Technology Reseller - v19 2019

technolog y reseller.co.uk INTERVIEW 49 protecting and securing their applications. Regardless of their size, they now run their businesses on applications, so we are working to release products that allow customers to consume our technologies in different ways to fit their budget or preferred procurement model. In the past, it was more likely to be on-premise, but with the cloud there are more options for making these tools available. TR: The channel has a critical role in raising awareness of these new options. How many partners do you have, and do you sell exclusively through the channel? CM: F5 Networks has over 3,000 partners globally, around 500 of which are in the UK and Ireland. We do have sales people who work on some of our larger accounts, but 95% plus of our business goes through the channel. We don’t compete with our channel; it’s very complementary. TR: Are you planning to take on more channel partners? CM: My philosophy is to focus on, and really invest in, the partners who invest in us. Through our partnerships, we have been able to drive scale and reach and that’s one of the big reasons for leveraging an external channel – how do we get to more customers? So, we work to make sure our partners are successful, that we are aligned correctly and that we are giving them the tools, enablement and other things they need. Our traditional way of dealing with partners has been around a resale notion, but as more and more customers start to buy in a services-type fashion, maybe from a managed service provider, we are working to help partners move to that model. TR: What are some of the challenges your partners face in moving to that model? CM: The marketplace is in transition and we are coming out with new products, new consumption models, new go-to- market models. Some partners will be very successful at changing and some will prefer to sell in the traditional model around perpetual and on-prem. Because each customer is at a different stage of their digital transformation journey and each customer configuration is unique, we’re making all options available and making sure partners have all the tools and resources they need to sell in the way customers want to consume. So far, we are very pleased with the response from partners. TR: What plans do you have for the rest of 2019? CM: We want our partner programme to be as well aligned to the changing market as our new solutions and go to markets. Our Unity programme is an excellent core programme, which suits all our partner types. However, it is primarily focused around resale partners, so over the year we are going to focus on building that out, increasing its flexibility and making sure it is aligned with customer demand for different buying options. In addition, we are going to be putting very real dollars behind partner development. We are going to invest in channel-focused marketing and demand creation and in partner-facing tools to help them develop, even launching a new partner portal. The other thing that can’t be overstated is that we want to be very easy to do business with. We are therefore increasing the transparency of communication with our partners and are launching our first ever Voice of the Partner survey. It’s all about listening and learning from our partners so we can do a better job for them. The survey findings will guide the investments we make later in the year. www.f5networks.com The fifth annual F5 Networks State of Application Services (SOAS) report reveals a fast-changing application landscape that favours automation, cloud- centricity and an increased receptivity to digitally driven business innovation. Digital transformation is a particular strategic driver amongst EMEA organisations, with as many as 75% of surveyed respondents embracing the transition, compared to 68% of companies in other regions. EMEA organisations are also more likely to enable applications for mobile clients (40% versus 36% in other regions), with a similar proportion (41%) saying that the impetus to leverage digital transformation is prompting them to explore new application architectures, such as containerisation and microservices. DevOps to the fore Across the region, 62% believe a digital first mindset is altering the way applications are developed, compared to 51% in other parts of the world. Almost half (46%) of EMEA businesses reported positive changes in terms of how apps are delivered to production environments, including operational improvements such as more frequent releases. The SOAS report concludes that the need for speed and greater innovation is prompting a worldwide trend for DevOps to transition from early adopter strategic differentiators to influential business operation contributors. Indicative of this step change is the fact that 63% of EMEA firms are now are implementing automation and orchestration wherever possible in their IT systems and processes. This is slightly ahead of the rest of the world (61%). Multi-cloud strategy and security Just under half (45%) of EMEA respondents currently evaluate cloud decisions based on the environment best suited for each application, a trend that is expected to grow and add further momentum to widespread multi-cloud adoption. Overall, 42% of EMEA firms use two to six cloud providers; 11% use seven to ten providers; and 4% use 11 to 20. More than a quarter (28%) of all organisations in EMEA avoid cloud in any form excepting SaaS. Security concerns are the main reason organisations currently don’t have plans to deliver apps in the public cloud. The biggest multi-cloud challenges identified in EMEA were dealing with existing and emerging threats (40%), followed by regulation compliance (31%) and applying consistent security policies across all company applications (30%). In general, EMEA respondents are wary about their ability to protect applications off-premise. More than a third (35%) indicated ‘low confidence’ to withstand an application layer attack in all three off- premise scenarios: SaaS applications, public cloud, and colocation data centres. The future of application services The most commonly deployed application services in EMEA are network firewalls (89%), identity and access management via SSL VPN (87%), anti-virus (87%), IPS/IDS security (76%) and identity and access management using application access controls (74%). Looking ahead, the top planned application services deployments for EMEA businesses are focused on IoT gateways (38%), DNSSEC (34%), HTTP/2 gateways (32%), SDN gateways (30%) and service meshes (29%). Market trends State of Application Services 2019REPORT