Partners are Integrating Security Solutions

How is CyberArk driving the growth of its channel partner ecosystem through the Channel Partner Program?

Chris Moore - I'll give you a global perspective. We've seen substantial growth through channel partners over the past few years, and we aim to continue that trajectory. One way we're achieving this is through program enhancements. First, we're focusing on encouraging our existing partners to promote more of our portfolio beyond privilege solutions. This includes adjacent products, which have seen double-digit growth, helping us better serve our customers. 

Secondly, we're driving partners toward providing services. CyberArk doesn’t aim to be a services organization; rather, we want our partners to deliver and successfully manage these services. This approach allows us to engage effectively with global SIs and regional service partners, thereby driving service revenue and enhancing customer experience, leading to stronger customer success and ecosystem growth.

Third, we’re emphasizing emerging go-to-market avenues, such as AWS and the global marketplace. This is an area of particular focus in India, where we’ve seen nearly 100% quarter-on-quarter growth in AWS transactions, driven by increased customer interest in cloud migration and transformation. Additionally, our MSP business is expanding as customers seek vendors for fully managed identity security and lifecycle services.

Ajit Ramnath - I would add that our partners in India see significant value in our comprehensive approach to identity security. Traditionally, Indian partners were focused on privilege, aligning with our initial focus on PAM (Privilege Access Management). However, the growth opportunity now lies in our platform approach, which enables them to manage all identities through a single platform. This not only drives license sales but also increases service revenue for partners.

We’re witnessing considerable engagement from partners in enablement programs and new product areas beyond privilege. With our new investments and expanding product suite, we're seeing positive traction with our partners in India.

What roles do CyberArk’s channel partners play in delivering advanced identity security solutions? 

Chris Moore - Our partners play a crucial role in integrating security solutions for our customers. They are the ones who pull together our platforms with those of our peer groups and alliance partners, creating a cohesive, comprehensive solution. Our goal is to protect every identity everywhere, and partners are instrumental in expanding this beyond privileged users to include machine identities and non-human identities.

Partners assist in multiple ways: they a) engage with customers to identify their security needs, b) help set an appropriate security posture for the future, and c) recommend a platform tailored to meet customer requirements. This year, our go-to-market approach aligns with our partners’ strategies, focusing on persona-based approaches. This covers various user types, like workforce, developer, and IT users, as well as machine identities. Partners work closely with customers, asking key questions: What’s in place for your workforce? Developers? IT? Machines? They then help craft solutions that meet these needs, ensuring security for every user and identity across the ecosystem.

The services component is also vital. Once customers choose a solution, we collaborate with partners to drive deployment, consumption of licenses, and outcomes based on sold use cases. Our partners are critical in delivering customer success, ensuring customers derive maximum value from our software. 

Elaborate on the key updates to CyberArk’s Channel Partner Program, especially for the MSP segment. How are these updates helping partners address emerging market needs?

Chris Moore - Our Channel Partner Program has two main components. First, there’s the overarching global partner program that supports all partner types. We’re refining this program to ensure we’re directing investments to the right areas of the customer’s sales cycle. Historically, the partner program focused heavily on the front end—finding customers and selling licenses—without much investment in driving customer success.

Now, we’re shifting some of that investment from the initial stages of the sales cycle toward customer success. This allows us to support our partners in both finding and closing deals and in delivering positive outcomes and customer success. By evolving our program to focus on the entire customer lifecycle, we enable more partners to contribute at various stages of a sales opportunity, thus supporting a broader range of partners in each opportunity.

On average, there are seven partners involved in a single customer opportunity. If we’re only focusing on one piece of that opportunity, we’re missing out on collaborating with the other six partners. So, we’re working to create a program that supports multiple partners across the lifecycle of an opportunity.

In parallel, we’re also evolving the MSP program to provide enhanced enablement and incentives, helping MSPs deliver solutions across the lifecycle of an opportunity. This includes making additional investments to serve more customers in emerging markets. By early 2025, partners will see a range of new MSP-specific SKUs, onboarding processes, and enablement features designed to empower MSPs to bring their solutions to market effectively. We’re moving toward a dual-path approach: one program specifically for MSPs, and another for all other partners, each focused on specific needs and stages of the sales cycle.

We’ve already made some progress, and more updates are planned for 2025. Indian partners are well-positioned to take advantage of these changes. 

