Network visibility specialist Gigamon is on track to double down in two areas in 2024, concentrating on boosting alliance sales and technical staff. Gigamon vice president of worldwide channel and alliances, Dee Dee Acquista joined the company in February this year and recently shared her channel plans for the year ahead.
Why is the Gigamon Catalyst Partner Program key to expanding the organisation’s reach across Asia?
Dee Dee Acquista (DA): In today’s evolving business landscape, the demand for reliable partners to navigate the complexities of securing and managing hybrid cloud infrastructure has never been more pronounced. The extensive network of regional Gigamon channel partners has been working hard to provide technical guidance to our customers as they advance their hybrid and multi-cloud strategies.
A key contributor to our strategic objectives in the Asia Pacific market is the Gigamon Catalyst Partner Program. As a channel-first organisation, Gigamon places significant emphasis on this program, integrating it seamlessly into the core of our strategy. This integration is key to elevating not only the program itself but also to raise awareness of the value our deep observability pipeline delivers to our customers.
Through the Gigamon Catalyst Partner Program and our channel-first strategy, we aim to strengthen our regional channel partner relationships and further expand our commitment to channel partners and customers across the region.
What are some of the new features of the program?
DA: A key differentiator for our partners is the simplistic approach we’ve taken with our Catalyst Partner Program. We are committed to making it as easy as possible for partners to do business with Gigamon. Moving forward, we plan to further enhance the bookings and accreditation requirements to align with the achievements of our reseller partners across the region.
How many partners does Gigamon have in ASEAN and A/NZ? How will you continue to expand the partner reach in these regions?
DA: For FY24, we plan to double down in two areas: alliance sales and technical funded heads.
There are two areas where our partners have asked us to invest our time and resources in order to deliver additional value and assure our collective success in the field. For Alliances, we are looking to provide partners with reference architectures and a true, technical-based “better together” value proposition.
For funded heads, we will also increase our investments in pre-sales technical resources to help our partner’s sales teams position the value of Gigamon in a sale.
Customer cloud adoption continues to be a key sales driver for Gigamon and our channel partners. For FY24, we’ll continue to double down on our presence in cloud marketplaces. We’ve done a great job of partnering closely with our regional distributors to participate in cloud marketplace programs such as DSOR from AWS and plan to do the same in ASEAN and A/NZ in early FY24.
In addition to partners that have security and cloud disciplines, we see increasing synergy in working with partners that have observability practices as Gigamon is able to integrate with leading observability tools, efficiently delivering network-derived intelligence and actionable insights that enable customers to better secure and manage their hybrid cloud infrastructure.
How has Gigamon’s channel-first strategy led to robust partner growth across the globe?
DA: Our channel-first strategy continues to prove very successful, and we work and partner with the leading channel and alliance partners and distributors around the world. We’re always looking for new reseller partnerships to help scale our ability to reach as many customers as possible. With our major focus on Cloud, our APAC channel team has identified and onboarded a significant number of new cloud-focused resellers in FY23.
Can you share details more about Gigamon's latest product developments?
DA: Based on a recent Gigamon survey, more than 70 percent of IT and security leaders globally admit that they currently neglect the inspection of encrypted data flowing across their hybrid cloud infrastructure. This act alone exposes organisations to grave business risks as encrypted data cannot be sufficiently analysed. Moreover, malware threats cannot be detected by security and monitoring tools alone as encrypted data traverses internally, externally, or laterally across an organisation’s hybrid cloud infrastructure.
In line with this critical challenge, we have taken a significant step forward in bolstering cybersecurity with the Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline, through our latest GigaVUE 6.4 software release. At the forefront of this is Gigamon Precryption technology, a breakthrough cybersecurity innovation that empowers IT and security organisations with an unprecedented, automated solution to gain unobscured visibility into encrypted traffic across container, virtual, or cloud workloads.
Gigamon Precryption technology reveals previously concealed threat activity, including lateral movement, malware distribution, and data exfiltration. Its innovative approach leverages eBPF technology inside the Linux kernel to deliver plaintext visibility, capturing traffic before encryption or after decryption. No keys need to be intercepted or sniffed, and no expensive decryption is required. Moreover, Precryption technology runs independently of applications, avoiding the operational challenges of classic agent-based approaches.
Tell us more about the road ahead as Gigamon invests in and advances its Deep Observability Pipeline while bolstering purpose-driven partnerships and deeper ecosystem alignment.
DA: In FY23, Gigamon hosted a series of GigaTOUR events in different cities across the world, which were used to showcase the company’s advances in deep observability. In those events, we invited channel and alliance partners to showcase how Gigamon addresses key customer security challenges and how Gigamon is a strategic solution sale. In 2024, we’re excited to continue working with our channel and alliance partners on co-marketing and customer events.
What are some of the company’s ongoing plans to evolve its partner relationships in the region?
DA: For FY24, we plan to double down in two areas: alliance sales and technical funded heads.
There are two areas where our partners have asked us to invest our time and resources in order to deliver additional value and assure our collective success in the field. For Alliances, we are looking to provide partners with reference architectures and a true, technical-based “better together” value proposition.
For funded heads, we will also increase our investments in pre-sales technical resources to help our partner’s sales teams position the value of Gigamon in a sale. The Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline is unique in the way it integrates with leading cloud, security, and observability tools so an investment in training assures partners can present a comprehensive solution to customers that elevates their security posture across their hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Are there any particular market areas that are growing in strength for the brand?
DA: We have invested in developing solutions that enable our customers to better secure and manage their hybrid cloud infrastructure. We see this as a huge area of growth and focus for the in 2024 and beyond. Specifically with the announcement of Gigamon Precryption technology, there has never been a better time to partner with Gigamon to introduce new, groundbreaking solutions to our joint customers and prospects. We’ll continue with this positioning, through the channel, in FY24.
