During our Q3 FY17 NextWave Huddle, we tried something different by adding regionally focused partner wins. If you missed your regional Q3 Huddle, I encourage you to watch the replay and review the presentation:
- Americas/EMEA replay and presentation
- APAC/Japan replay and presentation
As I said last quarter, when analyzing the performance in a given quarter, I look at three indicators:
- Business Momentum: We had a record revenue quarter growing at 26.3%, and we unveiled the largest product release in the company’s history with PAN-OS 8.0.
- Customer Momentum: We added approximately 2,000 new customers, bringing the total to 37,500, including more than 875 Traps customers and more than 2,500 VM-Series customers.
- Channel Momentum: We had more than 270 partners grow more than 100% year over year; partners led more than 1,000 Security Lifecycle Reviews, and partners achieved nearly 4,000 certifications, up 15% year over year.
It is this positive momentum that is leading me to believe there has never been a better time to be a partner of Palo Alto Networks. With this as a backdrop, here are my three keys for Q3:
- Embrace Change: We are changing our go-to-market playbook. Embrace this change. Be quick to adapt, and let’s make sure we are building joint plans for future success.
- Seek New Opportunities: According to our Annual Partner Satisfaction survey, many of you are taking steps to build out your public cloud practice. We saw a massive shift in the number of partners building new relationships with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The public cloud is a huge growth opportunity, which is why I encourage you to attend our upcoming Sales Insight: Positioning the Public Cloud webinar on April 25 at 8:00 a.m. PDT or 6:00 p.m. PDT.Traps is another growth opportunity. We exited Q2 with 875 Traps customers and about 100 Traps Specialized global partners. This means this product is going mainstream. As a result, we need more Traps Specialized partners to fill coverage gaps. We need to use Traps Certified Professional Service Providers (partners/distributors) to ensure the highest customer satisfaction, and we will run our first Traps Specialization compliance check in August 2017 (view requirements).
- Think Beyond the Point: Our channel strategy in FY17 is to accelerate your journey to becoming a next-generation security innovator. To this end, we have taken three recent actions you need to be aware of:
- We have overhauled our Accredited Sales Executive training to be more platform-focused.
- We recently announced CYBERFORCE, a platform-focused technical recognition program.
- We launched PAN-OS 8.0, which included more than 70 platform advancements. To help accelerate your PAN-OS 8.0 ramp to revenue, we have several Sales Insights webinars, as well as SE Summit session recordings, a marketing “How-To Guide” and a new infographic, all on the Partner Portal.
In closing, don’t forget the Ignite '17 Security Conference is June 12-15 in Vancouver. Together with your customers you will hear from security innovators and experts, gain real-world skills through hands-on sessions and interactive workshops, and find out how breach prevention is changing the security industry. Visit the Ignite website for more information on tracks, workshops and marquee session.
Also, compliance letters for Silver partners or partners granted an extension in October are scheduled to go out in the Americas and EMEA on March 31, 2017, with changes going into effect May 1, 2017.
Together we have the best people, partnership and proposition in the industry. Let’s continue to build momentum and break away in FY17.