Imperva and Thales remain committed to partners in the region

According to Andy Zollo, SVP for Sales, APJ at Thales, the acquisition enables them to provide that integrated solution opportunity, especially with both customers and partners looking at vendor consolidation.

In December 2023, Thales completed the acquisition of cybersecurity vendor Imperva. Over the past year and a half since the acquisition closed, both companies have continued to focus on integrating their products with their unique offerings and capabilities to cater to customers.

Thales, which has a wide portfolio of products offered globally, will now be available to offer more cybersecurity products that includes Imperva's robust solutions for application security, data security, and data risk management. The integration brings together both companies' partner programs under the new Thales Accelerate Partner Network, offering partners streamlined benefits, predictable margins, and opportunities for specialization.

CRN Asia caught up with Andy Zollo, SVP for Sales, APJ at Thales and Charles Lim, Vice President Channel Sales, APJ at Thales to understand more about their plans for the region, especially with the acquisition completed.

How has the integration been between the two companies since the acquisition closed?

Zollo: It's been a few bumps along the road, as you'd expect with any integration. But I think by and large, we've come out the other side now and got a huge focus on customer centricity. We've really consolidated down on a named account model. A lot of this year has been about cross training the team and also recognizing that application security and data security are two different disciplines. We do have the sales team split into app set and data set guys. But I would say it's been good from the people's point of view. People that are here really want to be part of Thales, understand the benefit of being part of Thales.

Technology is advancing faster now than it ever has been in terms of the investment we've put back into R&D and into IP. And we're also starting to see the two engineering teams talk to each other and give us things like risk analytics, for example, in the data security platforms as well. So, I'd say it's been super positive.

How are customers adapting to the acquisition?

We spend a lot of time in front of customers, demonstrating that they are looking at consolidation of vendors. If you look at banks, they want to go down from 30,000 to 15,000 vendors. So, from that point of view, they're seeing it as very positive news. Once we reassure them that, look, it was a strategic acquisition, and share the investment we're making, and how we're preserving each one of the product ranges, it's opening up more opportunity.

Just having the Thales name, especially in government and finance, it's one of trust. I think the other thing there is of a long-term nature as well. If you look at a lot of our customers, even if you take Singapore, we've been here for 75 years. We have 2,000 people here across multiple industries.

The mindset of a company like Thales is much more long-term than a typical private equity-backed cyber company. So, the reaction from the customers has been good. And in fact, it's opened up more opportunity for us because we can confidently say that we still are leaders in the technology and the IP that we have as well.

How are partners reacting to the changes as well?

Lim: From the initial conversations that I've had with partners, partners are very positive because similar to the end user and the customer landscape, partners are trying to work with a reduced number of vendors. It doesn't make sense to work with 100 vendors that they don't have knowledge on, they don't have skill sets on. So, the partners react very positively.

They also see that we are giving them a broader portfolio of solutions so that they could go deeper in their relationship with a lot of their customers. Because it's always easy to sell to an existing customer and expand their pie within that customer rather than selling it to a new customer because it takes a lot more effort. So, now we are giving them the ability to go deeper into their customers with relevant solutions that they could package around with their services and offer it to the customers from that aspect.

So that's pretty much the initial reaction that I've been receiving from a lot of these channel partners that I talk to.

Zollo: We've earned the trust of the partners through our relationships over the last X number of years, whether it's the Thales partners or the Imperva partners. But we still then have to earn our stripes. So, we don't take anything for granted.

We have to go and demonstrate that we can add value or bigger value to their business, help them expand into new markets, demonstrate the technology can enable them to do that. So, we've not taken anything for granted. We've really maintained a massive emphasis on knowledge transfer.

Likewise, if it doesn't make sense to a partner to adopt some of the technology, fine. If that's not part of your business and you can't make it, let's just focus on what we have been doing.

What about the program that has been revamped and launched? How different is that program for partners compared to what you guys were previously offering?

Lim: From the channel program team, we wanted to mix and take the best of both worlds.

