Elastic building out increased channel support

Search AI platform player Elastic is formalising its channel relationships and looking to expand its partner base. The security specialist recently hired Paul Martin to come in as director of channel and alliances to strengthen its approach, with Martin inheriting an existing partner community that can be developed and expanded.

“We’re wanting to pick and engage the right partners. We’ve got a real mix, with a great MSSP partner base, GSIs and resellers already. I don’t think we’ve paid them the attention they deserve to really help them get their elastic business up and running,” he said. “That’s where the change is going to come. We’re going to lean in a lot more and start to really work a true partnership.”

Martin has experience working with the channel at other vendors and is bringing that to his current role, making it clear that Elastic wants to work more closely with its channel and is increasing its support.

“When we’re working on an opportunity together, it’s not, ‘I’ll do my thing, you do your thing’, and then we’ll meet at the end and talk about how we’re going to commercially present this to the customers – ‘Let’s keep each other informed at all stages of the deal and let’s work together in true partnership. What does a good deal look like to you? What does a good deal look like for us? Let’s agree how we go about making that work, and then how can we repeat this and make this out to market further’,” he said.

Progress has already begun, with Elastic starting to make the internal training it offers staff available to partners to increase their skills.

“We offer some of the internal trainings that we give to our own account executives, some of their playbooks and campaign material, and offer that out to the channel,” he added. “For us, it’s kind of new, and we are really thinking about how we’re going to develop and how we’re going to train our channel.

“I’m hoping that we can start building these relationships. I want to get executive engagement. So, I want all our reps to be like an executive sponsor with a lot of our focus partners, to say, ‘You can invest with Elastic, because I’m here and I’m going to be supporting you’,” he added.

“We’re in channel build mode. I think there’s a perception that if you switch the channel on, it’s a quick fix – all of a sudden, you’re going to get a load of leads, and it’s happy days, you just close them. The channel doesn’t work like that. The channel is built on trust and integrity on relationships and showing up for each other,” he said.

The focus on deepening channel relationships comes at a time when Elastic is also looking for partners that can take its offerings to market.

“We’ve built out from the Elastic platform. We’ve got observability that we do really well and we have got cyber security that we do really well,” he added. “We can go head-to-head with some of these more well-known enterprise players, like Splunk, Palo Alto, etc. We can win those big accounts and support the channel at the same time,” he said.

Martin said that the as the firm increases partner support, it’s continuing to encourage an open dialogue with the channel and is receptive of feedback: “We want to hear what they’re trying to say and help them develop our programme and shape our programme.”