Longevity of the network infrastructure entices Gigamon’s growth opportunities in APAC

“In APAC, our distribution of customers isn't really different than across the world. But it's usually the emerging higher technology needed companies that are moving at a fast pace,” says John Giacomini, CRO at Gigamon.

Gigamon provides network visibility and analytics solutions that help organizations gain deep observability into their network traffic, enabling them to improve security, performance, and overall network management. They achieve this by aggregating, transforming, and analyzing network traffic to deliver insights to security, observability, and management tools.

According to a report by market intelligence research firm 650 Group, Gigamon recorded a 55% market share in the deep observability market in 2024. The deep observability market is also projected to be worth nearly US$1.8 billion in 2029.

In Asia Pacific, Gigamon continues to grow its presence in the region. Since starting its network business in the region, the deep observability company continues to have a deep and long relationship with its customers thanks to the longevity of the network infrastructure.

Today, Gigamon works with some of the largest banks, defence and transportation companies in the region. Not only does Gigamon have a strong presence in Australia, New Zealand, and in the Southeast Asia markets, it’s also building its focus in Japan and Korea.

John Giacomini, CRO at Gigamon, who was in Singapore recently, explains more about Gigamon’s presence in the region, as well as the opportunities and the partner ecosystem.

What industries is Gigamon working with in the region?

Like most technology organizations, the obvious verticals for us are banking, fintech, insurance and healthcare. Obviously, we're very strong in government, both in defense as well as, you know, the civilian or public agencies.

And we require lots of infrastructure, bandwidth, and transport. We're not very adept at the small end of the market. We don't really have an SMB or even a mid-enterprise focus. We focus on the kind of global 2000, and then government is our main focus.

In APAC, our distribution of customers isn't really different than across the world. But it's usually the emerging higher technology needed companies that are moving at a fast pace.

What is common for us is the environments they’re in. This can be hybrid or multi-cloud environments, of if they’ve gone all cloud, or back into on-prem. Most customers have a diverse multi-cloud environment, where they have private cloud, on-premises, and then some hyperscalers. Those are unique and great opportunities for us as a business with our deep observability platform.

How do customers decide which deep observability platform works best for them, especially with a lot of businesses also looking to consolidate their cybersecurity at this point in time?

It’s actually a rather challenging situation outside of a quick conversation.

I recently met a customer that has been a network packet brokerage customer for seven years. And the conversation was not about what we've serviced for the last seven years. It's what we're capable of doing for them.

So, the bridge for us is really more to the cybersecurity side. Network telemetry is a network purchase or a network buyer persona. From the security of the CISO office or in the network security, there's a lot of telemetry that can come from the network that is consumable by an information security office that endpoint tools and all of the infrastructure that has been consumed over the last 20 years in cyber doesn't address.

And the second part of our value proposition is that network telemetry, and with the position we sit on the network infrastructure, we can actually feed and enhance the tools that they've already invested in.

The old way of getting telemetry had a lot of logs that were not efficient. They have gaps in them. And so, if you can think of the Gigamon solution as an aggregation point for network telemetry, then we feed a very clean and organized set of data to those telemetry tools that have been invested in.

Also, the observability market is maturing. We've coined the term deep observability, which is just kind of the next layer down. So, we find a lot of opportunities with partners in this space like ExtraHop or Vectra. They might already have a customer. Our ability to provide that telemetry pipeline or deep observability pipeline just enhances the ability for that tool to be used more effectively. So, there's an element of potential cost savings.

If you were a Splunk customer, for example, using our telemetry pipeline, we may be able to minimize how much the Splunk tool has to process. This would save the customer money.

On the themes of consolidation, a lot of CISOs have invested in tons of tooling, and they're always looking to find places where they can potentially minimize the tool stack. Oftentimes with the deep observability pipeline feeding the tools, there's potential for elimination of redundancy in the tool stack. And that's an element of cost savings.

And is that a key part of your conversations that you're having with customers as well?

Cost is always an issue. When you look at some real use cases, and at the architecture of a customer now, their data and their networks are all over. They're multi-cloud environments. They're on-prem or in the cloud, or the private cloud. These potential gaps that occur based on the way that those networks have evolved. We are stitching to bring those back together.

For example, when you think about an adversary, if they've actually attacked an organization, dwell time is a real issue. How long do they sit on the network and observe? Think about what the high-value assets are? So, a lot of network infrastructure and security infrastructure has been kind of north and south. Firewall architecture, endpoint, etc., it's all the ins and outs of the network. We really focus on the side to side and the ability to provide telemetry for lateral movement. We also can encrypt and decrypt traffic on the network inside.

So, those two elements allow us to then provide better visibility to the tooling that exists, which then can help pinpoint those potential problems. When we get into that conversation with customers, we're absolutely finding gaps in their infrastructure, where this really resonates with them as a potential solution.

How is Gigamon ensuring that partners are carrying the right message to customers and able to deliver to customers what they want?

We're a 100% Channel First organization. Channel First is our position in the market. We really don't do any direct business. So, the role that I think our partners play in this whole thing is those customer relationships that they possess.

They have been the potential seller of all of that tooling and projects over time. We have an opportunity to kind of enhance that investment. In some cases, consolidation may be a strategic initiative, but more often, the customers are actually looking for outcomes. They want to reduce risk. And in some cases, the time to resolution is a big issue. The Gigamon infrastructure provides a great acceleration of time to resolution.

And with our partners, we want the right kind of partners that have the right level of expertise and have the ability to support and represent us well. We look at the relationship with every customer in a triangle. There's our partner, there's Gigamon and there's a customer. And if we have all three points of that working in harmony, then we'll have a successful customer that becomes referenceable for us.

I would also add that partners sell more than one thing to most customers. And their reputation to the customer is usually more important than any transaction that they can do. And so, by our desire to limit the focus to a set of partners that we have good training and enablement and interactions with, we can also protect their brand and protect their relationship.

At the end of the day, happy customers buy more. And that's really our strategy. We're opportunistic as we get inquiries every day from partners that find an opportunity and want to partner with us. And we're certainly open to that. But our strategy is not just more partners. It's more about having the right type of partners.

How competitive is it to provide customers with the best solution?

I dare say there's probably more cybersecurity companies than there is demand, which causes a lot of noise, if you will. So, I would just say meaningful markets have to have competition or they're not meaningful. So, we're happy to compete with industry to demonstrate our value and capability.

Being a 21-year-old organization with a great reputation and high-velocity, scalable, stable solutions, our reputation gives us a seat at the table. We have thousands of customers worldwide.

As we've worked towards this deep observability positioning market on top of the observability platforms that exist, there's lots of runway. I recently read a statistic where one of the analysts has kind of tagged this in a roughly US$1.8 billion market opportunity. I frankly think it's probably bigger than that.

So, there's plenty of room for us to run.