Darktrace A/NZ partners report growing interest in AI-security platform

Darktrace Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) partners see value, trust, and integrated solutions matter more than point-product sales, according to the vendor’s Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) head of partnerships, alliances and channel, Abhi Abhyankar.

Based in Sydney, Abhyankar was promoted in January this year from leading partnerships, alliances and channel in A/NZ to overseeing the broader APJ region.

Abhyankar’s role includes driving the adoption of the vendor’s ActiveAI Security Platform in APJ.

Prior to joining Darktrace, he served as vice president of sales at Mphasis, working closely with its technology partners including DXC, HP and HPE.

Abhyankar told ARN in an interview that Darktrace has tripled its channel workforce across the region to cement its commitment to its channel partners.

“Darktrace has gone through two major phases of growth” he said. “The first was all about proving our technology. We burst onto the scene over a decade ago at a time when AI wasn’t widely understood, let alone used in cyber security.”

The strategy for the first phase showed customers that AI-driven security worked and helped them to understand how to use it.

Over the last 10 years, the company has grown rapidly and had over 10,000 customers globally.

“With that kind of scale and market validation, the next phase was all about accelerating growth and that’s where partnerships come in,” he said.

That was one of the edicts that came from cyber security private equity firm Thoma Bravo after acquiring Darktrace in October 2024.

“They recognised the technology was proven,” said Abhyankar. “Its goal now is to scale Darktrace and the best way to do that is through the channel ecosystem.

“The channel plays a huge role in helping customers navigate cyber security challenges by combining solutions and expertise.”

In Australia, Darktrace extends beyond partnering with traditional managed service providers (MSP), as it is also working with Indigenous-owned MSP Yirigaa as an example.

“We’re really impressed with how it’s not just about the channel motion,” he said. “It’s about bringing Indigenous kids into the cyber security and getting them trained.

“We are partnering with them not just to sell but also [helping the kids to] become analysts so that they understand how to deploy cyber AI.”

Clearing the way for partners

About 18 months ago, Darktrace established the Global Partner Organisation (GPO), bringing in experienced leaders from companies like VMware, Palo Alto Networks, Cohesity and HPE.

These vendors understand the channel and how to build solutions with partners, said Abhyankar. Since then, the vendor has tripled its channel workforce.

“There have been so many point solutions entering the market[, with] many of them masquerading as full products. The push has often been to sell as many of these as possible,” he said. “If you look specifically at the cyber security category, I think it’s clear we’ve ended up with too many products and it’s confusing for customers.

“That’s why our approach is different because we don’t lead with the product. We lead with the problem.”

Abhyankar explained that it started by “understanding the customer, their industry, their cyber security posture and governance requirements”.

“What we offer is a cyber AI platform that partners can leverage,” he said. “You don’t need to buy the whole thing, we’re flexible,” he said. “We’re available via cloud marketplaces through partnerships with Microsoft and AWS.

“They actively promote our platform and we also work closely with distributors, resellers and consulting partners.”

Three-tiered model

A part of the GPO was the Darktrace Defenders Partner Program, which is split into Elite, Premier and Preferred.

The program allows partners to engage, ensure certification, deepen their technology understanding and learn how to integrate multiple technologies to deliver solutions.

“I’m responsible for rolling this out across APJ. When I say responsible, I mean both internally and externally,” said Abhyankar. “We’ve broken it down into three phases.

“On the people side, I’ve engaged with the ecosystem to educate channel partners here.”

In Australia, Darktrace said it has two main distributors as well as Nextgen, which form its distribution and channel model.

“We’re also working with some of the premier partners in the region at both a strategic level and by educating the broader ecosystem,” Abhyankar explained. “Internally, we’ve trained our own teams using mastering partnership workshops.

“We’ve launched a fresh partner portal, rolled out a new CRM [customer relationship management] and put a partner relationship network in place. This is how we’re engaging digitally with the ecosystem.”

He said the program has been rolled out in across A/NZ.

“[There’s already] strategic partnerships in place,” noted Abhyankar. “We’re currently working on strategic deals with Microsoft across different areas and its actively engaging us and bringing us into their conversations.

“Similarly, we’re collaborating with premier partners here like The Missing Link and Data#3.

“They’re hearing a lot from their customers about AI and how cyber AI platforms can be leveraged, so there’s tremendous interest.”

Currently, the A/NZ market is in the build phase.

“We are running lunch and learn workshops, have [partner] employees participating in extensive training and are driving a dedicated channel marketing effort,” he said. “We’re enabling the full ecosystem.”

For Darktrace, the A/NZ market was different from the rest of APJ, with customers in the latter viewing cost as the main driver of decision-making.

“Although cost is important, it’s a relationship-driven market over here … it’s the reputation,” said Abhyankar. “It’s less about competing on price and competing on value; cost then becomes a function of the value proposition.”

Training the sales teams

That has been key to working with channel partners, especially as MSPs continue to evolve. Ensuring the sales team was trained to understand this shift was a crucial part of building a successful channel model.

“We had to train our sales team,” explained Abhyankar. “Traditionally, our model was going straight to market [and] the sales team was used engaging directly with the customer by just selling a point solution.

“Then we had to really educate them in terms of how channel partners function and make money.”

Darktrace wanted to make the sales team was focused on working with a partner, where they’re trying to solve a customer’s problem.

“We may position our product or offering today however it may sell 12 months down the line because that priority was for the right solution,” Abhyankar said. “We had to train sales teams to understand that.

“Similarly, one area they learned from the whole process was how to embed our solutions in a larger solution play, be it managed building services or different arenas.”

What that helped was expanding the footprint, vendor consolidation and enabling Darktrace to increase our overall deal size.

“I wish I could have pressed a button and things changed,” Abhyankar said. “Change is always very difficult, but we did certain things which helped the whole process.

“The way we did that was creating opportunities for our sellers and our channel partners to have rapport. That included sales team to sell through the channel by giving them a sales incentive.”

Darktrace showed the team examples of sellers who were able to quickly work with the channel and leverage stories.

“Someone who probably would have sold maybe $1 through the channel managed to sell $100 worth of deal, maybe over six months,” noted Abhyankar. “It made to sure to show them how enjoyable and easy the whole experience was.

“We just made the whole experience very enjoyable, and that’s really leading to the shift from previously 10 per cent channel sales to almost 100 per cent.”