Having just reported a 74% rise in total sales year on year in its Q4, CrowdStrike is building a strong business based on partners in Europe. The appointment of distributor Westcon in UK&I a few weeks ago is a part of this; the distributor has made a strong commitment to increasing the business further in 2021.
CrowdStrike has just reported that it delivered a record fourth quarter and an exceptional finish to a strong fiscal year, achieving over $1bn in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The strong fourth quarter performance included record net new ARR of $143m, 70% net new subscription customer growth year-over-year, and 77% year-over-year subscription revenue growth.
“Our go-to-market engine has gained incredible momentum with both enterprises and small businesses alike as we expand our partner ecosystem and leverage our frictionless sales motion and leading technology. Combined with strong secular tailwinds, including digital transformation and an unprecedented threat environment, and our expanding technology portfolio, which now includes leading index-free data ingestion capabilities, we believe we are in an ideal position to further extend our leadership in the Security Cloud category we pioneered,” says George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s co-founder and chief executive officer.
Amanda Adams, Senior Director, European Alliances at CrowdStrike, says the remote working growth has meant a lot more potential business in both SMB and corporate customers even as it seeks to displace some of the traditional A/V brands such as Symantec and McAfee.
And there is a lot more to be done in security generally by partners, she says and looks for them to expand with more customers and more products.
“We are frank with partners – we know their profitability depends on stickiness.”
“The plan is clear- to replace legacy AV, so we’re doing a lot of messaging to customers, sales incentives to partners and promotional pricing. It is not one size fits all in Europe, and we have a country-by country approach, certainly in the more mature northern European markets.”
“There is a lot of change in the market, and it is the first time we’ve added distribution to the model. But we have a record of support and our plans align with Westcon’s Q1 and Q2 Next Generation Security, using the expertise and local relationships, looking at partner targets and data-driven deal registration and tracking.”
Antony Byford , MD for UK&I at Westcon welcomes the move to use distribution to help reach new partners and new customers. “It is a huge journey and one that the SMB sector in particular is looking for help with, accelerated by the move to cloud in the last year,” he says.
This is coupled with a rise in unified comms, where Westcon also has a strong position, he adds.
It has to cater for a very diverse group of partners. The channel is at various stages of security knowledge and abilities. “Many are realising that they need to catch up, so what Westcon does is all about enablement.”
For Westcon it is a key development - the company has almost bet its growth in 2021 around CrowdStrike. And in its investments, it has speeded up the onboarding “We can bring new partners on-board in a couple of clicks,” he says. And the rapid progress to sales follows “We have seen new partners start bringing in revenue inside six weeks.”
The result has been that Westcon has increased CrowdStrike’s partner numbers by 50% in the first couple of months - from just 23 up to 37 in number. “Certainly, it has been the fastest vendor to revenue in my experience.”
And it leads to further things as Westcon offers cross-selling to the rest of its security portfolio and products in its Next Gen solutions group. Stickiness is a valuable part of the sale he says, echoing Amada’s point. And using Weston’s intelligent demand analysis tools, partners are supported in understanding the market, where the target customers are and when their systems are due for renewal.
But it is not a rush to quantity “We’re not looking for hundreds of new partners,” says Antony Byford. There is still a lot of support needed in the analysing, scoping of projects, building the bill of materials and configuration.
And in the channel, MSPs are involved with many channel partners realising that their hosted platforms are not secured. “MSPs are looking at security with a new interest,” he says.
With a target group of customers in the SMB sector, this is a compelling message, he concludes.
