CrowdStrike CBO Bernard: Partners ‘Unlock The Full Capabilities Of’ Our Platform

“In today's world, cybersecurity isn't a nice to have – it's a need to have,” CrowdStrike executive Daniel Bernard said.

CrowdStrike’s latest strategic partner is global system integrator HCLTech – but solution providers remain an essential part of the cybersecurity vendor’s go-to-market, Chief Business Officer Daniel Bernard told CRN in an interview.

“We work with solution provider partners and GSIs like HCLTech to unlock the full capabilities of the platform, operationalize the platform, run the platform, grow the platform, and make sure the customer is getting the maximum value out of what we can do,” Bernard said.

[RELATED: CrowdStrike To Acquire Data Security Startup, Boosts Guidance]

CrowdStrike Partners With HCLTech

Bernard’s comments align with those of his boss, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz, who told CRN earlier this month that the vendor saw triple-digit growth with managed security services providers (MSSPs).

“Working with partners “that focus on the SMBs, we’re hitting markets that would be difficult to hit en masse,” Kurtz said. “So it really gives us the ability to go downmarket and capture some of those customers that are at risk. They’re at risk from ransomware, they’re at risk for data exfiltration, they’re at risk for impact into their organization. I think we had a great year and there’s more to come.”

The Austin, Texas-based vendor – a member of CRN’s 2024 Security 100 – is coming off a strong finish to its latest fiscal year. For the fourth quarter of CrowdStrike’s fiscal 2024, ended Jan. 31, the company reported that revenue grew 33 percent from the prior year, reaching $845.3 million.

For the full fiscal year, CrowdStrike reported total revenue of $3.06 billion, a 36 percent increase year over year, according to the vendor.

Bernard said that solution providers are important for standing up vendor products and giving end customers a cybersecurity staff amid a global lack of experts in the field. For CrowdStrike, solution provider partners can help grow the customer base.

“Partners like HCLTech, they know the enterprise environment very well,” Bernard said. “They're mapped across the C-suite. They're charting the technology strategy, which is a much bigger and broader initiative than just cybersecurity. And in today's world, cybersecurity isn't a nice to have – it's a need to have. It's not an afterthought. It's a mainline thought. It's not a backroom discussion, it's a boardroom discussion. These guys are already in the boardroom. They're already working with the executive teams on broader technology transformation projects. They're able to seamlessly work cyber into the discussion.”

Bernard spoke to CRN about the HCLTech partnership and Crowdstrike’s overall channel strategy. Here’s what he had to say:

Why is CrowdStrike partnering with HCLTech?

More and more organizations are turning to strong partners that have deep expertise in our platform.

Organizations like HCLTech, leader in their regard, where they're providing end-to-end technology solutions for their customers bringing about transformation that their customers really need.

And our goal is to provide the industry's very best cybersecurity to stop the breach. And we provide a platform to do so that spans many different aspects of cybersecurity from endpoint to cloud, identity to data, next gen SIEM, etcetera. … Together with HCLTech, we're able to bring about cybersecurity transformation effectively, expeditiously and produce the best cybersecurity outcome possible for the end customer, not only stopping the breach, but doing so more efficiently than ever before.

Does this HCLTech news fit with CrowdStrike’s greater strategy?

This is consistent with our strategy, which is we are the technology platform to stop breaches well beyond just endpoint.

And we want to work with the right partners that have the right expertise, to bring our technology to market and provide the customer with the full end-to-end service offering.

So while we do have some services here at CrowdStrike, and most vendors do have services, the breadth and depth of the expertise that HCLTech has, that's indicative of how we win at scale with large customers, how we bring transformation about faster.

And to be more specific about that, partners like HCLTech, they know the enterprise environment very well. They're mapped across the C-suite. They're charting the technology strategy, which is a much bigger and broader initiative than just cybersecurity.

And in today's world, cybersecurity isn't a nice to have – it's a need to have. It's not an afterthought. It's a mainline thought. It's not a backroom discussion, it's a boardroom discussion.

These guys are already in the boardroom. They're already working with the executive teams on broader technology transformation projects. They're able to seamlessly work cyber into the discussion.