So, we had actually taken components of the Imperva program, and we have taken components of the Thales program and then did a harmonization. And that's why the two programs are now mirrored across. Because we didn't want two different programs, it just confuses the channel partners.

We wanted to harmonize programs so that everybody would benefit from the programs, be it whether you're a legacy Thales partner or a legacy Imperva partner. And we took the best of both programs and put it together.

Zollo: I'm a big believer in consistency when it comes to the channel. The great thing about Thales and Imperva is that both have the same channel strategy, i.e. it's 100% channel. So that's very, very clear. And channel programs are pretty similar across all the vendors.

To me, it's about consistently delivering, not changing your mind every five minutes and coming up with some flashy new thing. Because these are long-term businesses we're working with. So, we're just a part of their solution stack, a part of their PS stack.

Because we just want to maintain that kind of long-term view, keep the stability on the programs. And I say, the good thing is fundamentally we were both channel companies. It's been very, very clear to everybody across the company.

We are a channel company, a two-tier company. Where we've had the odd direct contract, I think pretty much gone now. Because I think we respect the value that the channel can bring to us.

And in some instances, it might be banking or logistics. But typically, especially in APJ, to me, it's a really strong value-added region. And I really see that here compared to perhaps the US, Western Europe.

It's the same in the Middle East. We see a very value-added channel over there. And here, I remember when I was in Europe, I used to look over here with a bit of envy at how strong the channel was.

We do a channel event here. We just fill the room. If I was doing that in other regions, it would be struggling on the day to get people to turn along. So, I think, to me, one thing that I've got in the last 10 months I've been here, the value within the channel is still appreciated and acknowledged. And I mean that in all sincerity.

As a vendor, we acknowledge that we're great at inventing and building things, but the partners are really good at integrating those things and largely having those relationships with their customers.

What about Thales’ customers and partners? How are they reacting to Imperva being part of the offering as well?

Lim: The feedback that's given to me from both sides is that they definitely want to cross out into the IP search. Because there are definitely overlaps. And they could see that if a customer has already bought encryption from a partner, they could easily sell the database activity monitoring pieces, because it's still the data team.

The legacy Imperva partners that have sold the database activity monitoring because it's a visibility tool, but they don't have the necessary controls and encryption in place, that's where the Thales pieces come in. So, the channel partners, definitely on both sides, are very positive in terms of wanting to take the other pieces and deepen their relationship with the customers.

Zollo: We are leaders in the technology we have, so we can competently go in and say, let's demonstrate that we can do what we talk about. It's been super positive, and a lot of it because it does complement each other.

If you look at encryption, it's not one size fits all. But if I can add a level of intelligence to say, look, this is mission critical. So if I take our own business, our IP on avionics and in-flight entertainment system, that's critical.

We have more meaningful conversations with customers. And one of the things, and it's something I've always loved about selling, we help bring them together. Because often, like every organization, or many organizations, our customers are quite fragmented.

As salespeople and along with our partners, we can go and visit all the different areas and actually help them collaborate and show them problems and how we can solve them together. So that's having a larger portfolio really helps, rather than just being a bit player and saying, we do that bit really well, but that's it.

With that said, what are you also hoping to see from partners in the region?

Lim: If we look at the partner landscape today, my main aim right now is education and awareness because tech is evolving so quickly. It's to constantly educate them, make them aware of what's happening, what are the trends that we're seeing based on our conversations with customers and really to give them the use cases and the knowledge.

The more we can educate them, the more we can bring awareness to them, the more they're able to piece these technologies together with Thales being the technology enabler underneath that.

Zollo: We should never, ever become complacent as a vendor. And I think we've got to stay in the real world as well. Whilst we're talking about, you know, post-quantum and AI, people are still being attacked with DDoS attacks. The old problems don't go away, and they're just supplemented by this new stuff. So again, sometimes we've got to remember to keep our feet planted and keep it real and make sure we're addressing the problems that are actually happening to people today, as well as the stuff that is going to happen.