🚚 Accelerating the Cloudflare One Partner Program

Thank you, everybody, for joining. My name is Karl Henrik, and I'm on the product marketing team here at Cloudflare.

I'm excited to be joined today by Steve Pataky, who is the head of sales for Cloudflare Area 1, and also on the team overseeing our Cloudflare 1 Partner Program, which we're here today to discuss.

So welcome, Steve. Thank you, Karl. It's really great to be here, excited for our conversation.

Awesome. Same here. And yeah, I think a lot of folks have seen as of this morning, we published a blog post following up on the announcement back in June that we made launching the new Partner Program for Cloudflare 1, which was really reflective of the opportunities at our disposal to partner more effectively with the channel.

So I guess just to kick it off, I'd love it if you could tell us a little bit more about what the Cloudflare 1 Partner Program is and why it matters.

Yeah, thanks, Karl. It's definitely a great place to start.

Like you mentioned, we previously announced the program, and since then, we've been doing a lot of work to continue to build it out and launch it around the world.

So what is the Cloudflare 1 Partner Program? Well, first of all, you mentioned one of the key things, Karl, which is it's about understanding the opportunity out in the marketplace for Zero Trust solutions.

As I think a lot of folks may know or not, Cloudflare 1 is where we define all of our Zero Trust solutions, right?

So that's the umbrella for all of the different technologies of access and identity and CASB and now email security and other things, but all collected under a single platform.

And that really matters because what we find is, of course, everybody's hearing Zero Trust.

Every vendor in the world is talking about Zero Trust.

And there's a lot of confusion, honestly, amongst customers about what does it all mean and what is the value to their organization?

And if they are so inclined, where do we start? And so the Cloudflare 1 Partner Program is really rooted in two things.

It's the fact that we've assembled a true Zero Trust platform that we believe makes so much sense for our customers.

And we can talk a little bit more about that.

But it's also the recognition that we need to partner with the channel and leverage their expertise to go to their customers, work with their customers.

They have a trusted advisor relationship with their customers to help make sense of Zero Trust and help those customers assess where they want to start their journey to Zero Trust.

So many, many folks are talking about, and I think we all know, Zero Trust is not a product.

It's not even a set of products. It's actually a journey.

It's a mindset of how you approach your network and security.

And so customers need a lot of help thinking about that and sorting through what the right business cases are for them and what outcomes they want for Zero Trust.

So really great opportunity for Cloudflare to partner with the broad channel to leverage all of our combination of our solutions and of this architecture, along with the expertise of the partners, really to help our customers figure out where to start that Zero Trust journey.

Now, the program element is also designed a little bit differently.

And it's really built on what I think are the most important value propositions for partners when they're looking at working with a vendor like Cloudflare.

And every year, there's many surveys that are done in the channel asking partners to talk about vendors and what's important to them and rate vendors and all that kind of stuff.

And it's really interesting to me over many years of doing this that the same elements come up over and over every year, Carl.

They talk about the number one thing, most important thing when looking at a vendor and partnering with the vendor is the solution.

It's the value of the technology, the differentiation, you know, what are we offering that is unique?

And that's number one.

And as I mentioned, we're not approaching Zero Trust as a set of point products.

We're approaching this as a platform, a composable set of solutions that really help customers on ramp to Zero Trust from any place that they want to start.

That's really, really important. And it's that combination of all of those elements that come together.

So we've got the technology value, but equally important to partners is financial value proposition.

How does this solution help me drive net new customers?

How does this help me, you know, expand my footprint within my existing customers?

And can I engage with your technology in a profitable way?

And we can talk about some more of those reward for value elements maybe later on that constitute a really predictable and consistent profitability model for our partners.

And then the third element they rate every year is ease of doing business.

And so we've looked at all of the elements that are important to a partner when engaging, not just the technology and the profitability, but are we making it easy for sales reps and SEs to become enabled?

And what about services for my partners and how can I procure these solutions?

And so all of that has been comprehended under this umbrella of the Cloudflare One Partner Program.

So that's why we're really excited to launch it.

We think massive opportunity in the market, but also a great, a great new watermark for how we engage with our partners.

Yeah, no, no, that's super exciting. And I love the call out to leveraging channel expertise and helping them assess the right path in their journey forward.

And, you know, you touched on some of the items already related to the challenges of procurement or implementation, but in our initial launch post from a few months ago, we didn't, you know, build this up.

We talked a lot about how organizations of all sizes can purchase and adopt Zero Trust more easily now.

And it's a more simplified version of doing that. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about the configuration of our like bundle and package design.

I think that's a key item that a lot of our partners have really honed in on as they've wanted to become partners.

Yeah, it's a great point, Carl, you bring up around the bundling.

