komadina said the industry is at a “AI saturation point”.

"There's a bit of a FOMO happening in in the industry. Actually, I won't even say in the industry, it's beyond that, customers have a bit of FOMO,” she said.

“They need to have this need to jump on the AI bandwagon, choice is now becoming one of the most significant hurdles, where customers are thinking, ‘I need to invest in AI. Is it agentic AI? What does that mean for my business?”

From a partner perspective, Komadina noted that their role is to help customers on that AI journey.

“The goal of the partner is how do I help a customer through that journey in choosing the right AI strategy. Paired with the right cybersecurity strategy, that's going to deliver on the expectations of market demands or customer demands and expectations, but at the same time keeping organisations secure,” she explained.

Message to partners

Her message to Australian and New Zealand partners is that Darktrace is “ready to partner”.

"What we want from our partners is we want unique experience in specific verticals,” she explained.

“We want them to bring services value that includes not just implementation professional services, but also managed services, that they're able to support customers through a journey.

“We want partners who want to lean in to working with Darktrace and prioritise working with us,” Komadina ended.