Zscaler in APAC: The opportunities for partners

“We really need to have partners who are facing into customers that can really instil confidence and help customers navigate the mindset shift that they have to go on in order to be able to deliver this,” explains Foad Farrokhnia Head of Channel & Alliances, Asia Pacific & Japan, Zscaler as the vendor looks to focus on working with the public sector in APJ.

For Zscaler, it's all about providing secure digital transformation for customers. In Asia Pacific, this becomes even more important given the pace of transformation in the region.

While the region is divided between mature and emerging markets, Foad Farrokhnia Head of Channel & Alliances, Asia Pacific & Japan, Zscaler said Zscaler believes there are still many industries in both types of markets that could benefit from Zscaler. He also explained how Zscaler is relying on MSSPs to cater to the midmarket opportunities in the region.

He shares more in an interview with CRN Asia.

What opportunities is Zscaler seeing in APAC?

For Zscaler, we talk about digital transformation for all and make sure it's secure. Our use cases actually apply to all customers. Whether they're large or small, or whether they're in FSI, manufacturing or mining, we're seeing great outcomes in the technology that we deliver. Hence, our positioning is quite broad in the sense that it can apply to pretty much any market, any customer or any vertical.

But what that actually means in real terms for a region like APJ is that we've had a lot of success in the major accounts, especially in the financial services segment as well as in manufacturing and mining. We've seen these wins over the last several years and they continue to grow and expand, which is fantastic.

Over the last two years, we've really started to double down into the government sector, the public sector vertical, which is highly regulated and has stringent compliance requirements. For us to be able to play in that market, it's a little bit more investment in terms of making sure that we've got all of those boxes ticked and the ability to go and support those particular verticals. And we're starting to see some great success there.

We're going to continue to double down into that public sector and government space across all of the markets we're playing in APJ. And we're doing that through investments of making sure we have points of presence and data centers in the country. We're being very mindful of data sovereignty pieces as well.

And again, the partner component to this is making sure we're working and aligning with the right partners who have experienced tenure and influence also in that sector. Because we find that it is super critical. We're talking about mindset shifts across a sector that is probably a little bit more conservative, as they should be.

So, we really need to have partners who are facing those customers that can really instil confidence and help those customers navigate the mindset shift that they have to go on in order to be able to deliver this. Zero Trust is very in front of mind and something that we continue to implement in that space.

From a market standpoint and potentially kind of geo standpoint, India continues to be a really interesting growth market for us. We're continuing to invest in that space. There is continued investment in headcounts and programs and initiatives to continue to drive and leverage the growth that we've seen over the last couple of years. And we want to continue that in the future.

Japan remains to be a very strong market for us as well. It’s one of our oldest market in this APJ geo where we’ve seen fantastic uptake from very large customers who have really trusted us and had the confidence to continue to expand with the Zscaler platform and deliver that transformation.

Australia is also an absolutely strong market for us. We've done well in the FSI space. We're seeing a lot of good public sector wins in that space as well. When I think about greater Asia, there's probably a very strong focus in what I would call our mature markets in terms of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan. We're seeing some great traction. We're continuing to build out leveraging our distribution partners a little bit more and our local SIs a little bit more to open up Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines.

What solutions are the focus in these markets?

We've got some great accounts in these markets, but we want to continue to build and see that scale across a larger volume of customers in this space. And we do that through partners and distribution. And then some of the other areas where we're really drilling down is making sure that we've got our core products around Zscaler Internet access and private access.

These are tested, tried, and heavily adopted by a large number of customers. One of the focus areas that we have is to continue to expand that into the broader platform with CDX, with data protection. Data protection has been a really important one, especially as we move into the world of GenAI.

Customers are telling us they want to use AI and all these prompt-based GenAI platforms. However, it's very difficult for us to get visibility of what data is leaving our secure infrastructure and what's coming in through that use. And also, we're seeing a lot of use being through individuals using personal accounts and such.