And so it really, for me, it even starts before that, right?

So you mentioned it, the trusted advisor status, the technical expertise.

This is a place, there's so much hype and jive in the market around Zero Trust, you know, to go any security industry event today, everybody is talking about Zero Trust.

But what I find from talking with a lot of our partners and different, you know, recruiting events we've been at and our partner roadshows is that it really does come down to nobody calls a partner on any given day and says, I want to buy Zero Trust.

That's not how it works. Customers, you know, are trying to solve specific problems, right?

They've got use cases, they're dealing with myriad issues, and especially post COVID, you know, where they're now trying to make sense of how do we move forward?

How do we get back to normal operating models, things like that.

So there's a lot of demand placed on the channel to help their customers weed through that.

And so I think one of the things that we're hearing really works very well is the idea of going in before you're even talking about any products, the idea of helping customers assess where they are today.

What do they have in place?

And this should be really familiar to a lot of partners who historically in security have sold a lot of assessment services or, you know, penetration, security penetration testing.

But in the world of Zero Trust, being able to go in and help a customer, you know, take stock of where they are, what does their infrastructure look like, because Zero Trust is a journey and it's an architectural transition, right?

And this architectural transformation, knowing where you're starting from is really critical.

And every customer really is starting from a unique place.

So the number one thing that I think, you know, we've brought to the table here is this idea of going in and really doing a Zero Trust assessment.

And I know, you know, we've done some really interesting vendor agnostic stuff as Cloudflare, I think, you know, the ZeroTrustroadmap.org, right?

Which is really just a blueprint for how you could start your journey towards Zero Trust and some other services that we've built out around that to help partners go in and just have a unique and differentiated conversation around Zero Trust and one that is very dialed in on where the customer is today and what makes sense for them to start their journey.

We talk about on-ramps to Zero Trust and for in the partner world, an on-ramp is really honing in on a specific pain point that a customer has and identifying what the business outcome is that they're trying to achieve by solving that pain point and then architecting the right solution.

But you can do that in a way that now points, you can be both tactical in helping solve that immediate problem for your customer, but also strategic because you're presenting it as part of an overall Zero Trust architecture.

And then from there, to your point, to try to make it as easy as possible for our partners, our product teams have created a set of Zero Trust bundles that just take a lot of the guesswork, I guess, and, you know, the idea of composing the right solution, taking all the right Zero Trust products that live in our Cloudflare 1 portfolio, composing them in a way that solves that specific use case for your partner.

We don't need to get into the details of the bundles here, but we have an essentials bundle, we have an advanced bundle, we have a premier bundle, but they're all really designed to fit those various use cases of the partner.

I've heard a lot of feedback from the technical teams in particular, from our partners who say this takes a lot of the guesswork out of once you've identified the problem you're trying to solve, which solutions make sense, which pieces of the overall Cloudflare 1 portfolio make sense, and it all kind of works together, and there's some pricing advantage as well for consuming in that way.

So we're really excited to see that, you know, start to take root in the channel.

Absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned the vendor agnostic roadmap.

It's definitely a great way for a valuable step-by-step approach for, or guide wherever folks are in their journey, right?

So definitely. Absolutely, absolutely. I also think it's a fan. I really promote that everywhere I go because it's thorough, and it's thoughtful, and it is, you know, vendor agnostic.

Just again, for our partners, for sales folks, for technical folks, using that almost like as an enablement tool to think about all of the elements in a Zero Trust architecture, and how do you start the conversation in a meaningful way, you know, with your customer?

It's super valuable.

Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, in some ways, this update that we're sharing today is kind of like a State of the Union of sorts of the program, where we are even though we're months in since launch.

So I'd love if you could share, you touched on it a little bit, but some of the feedback that you've been receiving from partners on the program kind of thus far.

Absolutely. So, you know, one of the major proof points is really just how fast we see the adoption of these zero, these are, you know, Zero Trust solutions.

So one of the things that is exciting is we've just seen, you know, tremendous growth in the overall opportunities and the overall revenue from the Zero Trust solutions in the first half of the year.

That's accelerating as we bring on board more and more partners.

So there's just, the proof is kind of in the pudding, as they say.

And so not only the adoption of Zero Trust solutions from Cloudflare and the acceleration of the revenue in that space, but the revenue with partners is growing faster than the overall revenue.

So that tells me, great, partners are adopting this solution, they're figuring out how to build it into their practice, and they're able to go solve problems for their customers, which is ultimately how our partners make money.

In addition to that, the feedback has been in many areas.

One is the fact that we are working in a very industry standard way.

Well, you know, I'd like to touch on some of those elements as well around the program, but the fact that, you know, we're acknowledging the value add that the partners bring to this equation and how important it is for them to help their customers on this journey, that's one major piece of feedback.

