Cloudflare channel boss looks to increase partner activity

It has been a year since Mark Jenkins stepped into the role as vice-president of partner sales EMEA at Cloudflare, and the vendor has continued to increase its channel momentum in that time.

The former Zoom staffer joined the firm after being attracted to its commitment to partners and the determination across the senior management team to build a stronger indirect business.

While progress has been made, with the firm now gaining more revenues via partners than it does direct, the efforts to increase that further are continuing for Jenkins and the team of regional channel managers across EMEA.

Recognising that it wanted to increase partner activity, the firm took the decision a few years ago to adapt its approach, widening beyond a product-centric approach to a customer and partner-driven operation. That shift has created increased opportunities for partners to add services around the Cloudflare offerings.

Jenkins said that the key was to generate joint value for both partner and vendor to make it advantageous for the channel to work with Cloudflare, adding: “We bring an innovative technology to the partner that is something that they can get stuck into and they can drive. What I like about Cloudflare is we’re labelled as a security company, but we’re really a technology company that can drive transformation of not just security but networking and AI.

“There’s lots of ways that a partner can get engaged in our in our technology and add different value at different times. It’s not just that resale transaction, and I think many vendors do overlook this value exchange. Different partners need a different value exchange at different times in in the sale,” he said, added that working with the channel to secure a deal was part of the company’s collaborative approach.

The business decided to provide partners with the opportunity to add services and not to compete with them around adding that value. “We have no intention of building a professional services organisation,” said Jenkins. “We’ve got a good base of maybe 20 or so partners delivering professional services on our behalf, working with large clients and small clients.”

The firm has identified growing small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) opportunities for partners, along with a need to address vertical markets as it looks to widen the range of customers Cloudflare is reaching.

“We’ve really grown from a mid-market company into a full segment company,” said Jenkins. “We’re seeing great traction in the enterprise, and we’re seeing interesting traction in the SME [market] – the mid-market is continuing to grow. We’re starting to look at things like support and we’re putting more into MSSP offerings. This year is less about overhaul and more about scale and focus.”

For Jenkins, the task for the rest of this year is to support and grow the channel business, as well as to reap the rewards of the strategic decisions made in the past couple of years and the investments in channel-facing teams in the past 12 months.

“The business we’re bringing to partners is controlled...and this year Cloudflare initiated opportunities that will bring well over 60-65% of those to partners,” said Jenkins. “We’re doing that with renewals and with professional services, and we’re working on a partner ecosystem that can receive that capacity and has the skills that they need.”