Channel driving Tanium into fresh opportunities

The channel has driven endpoint management and security specialist Tanium deeper into the mid-market as partners react to growing customer demand.

The vendor has traditionally been focused on the enterprise, but over the past couple of years, as it has looked to grow its channel business across Europe, the firm has also seen its small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) revenues increase.

“[We were] concentrating on customers and enterprise-based organisations [of] 500 to 1,000 endpoints and more, because that’s where our business had started and flourished in the US. But we started to realise, as we built a channel, that from the start in Europe, our channel was identifying opportunities below those thresholds,” said John Taylor, vice-president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) channels at Tanium.

That development has seen partners take the technology out to customers with as low as 300 endpoints and make that sale work.

“The channel has devised models and growth models that are allowing customers of that size to consume Tanium and make it relevant. What’s happened, over the last two years, is our addressable markets have changed quite significantly, and we still have a big focus on enterprise and global accounts,” he added.

The business has reacted to the expansion of the mid-market opportunity with efforts, through its Ignite programme, to ensure it has the packaging and messaging right for that customer audience.

Tanium’s moves to grow its channel business include the recent launch of its Technology Partner Programme to formalise relationships with the vendor, encouraging a platform approach that would appeal to both customers and those looking to offer an alternative to point products.  

“We make sure partners are used to dealing with a platform rather than a point solution. The engagement with a vendor that has a platform is very different from the engagement with a vendor that has a point solution. The ROI [return on investment] looks different, the timeframes look different, the enablement looks different, the cost base looks different,” said Taylor.

Attempts to contain vendor sprawl have been a theme in the security market for some time, but the rise of managed security service providers (MSSPs) and more platform offerings from vendors have made that user ambition more achievable.

“We’ve seen increased demand in the partner community for a programme that brings together isolated point solutions via a single source of truth,” said Michael Martins, vice-president of technical partnerships and alliances at Tanium.

“Our Technology Partner Programme is designed to provide value to partners at scale and deliver real-time, decision-quality endpoint data across all devices and environments to keep pace with the ever-growing threat landscape,” he added.

Taylor said the prospects for those pitching a platform approach were decent and he was expecting growth over the rest of the year.

“I feel quite buoyant about it. I think partners feel quite buoyant about it. We assist our partners and we’re showing a return on value when they’re selling into the end user client,” he added. “Everyone has to show how they’re going to consolidate costs, how they’re going to bring that ROI back into the end user. We show a very clean set of heels around that.”