For Proofpoint, the channel is an integral part to growth

“We want to be relevant to our partners. However, does that mean that we are not going to bring any partners on board? No, we will bring in the right partners, because as a company, we are also evolving,” says Nelson Soon, Vice President of Channels and Alliances for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ).

When it comes to growing its partner ecosystem in Asia Pacific, Proofpoint believes it has got a solid strategy in place to ensure they are capable of providing partners what’s needed to be successful.

At its recent Protect Tour 2025 in Sydney, Proofpoint honored and recognized channel partners for their dedication and delivery of innovation solutions. This includes Lumen IT taking the award for best partner of the year for 2024 as well as The Missing Link taking the growth partner of the year award. Other winners included Nextgen being named distributor partner of the year while NTT Data was recognized as the systems integrator of the year.

Nelson Soon, Vice President of Channels and Alliances for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) shared with CRN Asia how the channel remains an integral part of Proofpoint’s growth in the region.

According to Soon (pictured below), Proofpoint does not believe in just investing unlimitedly into a few teams. For Soon, the channel ecosystem brings something very different because whether its distributors or partners, they sell a whole suite of solutions to their customers.

“This means they will be more relevant to one customer than we will be because of their aggregation of all their solutions. So, this year, our rallying call is, we want to build an autonomous channel ecosystem. We want the channel to be able to take our runway products, create the debris. That's what we want to do. So, and we are willing to pay the partners to do this so that we can focus on the big projects,” explained Soon.

A call to action for the channel community

Interestingly, when it comes to growing the partners in the region, Soon pointed out that this isn’t their goal. Instead, he explained that Proofpoint is hoping to do more with a lesser set of partners.

“We want to be relevant to our partners. However, does that mean that we are not going to bring any partners on board? No, we will bring in the right partners, because as a company, we are also evolving,” said Soon.

At the same time, Soon also shared that while Proofpoint has experienced tremendous growth to become the “seventh biggest cybersecurity vendor”, they are constantly evaluating if the partners they currently have who got brought them to where they are now are the right ones to also get Proofpoint to where its need to be.

“So yeah, we will be constantly recruiting, but we will constantly want to grow the small set of partners significantly so that we become material to their business,” added Soon.

For partners, Soon advised them to belief in Proofpoint as the cybersecurity vendor aims to prove to partners that they are the right vendor to work with.

“We are at this point where we are going to have an experience of exponential growth. We are at the point where we are already a top seven cybersecurity vendor. Partner with us, invest in us and you will partake with us on this growth journey. Because we are on a growth trajectory without a doubt,” said Soon.

Soon also mentioned that Proofpoint is willing to invest in partners if they want to be part of this journey. Proofpoint has the funds needed to invest in and grow the partner ecosystem.

“We are just counting on and looking towards these partners to do the same so that we can grow the business together,” concluded Soon.