Sandy Janes, Senior Director of Global Partner Programs and Operations at Infoblox, talks about the company’s channel strategy.
In what has been an extraordinary year for Infoblox and our partners, much is changing as we enter the post-pandemic era where companies will retain their remote work investments. We are continuing our cloud-first evolution with what our CEO, Jesper Andersen, calls Infoblox 3.0.
This evolution began with extending our market-leading DDI and security solutions into multi-cloud environments and evolving from selling perpetual licenses to offering subscription services. Then, last September’s investment from Warburg Pincus and Vista Equity Partners validated the successful SaaS foundation we built and set the stage for further investments in our cloud-first strategy, including developing more programs and resources for our partners.
We are executing this SaaS strategy in the channel through the Infoblox Cloud Specialization designation. An extension of the BuildingBLOX partner program, this new designation connects our top-performing channel partners with Infoblox’s Cloud Champions to create a highly-skilled, SaaS-savvy sales force. We are very excited that up to 30 designated channel partners worldwide will gain exclusive access to Infoblox’s Cloud Champions — a team of proven cloud experts in field sales, business development, customer training and other disciplines.
Another highlight is our enhancements to our professional services program to enable partners to go to market with additional enablement tools and documentation.
Through these and other initiatives, we are demonstrating our commitment to our partners, who will continue to be key players in Infoblox’s continued transformation. Jessica Lay, our Partner Programs Manager, noted, “We need our partners more than ever as the world pivots toward SaaS, and we are very proud about what our partners have achieved in the last 12 months. For example, our partner-generated revenue increased 40% over the last year. When you consider the challenges that many of us have faced, this is an outstanding achievement.”
During 2020, Infoblox also saw the market move with us. The work from anywhere trend that is expected to continue in the foreseeable future, has provided tremendous opportunities for our partners. And, despite the pandemic, many of our partners also grew their businesses with BloxOne Threat Defense, which contributed to a 58% increase in security revenues. We also saw many partners bring us opportunities from existing and new accounts, and our new logos grew from 50% to 70% year-over-year, thanks largely to our partners.
Moving forward, as Vic Northrup, Infoblox’s acting executive vice president of worldwide field operations, pointed out that the key to growth is making sure the experience and the value provided to customers through using Infoblox in conjunction with partners is realized as quickly as possible. He said, “In order to do that, we need to work as one team. We’ve got the selling experiences, which drives the SaaS growth. Many of you have already started moving down the SaaS path, and for those who haven’t, this is how most of the infrastructure companies and the networking companies will end up going to market.”
In closing, I want to leave you with one thought — one degree is all that separates us from greatness. Our continued evolution to “cloud-first” is an important part of that one degree of separation that is enabling our partners to better position Infoblox solutions to their customers, and ignite success within their own businesses.