So, data protection and being able to actually provide some resilience around that piece is going to be a really strong suit for Zscaler's platform. And we want to continue to double down on that. Hence, ensuring that we've got this specialization for partners to build skill sets around specifically our data protection suite of solutions.

What about the mid-market opportunities in APAC?

I think 90% of APJ sits in that SMB mid-market space. So, this is a huge volume of accounts that we need to absolutely scale too. So, a couple of things we're doing right now is on MSSP and working with some of the service providers.

So, with service providers like Telstra, Singtel, Airtel in India, SoftBank in Japan and such, we've built a velocity program. And so, as an MSSP service provider, generally, you have great reach across that SMB and mid-market space. So, what we're really working with these partners on is ensuring that we've got the right commercial construct as well as solution set that is going to really address the requirements of that segment of the market.

We sometimes hear that maybe the requirements are not as complex because they're smaller accounts and those types of things. But the reality of it is, whilst they may not be as large, the complexity can be around similar kind of levels of complexity. However, they generally don't have the resources to manage, support, implement, and do that level 1, level 2 across their own infrastructure.

So, we lean on the MSSP to do that. They have the services capability to implement, to support. They get the commercial construct to be able to actually position, sell, and transact the deal at the right price.

And that's how we are really looking at that kind of mid-market and SMB space. We've got a similar kind of model with distribution as well. So, we've also built out a velocity plan with distribution.

We ran a couple of pilots last year in India, which was really successful. So, we're going to double down on that and continue to extend and expand. And I think as we look to the future, we really want to start leveraging more of that automation.

Vendor consolidation is also on the agenda for a lot of companies. How is Zscaler dealing with this?

We're seeing it from customers. Customers are saying their architecture is too complex. They’ve got way too many agreements, way too many price points that they’ve got to manage from a technological standpoint. They’ve got a mix of legacy and modern stuff here. They know how to really string it all together.

It's starting to become actually a bit of a threat exposure as well because if they don't have clear visibility and able to manage the infrastructure that they've built out, that opens up a bunch of opportunity for bad actors to actually start to infiltrate.

With Zscaler being a transformation type solution, we are a platform. And as part of that platform, in very clear use cases – and we're very open and we actually educate and enable our partners to understand these use cases – we are best of breed.

And so, what you can do there – we're the leading cloud security vendor out there right now. We've got a large portion of organizations already on our platform here today in APJ. We look after something like 11 million users just in the APJ market.

So we're able to actually have that consolidation conversation with a customer. We say you don't need to have 200 technologies anymore to achieve what you want to achieve here. And actually, if you consolidate down to the best of breed with a platform approach, you can reduce the number of technologies, and you'll actually get a better outcome long-term.

You're going to be more productive. You're going to see some significant cost reductions. And you'll be able to also get an amazing lift in user experience. And when you have that lift in user experience, that leads to productivity, profitability, and more innovation.

So just in the DNA of what Zscaler is, we are a consolidation vehicle for customers. And so partners can leverage that to position and have a conversation with customers.

Now, what I need to also be cognizant of in this conversation we have with a lot of our partners is they've provided a lot of those technologies in the past to the customer. And are potentially managing those technologies. And so there's a balance here. There's a balance of letting us understand what is absolutely critical for the customer. And, again, if we focus all our attention on the customer's outcome, it makes this discussion much simpler.

What do we need to consolidate? What makes sense today versus next year versus three years? Build a strategy around that and start to actually implement it together as a joint strategy.

Again, being the trusted advisor to the customer, delivering an outcome around digital transformation, that is 100% secure. So that's how we kind of position, leverage, and also see the opportunity in that consolidation piece of the play.

I think partners are also seeing that as differentiator for us. Our ability to come in and simplify these things for the customer, reduce costs significantly for the customer, drive productivity, and really help the customer implement zero trust quicker. And our partners play a big critical role in making sure that we've got the overall strategy in place and able to implement it.