Sarah Croft joins Elastic as partner director for Asia Pacific

With more than a decade of experience, Croft’s appointment reinforces Elastic’s commitment to the channel business and partners in Asia Pacific.

Elastic has appointed Sarah Croft (née Wilson) as partner director, APAC. Croft brings more than a decade of experience in enterprise technology, most recently serving as Datadog’s Alliances Manager for South Asia.

Based in Singapore, Croft will oversee Elastic’s partner approach in the region in her new role. This includes working closely with partners across the region to build their capabilities using the Elasticsearch Platform and developing effective go-to-market strategies with them.

Having spent the past six years at Datadog, Croft had led South Asian alliances and channel business, playing a key role in developing the cloud strategy and scaling key resellers across the region. These experiences will enable her to further expand Elastic’s partner strategy in the APAC region.

Croft will report to Andrew Habgood, International VP of Channel & Alliances at Elastic to ensure the company’s APAC partner strategy is fully aligned and integrated with Elastic’s international partner programs and standards. Operationally, she will work in close partnership with Sanjay Deshmukh, Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan at Elastic to ensure the partner ecosystem in wholly focused on executing and accelerating regional sales goals.

According to Deshmukh, driving impact with AI across APAC will depend on the strength of Elastic’s partner ecosystem.

“We’re committed to enabling, educating, and celebrating the accomplishments made with our partners to build a strong reputation as a trusted driver of innovation. Sarah’s experience in building partnerships and knowledge of the observability and security space will define the growth of Elastic’s APAC channel business and accelerate the value our partners and their customers get from AI,” said Deshmukh.

Commenting on her new role, Croft believes the AI advantage comes down to one thing: context.

“If you can’t connect intelligence to the right data at the right moment, you don’t get outcomes. The Elasticsearch Platform was built for exactly that, turning messy, unstructured data into action. That gives partners in APAC a real competitive edge as they build AI-led observability and security practices. Ecosystems, not vendors, will win the next wave of AI adoption in this region, and I’m excited to build and nurture lasting relationships with our partners in the region,” said Croft.

Elastic was recently named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Observability Platforms 2025 Vendor Assessment as well as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide General-Purpose Knowledge Discovery 2025 Vendor Assessment. The recognition is a testament to Elastic’s capabilities as the Search AI vendor looks to grow its influence in the region.