Cybersecurity and compliance services firm Proofpoint expects its channel ecosystem to go from strength to strength, helped by the advent of agentic AI technology.
At this week’s Proofpoint Protect customer and partner event in Nashville this week, IT Europa sat down with the company’s channel leadership, to find out about what it sees as an evolving opportunity.
Stan de Boisset, senior vice president of global channels at Proofpoint, said: “Every customer we talk to is considering AI agents, so partners have to be top of their game to take advantage.
“We are already involved in the AI agent ecosystem with the likes of Microsoft, Crowdstrike, and AWS, and we will have more technology alliance announcements to come over the next weeks and months.”
The company’s partners also see the opportunity. Optiv, a major cybersecurity services partner of Proofpoint, was in attendance. Scott Goree, senior vice president, partners, alliances and ecosystems at Optiv, said: “In the market there is tech tool weariness. Optiv customers have an average of 55 tools, and they don’t want any more, ideally. Proofpoint is going for a platform strategy around agentic AI, and that suits us.
“While partners are happy to sell standalone products and tools, with AI it is often about selling services around a platform, and the AI margins are bigger, so it’s all good.”
Goree said when selling to customers it was traditional in the industry to initially look at a 12 month relationship, with a focus on building up to a renewal at the end. With AI, he said, partners had to get closer to the customer from day one, by offering a hand and the in-depth support they would need immediately. This would help create a wider sales opportunity with extended services, as well as making a renewal more likely, he said,
De Boisset said Proofpoint had, over the last decade, increased its partner-centric sales from 40% to now 80%, and it wanted more. “This week we announced we had tripled our investment in partners, not just in AI, but more widely too.
“We are helping our partners get more involved in services, which is driven by incentives around market development funds, partner AI pre-investment, enablement investments, AI best practices, and how they can differentiate themselves in the market.”
With the advent of AI agents, he said partner numbers would go up over the next 12 months, but not just because of AI. “There are territories in Europe and elsewhere where we see growth opportunities, and even in North America, where we are particularly strong, because not every company is fully protected.
“We want to grow our ecosystem across the board, and that means more partners, not less, the automation that AI brings does not mean you need less partners when it comes to deployment and support.”