So when they're doing a broader cloud transformation for a client, they're in the driver's seat not only on the cloud strategy, but also on the technology strategy of how to secure that cloud.

How does CrowdStrike help solution providers like HCLTech?

This isn't a transactional relationship that we have mutually nor with the joint customers we have.

We are able to articulate very clearly to HCLTech and enable them on our platform, which allows them to take a customer on a journey from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. A maturity model, a TCO (total cost of ownership) model, a consolidation model to really help the end customer standardize on the platform approach that we have.

That's an interesting proposition for HCLTech as they look to drive the transformation in an account. That's what it's really all about is creating the broader platform opportunity for us but for the end customer, helping drive consolidation, helping drive better security outcomes, helping reduce TCO.

What can solution provider partners do to get more out of their CrowdStrike relationship?

We want to work with partners that have deeper relationships and accounts than we do.

This is all about having one plus one equal three, four or five. And that's what we're able to drive with HCLTech. We want to work with the partners that are like HCLTech, that are mapping the broader technology strategy and putting us in at all the right places at the right times and providing the right services on top of us for the end customer to get the most out of our platform.

It takes investment on both sides. It's not just us enabling HCLTech. It's also HCLTech enabling and activating the field organization that they have across the world.

We don't just work together with U.S. customers. We work together with European customers. We work together with Asian customers. We have folks on the ground in India at some of the main campuses of HCLTech.

Likewise, they have folks in regions where we're operating. This is a global partnership. We have a strategy. We chart what we're going to do before we do it. We enable on both sides. And then we execute.

And we see success. And certainly we've seen a lot of success already. And we're seeing the next iteration of our partnership. First it was like, let's try this out. And then we go from trying it out to really scaling it out.

And I think that's where that's where we're at right now. We have the right alignment. We have the right investment. And we're winning together.

Why are solution providers important to the CrowdStrike go-to-market?

Secure by design is a good marketing line. And I think it's a good aspirational North Star that the world should in every area – from building airplanes to cars to trains to software – everybody should focus on.

But reality is very different. Just because you want to build and secure by design doesn't mean that doors don't fly off planes when they take off. It doesn't mean that cyber attacks don't happen. It doesn't mean that code bases aren't exfiltrated.

The reason services are so important – you want a product to be autonomous and work by itself. And certainly our platform, we use generative AI, we've been doing AI from the very beginning. That is how we replace signature based AV (antivirus software) from the disruption that CrowdStrike has brought to the market, creating the EDR (endpoint detection and response) category and so on.

However, getting the product set up right, operating the product properly, this is how you achieve the outcome of stopping the breach. You need the right technology, but you also need the right playbook. There is the old adage – it's people, process and technology.

Certainly some customers, they're able to make the investment in the people and the process of the technology by themselves.

What you find is more and more and more large enterprises realizing that their competitive advantage is in the business that they're in, not necessarily cybersecurity, not necessarily technology.

So it becomes very attractive for these large enterprises to go to HCLTech and say, ‘Hey, folks. We need your help. We need to grow our business from here to here. We are going to be innovating on automobiles. We're going to be changing the way that people use computers. We're going to be building chips. Can you make sure that our technology is in alignment with our strategy? And can you make sure that we're secure in the world?’ … We need service provider partners to go and enable the platform.

We don't have to do ‘platform-ization.’ That's not our word. … The platform is by design. It's already a single platform. Our architecture is a single agent, single console, single platform. Deploy it once, we collect the data once. We do so much with it.

We work with solution provider partners and GSIs (global system integrators) like HCLTech to unlock the full capabilities of the platform, operationalize the platform, run the platform, grow the platform, and make sure the customer is getting the maximum value out of what we can do.

Any other thoughts?

The first is that the single platform approach is the winning approach for customers of all sizes. … The second is that partners take our business further, and we're super excited to have the full buy in at HCLTech.

We're super excited about the traction we have in the market together and we're super excited about what we're winning together.

And third and final is that HCLTech has bespoke capabilities, is fully enabled on our platform and is already taking customers on the transformation journey on the Falcon platform And we're eager to fly to Falcon even higher together.