New Zscaler Channel Chief Anthony Torsiello On Plans For ‘Substantial Investments’ With Partners

A ServiceNow veteran who joins Zscaler as of Monday, Torsiello tells CRN that the cybersecurity vendor’s growth strategy ‘starts with having a highly capable ecosystem of partners.’

Anthony Torsiello, a former longtime channel business leader at ServiceNow, has been hired by Zscaler as its new global channel chief, he said in an interview with CRN.

Torsiello (pictured), whose title at Zscaler is senior vice president of partner and alliances, officially joined the prominent cybersecurity vendor Monday. The move comes after Torsiello spent more than a decade at ServiceNow, where he most recently was the company’s group vice president of global partnerships and channels.

At Zscaler, he succeeds Karl Soderlund, who’d served as the vendor’s channel chief since March 2023 and departed from the company on Friday. San Jose, Calif.-based Zscaler declined to provide further details on Soderlund’s departure.

At Zscaler, Torsiello will report to CRO Mike Rich, who’d formerly been the president of ServiceNow’s Americas business before joining Zscaler in November 2023. Rich and Torsiello had worked together at ServiceNow for a decade, Torsiello said.

Prior to joining ServiceNow in early 2014, Torsiello had spent 13 years in sales roles at EMC Corp.

Speaking with CRN, Torsiello said that while he is just getting underway as Zscaler’s new channel chief, the goal will be to double down with partners in an effort to accelerate channel-driven growth.

“We're going to continue to make substantial investments in our partner model,” he said. Without a doubt, the cybersecurity vendor’s growth strategy “starts with having a highly capable ecosystem of partners,” Torsiello said.

The move to Zscaler was prompted in part by the massive opportunities that the company has around working more closely with partners to transform customer security, Torsiello said. Key segments for Zscaler include SSE (security service edge) and SASE (secure access service edge), which aim to enable secure access to corporate resources for distributed teams using zero-trust security principles.

Publicly traded Zscaler is currently working toward a goal of achieving $5 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR), and “I actually feel like we can accelerate the path to $5 billion with and through partners,” Torsiello said. “I do believe that partners will be an accelerator to that growth.”

What follows is an edited portion of CRN’s interview with Torsiello.

What prompted the move to Zscaler?

At ServiceNow, I worked with Mike Rich for a decade — I was his partner leader for seven of the 10 years. We grew pretty close [and also worked closely] with his leadership team that was at ServiceNow at the time. Many of those [executives] have made their way over to Zscaler — [Vice President] Jason Holleron, [SVP of Americas Sales] Ross Tackett. These are leaders that I have high regard for and have worked with very closely. So just the opportunity to work with that leadership team again — knowing their pedigree, knowing Mike's leadership and his philosophy of leadership, which I know will resonate well at Zscaler — first and foremost, that's just what really excited me about the move.

It was not an easy decision. ServiceNow has been really good to me over the last 10 years. But for me, it’s an opportunity to take on a global team and have a much broader impact on the partner ecosystem.

What do you see at this point as the major opportunities for partners in working with Zscaler?

The key here I think is going to be twofold. One is, we have a lot of great customers. Those customers could be much larger customers. So I think the [expansion] play for Zscaler is going to be a high focus area for my team with partners. Today, primarily partners are relatively transactional. And again, I'm just getting into it. But moving toward partners delivering additional services on top of the Zscaler platform—so on top of the products that are sold—[will be a priority]. Whereas today, partners aren't necessarily creating large business groups like they do at ServiceNow, we want them to be able to create $500 million to $1 billion businesses on top of Zscaler—so that they can go and drive a true platform play across enterprise security and network teams within our large and midsize customers.

Were there certain aspects of Zscaler’s technology or market presence that especially caught your eye?

I called some of my customers that I've known and respected for years, and every one was a Zscaler customer. And I said, “Is [Zscaler] a tactical play? Is it something that you see as strategic?” And every single one of them said, “Zscaler will be in our environment for a really long time. Our only challenge right now is we're not using Zscaler to its full extent. And we think there's an opportunity to do so. But in order to do so, we need the entire ecosystem to wrap themselves around it.”

For me, this is my second job in 24 years — so I do my due diligence. And coming to Zscaler, I wasn't going to come if this wasn’t something where I felt like we were going to scale. [The plan has been to grow] from a little over $2 billion [in ARR] today to $5 billion in the next few years. I actually feel like we can accelerate the path to $5 billion with and through partners. I think that we're dreaming big — [CEO] Jay [Chaudhry] is dreaming big, the leadership team is dreaming big. But I do believe that partners will be an accelerator to that growth.

Any other lessons learned from your previous roles that you expect to be bringing to Zscaler?

The value realization piece to me is probably the biggest lesson learned. And to me, it starts with having a highly capable ecosystem of partners that understand how to deploy, how to make customers successful. They're in the environment, they're helping them to consume the technology. The entire industry is going to be looking at consumption issues as the renewals come up. Keeping those customers happy and healthy is going to be the key to success. And I think that starts with partner enablement.

Overall, what’s your message to Zscaler partners?

What I want them to know is that we're going to continue to make substantial investments in our partner model. It’s such a core component to how we go to market. We’ll continue making the investments where it makes sense across the partner ecosystem. Obviously change can be nerve-wracking for some people. But we're going to remain steadfast in our commitment to driving mutual success. At the end of the day, that's what we're committed to — investments in the ecosystem and driving mutual success with and through our partners.