We mentioned the bundles, and along with those bundles, a lot of new sales and technical enablement that we brought out through the partner portal and our enablement platforms to help partners really understand the fundamentals of all this and how to really help have that dialogue with the customer to find the right on-ramps, the right solutions for them.

The other area that I'll touch on is the overall concept around partner services enablement.

So you know this, Carl, but every vendor kind of makes a choice to either engage in the professional services realm themselves or rely on the channel, and this was a great opportunity for Cloudflare to think that through, and we did, and understanding how important the services components are, and by services I mean right up front that assessment that we talked about, helping partners assess where they are on the journey, where do they want to start, what use cases make sense for them, but then once that architecture is agreed to or the solution is agreed to, how do I design that, how do I implement that, and even how do I operate it?

In the services realm, there's the standard model of PDIO, right, plan, design, implement, and operate.

Partners create services offerings around each of those stages, and we made a very conscious decision to enable our partners to deliver those services and not compete with them for that.

So that's another huge new element that's being brought to our partners with this is that whole, you know, authorized services partner enablement where we can enable not only with training but also with tools and services blueprints and elements like that, and allow then the partners to go provide that incremental value to their customer.

We think that not only helps accelerate customers engaging in a meaningful way with Zero Trust, right, but that they're going to have the support that they need from our partners enabled by us to make sure those solutions land and are operating in the way that they should, and that ultimately it's solving the problem that the customer wants to solve.

And so that's a lot of feedback we've been hearing from our partners around different elements of the program, yeah.

Yeah, no, that's partner services enablement is such a critical part of this program, and there's also that undercurrent of not just the bundles but the reward for value structure that you talked about a little earlier.

So I think just to set that up, you know, one of the really important components of the program is kind of the critical role and full contribution of partners that bring Zero Trust to life for their customers, and that in a way is kind of reward for value.

Could you maybe share a bit more about what we had in mind when we talk about that and how we position it?

Yeah, I love talking about this because it is, at the end of the day, we understand, you know, today partners act on behalf of their customers.

They are the trusted advisor.

They need the technology, need the support from vendors like Cloudflare, but we always have to remember they're independent businesses and they're driving profit for their business.

And so having a financial structure, we love the concept of a reward for value because it operates as the name implies.

It's the, we can reward partners for the value that they bring to their customer across the entire life cycle of that customer, right?

So we think about it from identifying an opportunity and having that initial conversation, a partner going to their customer base and saying, I have, I want to execute a campaign because this is valuable, and I have my install base and I want to share this with them.

So reward for value is just built on that premise that partners can add a lot of value throughout the engagement with a customer, and we want to reward them at each of those steps.

So simple reward for value structure, we're inviting the partners to come join the Cloudflare One Partner Program.

That's what we're talking about, right?

We are open for business with the channel, as I like to say, we're in active recruitment mode, join the Cloudflare One Partner Program that will vet your capabilities and your desire and make sure we have a good fit.

And then there's a reward with a base discount for joining the program.

We then stack on top of that a very healthy 15 additional discount points for a deal registration.

So the concept there, right, Carl, is we're sending the signal that it's important that we engage together to go find net new opportunities and grow the business together.

And that's stacked on top of the base discount. And then we also reward additional discount for selling bundles, selling the combination of these solutions that really deliver on those use cases and the promise of a Zero Trust architecture for their customer.

And then finally, we mentioned how important services are so that a partner who attaches their services anywhere in the cycle with their customer, whether that's just in the assessment or the implementation of the solution, or if they're going to manage the solution on ongoing basis, then we stack additional discount for this.

So the concept of reward for value with discounts stacking one on top of another.

So full value discount is very, very healthy and very predictable.

That's really important for partners, very consistent, and they see how they can build a really profitable practice with the Cloudflare One solutions.

That's the concept of reward for value. There isn't a partner we have talked to that hasn't loved that concept and likes what we're doing with that.

And so we're excited to roll that out.

The other component of that is, and we mentioned this at the very top of the call, the fact that ease of doing business is really important in the partner vendor relationship.

And so making sure that that entire reward for value structure is available to any one of our Cloudflare partners through distribution, where they are used to sourcing their products.

We'll honor that for partners that purchase direct from Cloudflare, but we also want to make sure for the broader channel of all of our partners that that is available through distribution.

So we're working simultaneously with our distribution partners so that they understand the program, they've embraced it, they've built it in.

So if a partner says, hey, I need to go acquire this Zero Trust bundle, it's ready to go at distribution, it flows seamlessly, and all of those reward for value discounts are honored.

So that's the final piece is making sure it exists throughout the entire ecosystem.