Share details on the new initiatives aimed at equipping channel partners with the latest skills and tools for cybersecurity.

Chris Moore - There are three significant updates to our enablement approach, all of which build on our current offerings. Today, we’re seeing a 25% increase in the number of partners and individuals certified on CyberArk products. On average, a CyberArk-certified user holds 2.4 certifications, indicating they’re trained across multiple CyberArk platforms and products. Not only are more people becoming certified, but they’re also expanding their expertise across various products within our ecosystem, which is a trend we want to continue.

To support this, we’re introducing two key functions into our enablement strategy. First, we’re moving towards a persona-based enablement approach. Instead of just focusing on individual products, we’re now training around user personas—workforce, developer, and IT personas, for example. Each persona has different products, use cases, and expected outcomes. We’re focusing on training our partners not only on what the product does but on the outcomes it delivers for each persona type. 

The second new focus is a comprehensive customer success training program, which includes blueprints and outcome-based scenarios that define successful customer engagement. This program will guide partners in delivering consistent, world-class customer success by leveraging proven blueprints and best practices that we’ll implement collaboratively.

Lastly, we’re emphasizing Venafi, which we recently acquired. This brings an opportunity for all partners within our ecosystem to engage with the Venafi product portfolio. We’re investing heavily in enablement for both sales and pre-sales, as well as for deployment, implementation, and customer success. This expanded portfolio provides a substantial new area for partner engagement, and we’ll be focused on bringing our partners up to speed with these offerings over the next 18 months.

How do you think the AWS partnership is contributing to CyberArk’s growth, and what benefits do they bring to both channel partners and customers?

Chris Moore - Global SIs are a critical part of our partner ecosystem. Their insights and the level of engagement they bring elevate the entire ecosystem. These global SIs and advisory firms engage in high-level discussions, including board-level conversations, often focused on security posture and outcome-driven solutions.

The more these partners talk to customers about advanced topics—like modern PAM strategies, the impact of AI on cybersecurity, or the role of quantum encryption (where our Venafi acquisition provides solutions)—the more they help convey the value we can bring together. This elevates all our partners. 

Similarly, our collaboration with AWS plays a major role. As customers increasingly shift to the cloud, our partnership becomes more critical. AWS has a unique capacity to bring together ISVs, partners, and customers, effectively acting as an aggregator of solutions. This approach allows customers to benefit from a comprehensive ecosystem, where various technologies and expertise converge to meet diverse security needs.

With evolving market trends, how will CyberArk support channel partnerships, particularly in India’s growing cybersecurity landscape?

Ajit Ramnath - One of the significant challenges we’re observing in India is the lack of skilled cybersecurity professionals. It’s an industry-wide issue, especially in security, where finding people with the right expertise is tough. As a result, we see a shift towards an outsourced model, with customers increasingly relying on partners to manage security end-to-end. This is where Managed Service Providers (MSPs) come into play, and we’re witnessing strong engagement with local MSPs, from large, established players to tier-two partners aspiring to enter the MSP space.

Given the complex threat landscape and the diverse tools customers adopt, integration can be a challenge. Our boutique partners, who specialise in CyberArk, bring valuable skills to help customers manage and streamline these tools into a cohesive security solution. Additionally, with the shift to an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) model, customers expect quicker time-to-value. Our focus on enablement has enabled partners to rapidly kickstart projects, helping customers derive value from our solutions sooner. Local adoption programs also empower both partners and customers to make the most of CyberArk products.

Currently, most of our partners are based in large metropolitan areas across North and South India, with limited activity in the East. However, we anticipate growth in tier-two cities as well, which represents a potential expansion area.

Chris Moore - Globally, we’re focusing on equipping our partners with enhanced MSP capabilities, including advanced product features suited for MSP environments. Our ongoing collaboration with AWS supports both fulfilment and market reach, and we’re also making significant investments in systems integrators (SIs) to address AI-driven security needs, including the protection of AI agents and AI-focused cybersecurity defences.

We prioritize providing partners with best-in-class training, enablement, and customer success tools. Listening to our partners is equally critical; we regularly conduct partner advisory councils, recently in the US, with upcoming sessions in EMEA and APJ. These councils are designed for listening and adapting based on the insights partners share from their market experiences, ensuring our strategies are responsive to evolving needs.

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