Illumio taps into rising segmentation awareness

The increasing awareness of zero-trust segmentation is playing into the hands of Illumio and its partner network, with expectations that the focus on the segmentation market will increase further this year.

As analysts drill down into segmentation, with planned vendor rankings coming in the second half, the spotlight is going to remain on the technology and should benefit partners offering it.

Pete Wilson, senior director of partner sales at Illumio, said it had seen the demand from customers increase as awareness rose, with the firm expanding its alliances, including the likes of Nvidia and Microsoft, to get the technology in front of more partners and customers. The increased interest is also one of the key factors behind the recent partnership formed with Deloitte.

“Deloitte and any GSI that comes to work with us are doing it for a reason. Usually, the reason is customer demand or something in the market that demands our technology as part of a wider solution,” said Wilson.  

“Deloitte itself moved quickly into this area, and there are lots of other partners that are following. They’re looking for technologies that they can combine with their expertise, their end-to-end services, from advisory to delivery.”

Wilson said compliance regulations, including DORA, and the need to react to increasing artificial intelligence (AI) threats was driving customers to evaluate their data defence strategies and look for options that increased resilience.

“They all point to the need to improve resilience and to understand how environments are connected and workloads communicating, really understanding that and locking it down,” he said.

Wilson added that the increasing tracking of the technology by analysts has also had an impact on customer awareness: “They’ve already started talking about this shift from prevention to resilience. It’s a big change in how people think about this category, so that’s an indication of how many customers are talking to them about what we do.”

Illumio is continuing to enable partners to pitch the resilience story and keep ahead of the AI curve to deliver the resilience customers are increasingly looking for.

“The market will come to them as their customers are going to be asking them, ‘Okay, we’ve just seen this. What do you suggest?’. And we’re part of the story around segmentation. Part of the story to provide a sub-resilient infrastructure, so I think they’ll see an increase in inquiries from their customers.”

Wilson said that Illumio was also working more closely with technical staff at partners as its EPIC (Excellence through Partner Innovation and Competency) community continued to flourish in the year since it had launched its Partner Technical Champion Programme.

“[It’s about] recognising the top, technical talent in our partner ecosystem that is very skilled up and knowledgeable, bringing them closer to us and giving them access to the latest developments from our solution. We’re making sure we empower technical talent and that they’re up to speed,” he said.