Cyber Crime
Why agility is key to Trend Micro’s channel proposition
Most software vendors need partners to scale and succeed. But no two partners are the same. In a dynamic and fast-paced sector like cyber, you need to be flexible enough to offer the right route to market, whatever their requirements. And to have the agility to respond rapidly to market trends so we can all win together.
In just a few months of working at Trend Micro, it’s clear we’ve got the balance right.
A cloud-first world
The pace of technology innovation in cybersecurity is sometimes dizzying. And it has to be, when faced with increasingly well-resourced and determined adversaries doing their best to compromise customers. The shift to the cloud provides huge opportunities for those organisations to become more nimble and efficient, but it also opens the door to malicious actors. That’s why we offer a full-featured platform to secure the customer journey, whatever stage of cloud migration they’re at.
And it’s also why we’ve been quick to enable our partners in this fast-growing space. Trend launched a pilot programme for cloud partners built from scratch in just a few months. That’s the kind of agility that’s helped my work in partner development no end. But it doesn’t stop there. It’s also critical as a vendor to tailor offerings depending on the type of partner you’re talking to. That’s why, whether you’re a cloud native partner, an SI or a traditional VAR, there’ll always be a route to market for your business with Trend.
Listening to each other
This all sends out a pretty clear message: working with Trend is just so easy. Not only do we have an endless capacity to respond to changes in the market with new partner programmes, but the technology makes for an easy sell. More and more organisations want to simplify security and rid themselves of poorly performing point solutions. Our platform-based portfolio makes for a compelling narrative.
We also have to remember as a vendor that the role of the partner is changing longer term. Increasingly, customers are asking more of their IT partners—not just to sell them products, but to also help advise on digital strategy. That in turn is affecting the partner-vendor relationship.
Today it’s less about revenue and more about long-term strategy. This makes it more important than ever that vendors listen and understand their partners’ agendas, and we work together for a common cause.