Yeah, no, that's super exciting. And I encourage everybody to take a look both at the Zero Trust roadmap and the 90-day minute assessment that Steve mentioned just now, because both of those have been linked in the blog post, and you can get started with that pretty much today.

So maybe for you, Steve, personally, what are you most excited about with the future of the program?

Well, I love the fact that Cloudflare is we are bringing to the market a program of this scale and of this scope.

I really love, I think the timing is right, you know, like they say, timing is everything in life.

And I think when you just look at how much noise there is out in the world around Zero Trust, and we are in a very unique position as Cloudflare with the depth of our portfolio.

Obviously, as you mentioned, I came from the Area 1 acquisition back in April.

Cloudflare is really the only company today that is extending Zero Trust to email security, one of the biggest, you know, threat factors, the biggest threat factor and the source of, you know, the vast majority of all breaches.

So we have this incredible set of solutions that comprise our Cloudflare 1 Zero Trust portfolio.

But the fact that it's composable, that there's any one of those services is available on any one of our servers anywhere in the world, the accessibility of that, you know, for customers, and what that means for performance of these solutions means we can really drive this on a global basis.

So I'm most excited about getting the word out through all the engagements we've had with partners thus far, we know it resonates, we know this concept of having this differentiated approach, but one that you can build a profitable practice around and where you're going to be well-enabled and well-supported.

That's what gets me really excited.

So I look down the road to where we have this very global, very well -enabled, very thriving, you know, channel of partners of all shapes and sizes who are really able to deliver this value to their customers.

And that's kind of the promise of Zero Trust, right?

And if we make their customers and the world a bit more secure and stop bad stuff from happening, then our job is, our mission is accomplished with this, right?

That's what I'm excited about. Love that. That's a great last word.

In fact, there is my maybe one final, most important question, which is for organizations who want to get started with us today, and I want to get involved.

What do you recommend? Reach out. Number one is it starts with a conversation.

If you go to Cloudflare's website and you go to partners, you'll see, you know, click here for the Cloudflare One Partner Program.

That's the best way.

You can also reach out if you're an existing partner and you have a relationship already with one of our channel account managers.

That's also a great place to start.

Reach out, have a conversation about the Cloudflare One, about the Zero Trust, you know, Cloudflare One portfolio, around your practices.

Get engaged.

That's the number one thing. Just reach out. If you hit us up on the website, we'll respond very, very quickly.

We're in active channel building mode right now.

And we'll get back to you. We'll start the conversation. It's a very painless process.

We will do some vetting. We want to make sure there's mutual value for us in the partnership.

But if you're about, you know, going out and having a unique conversation with your customer and you want to provide this level of security, then we ought to be talking.

So that's the easiest way to reach out. Well, awesome, Steve.

Super excited about the future of the program. And I guess thank you for joining.

Thanks so much, Carl. Really appreciate it. Hello from rainy Singapore and welcome to Cloudflare GA Week.

We have never done a GA Week before, but we're excited about this as a way to take a bunch of products that we have already announced and actually make them available and especially to tell the stories from customers about how they are using these products in their production environments today and how you can use them in order to build the fastest, most reliable, most secure, most efficient and most private applications on the Internet.

As some of you may know, September 27th of 2010 was the day that Cloudflare launched.

And so every year around that date, we celebrate our birthday with a series of new announcements around what we call Birthday Week.

And we're doing that again this year, next week, actually. But what we realized as we were looking at Birthday Week was we've announced a bunch of stuff and it's time for a lot of it to go GA.

And so we're taking this opportunity a week before Birthday Week in order to hold our what we call GA Week.

And so you're going to see a bunch of products that we've already announced now become available for anyone to use and be able to use in a way that you can trust and that they are production ready, enterprise grade, and ready to do whatever it is to build those applications of the future.

And so if you've been waiting for better user account controls, that's coming out GA this week.

If you've been looking forward to some of what we've done around the amazing acquisitions of Area One and Vectrex in CASB and email security, those are products that are going to go GA this week.

And even some of the products that I know a ton of people are excited and just waiting to go out, watch this space because over the course of this week, we're going to be GAing those products too.

At the same time, we're going to be sharing stories of how customers are using those products in order to make their production environments as efficient as possible.

And all this just sets the stage for next week, which is our birthday week, where we're going to do what Cloudflare always does, which is hopefully surprise and delight the entire Internet, releasing products that make the Internet a better, faster, safer, more reliable, more efficient place.

So stay tuned. This week is GA week. Next week is birthday week. And we're super excited for everything we're going to be announcing.

In our industry and many industries, success is measured in milliseconds.

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Cloudflare's relationship with has far exceeded that by probably four to one.

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Security is paramount at Outdoorsy because our entire platform is built on trust and safety.

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I think that I feel like I have a fighting chance there with Cloudflare.