‘We’re in it together’: SentinelOne’s SVP of partner ecosystem
Brian Lanigan talks about 2025 partner strategy, channel ambitions and the importance of AI
“SentinelOne is a company that genuinely thinks of customers first and that everybody’s in it together, we're in it together,” SentinelOne’s SVP of partner ecosystem, Brian Lanigan, tells CRN.
As the channel braces for 2025, SentinelOne is prepared and even excited about the future.
To understand where the business is heading next year, CRN met Lanigan in SentinelOne’s London office to discuss plans for the channel, expansion, and channel ethos.
“We all fundamentally believe in the fact that partners are our force multipliers,” says Lanigan.
“But the question is; how do we take advantage of that?
“Our partner strategy is made of the three “I’s”; indirect, incremental and independent revenue streams to the company.
“What's paramount for the partner ecosystem, is that it must operate as an ‘interconnected fabric.’
“When you look at our platform, we offer cloud, to data, to the endpoint, and everything that’s in between, as there are so many different partner types that are going to be interacting.”
Lanigan joined SentinelOne in March to drive the company’s channel efforts and has since won his spurs as the company “has grown by 100 per cent across partner organisations.”
“Whether it’s our sales team members, our solution architect organisation, or our enablement organisation, we've expanded quite significantly,” says the SVP of partner ecosystem.
“This comes as we want to focus across our key markets.
“In Europe, we are focusing on the UK, France, and Germany, putting the personnel in those markets, as well as supporting emerging areas.
“We’re then going to focus on putting an emphasis on hyperscalers, not in lieu of the rest of the partner ecosystem, but in addition to it.”
Underscoring this point, Lanigan gives the examples of AWS and Google in Europe.
“It’s co-build, co-market, co-sell.
“Once you co-build and your infrastructure elements, you integrate with different services, like security hubs, control tower, and then you start getting access to the cloud.
“You start getting money to get access to all the master data management (MDM), all the programme developers.
“Your best execution with that is never to just try to deal with the $100bn company like AWS directly, but to really interact with the ecosystem, to go to your partners.
“And I'll just use the examples of some of the well-known names here in the UK, such as Softcat and Computacenter, it’s about how you execute with them, taking your MDF and putting into action.
“MSPs and MSSPs are a significant portion of our business, so we spend a lot of time thinking on how to invest further into these.
Keep reading to find out more about the vendor’s AI strategy and expansion into new geographies.
Mortals and the machines
The cybersecurity vendor is also planning to double down on its AI strategy it accelerated in recent years.
“AI is now a buzzword, but when you look at SentinelOne, we've actually built our intelligence into the platform.
“We came up with Purple AI, which we've been proving out there in the market by running various events across the world, such as ‘Mortal vs. Machine.’
“We make a junior employee compete with a higher up in the same sector, but we equip the junior person with Purple AI.
“They come out on top every single time.”
Purple AI was first announced in April 2023, during the RSA conference in San Francisco.
The technology aims to leverage ML and AI to analyse important amounts of data and detect anomalies or potential security threats across endpoints and networks.
“We bring these tools to our partner ecosystem,” says Lanigan.
“We treat our managed services partners as first-class citizens, as we develop a product with them in mind, which is not usually the case.
“We think in terms of ‘how do we take the capabilities that we're building out to the partner ecosystem? How do we help them build services capability around SentinelOne?’
“There's going to be a big emphasis this year around building services, capacity and capability in the market.”
The vendor is also thinking long-term, as it has already started elaborating a three to five years strategy.
“Looking into the future, you'll see an emphasis on the whole ecosystem working together
“You're also going to see a lot from us in terms of helping customers move to the cloud.
“There will also be a strong focus on our tech alliances strategy.”
But the future of SentinelOne’s partner strategy relies on feedback, as the company says it has gathered information from firms all around the world.
With over 6,500 partners around the world, the vendor must adapt to a wide and diverse array of needs from the different actors of the ecosystem.
“We’ve created a new holistic all-inclusive partner programme that focuses on ‘What value are you delivering to the customer? What value are you delivering to us? Do you help us sell? Do you help us deliver? Do you help us build capabilities on top’
“To redesign our partner programme, we contracted with a company called PartnerPath.
“They went out and interviewed our partner community across the globe to get input as we rebuild the partner program, to really focus on what’s really of value to them, and how can we help.”
Despite an already global implication, Lanigan says SentinelOne doesn’t intend to stop there.
“Most of our acquisitions tend to be discrete product capability buyouts.
“We usually identify a core specific need, find the best-in-class company that does that specific function, and then integrate that into the platform.
“The biggest market share for most companies that are US based, of course, is usually the US itself.
“But our market share in Europe is also pretty decent.
“We don't disclose those percentages per market, but it's definitely higher than the other companies I worked for.
“If you look at our endpoint share across EMEA, in France for example, it’s really strong thanks to our strong partnerships there.
“In the future, you'll also see deeper entrenchment into the Middle East.”