In an interaction with CRN India, during his recent visit to India, Andrew Habgood, VP, Partner Ecosystem, APJ, Elastic, highlights his organisation’s strong growth in the APJ region, especially in this country, driven by partnerships and developer collaborations. He outlines Elastic’s partner strategy, which focuses on innovation and expanding partner support, including the appointment of Ingram Micro as a key distributor in India. Habgood emphasises the role of AI and GenAI in Elastic’s solutions, particularly in security and observability, and discusses Elastic’s tiered partner programs aimed at fostering deeper collaboration and growth across the region.
How has the business growth been in the last couple of years in the APJ region, particularly in India?
It’s certainly been a growing business. We have continued to grow as a company for many quarters. We’re acquiring more customers all the time, and this growth is driven by the work we’re doing with the developer community, our customers, and our partners. The commitment, solutions, and innovations that our partners are bringing to the Elastic solution itself are where we are seeing tremendous growth.
Could you elaborate on Elastic’s partner strategy in this region? How are you fostering stronger relationships with technology partners, channel partners and system integrators?
I joined Elastic to scale the company through our development community and partnerships. While we have historically worked with partners, we only recently started focusing on enhancing their experience. Over the last 18 months, we expanded our team and added partner resources in each market, including India, and introduced partner pre-sales support. We appointed Ingram Micro as our distribution partner for India, aiming to provide more resources for VAR resellers, systems integrators, and tech alliance partners.
We want partners to leverage their innovation and solutions alongside Elastic, rather than just selling our products. Our commitment to open source has been foundational since our inception, and last month, we announced a return to a full open-source licence. The partner community is crucial for our growth, as plugins and integrations are developed collaboratively. We will continue to facilitate tech alliance partners in building with us, supporting specific go-to-market strategies through various commercial models, including OEM embedded models and certified integrations.
Additionally, we offer flexible deployment options for customers, including self-managed code and cloud models. Our partnerships with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are closely aligned, highlighted by our partner of the year awards for successful integrations and ease of procurement through their marketplaces. This integration is vital as many customers now adopt cloud solutions, ensuring our platform works seamlessly with GCP, AWS, and Azure, making it easier for partners to develop in these environments.
What are the key market trends and opportunities that you are focusing on in the APJ region? How is Elastic pioneering itself to capitalise on these trends?
AI is an extremely exciting opportunity that we are witnessing in many different ways. We position ourselves as the search AI company, built on the power of search while providing AI and machine learning integrations to enhance functionality. Our solution stacks are centred around security, observability, and search, including GenAI search, all of which represent real and growing areas for us, featuring various use cases built on a single foundation.
In security, our focus is on making life easier for analysts and operators. One of our key go-to-market strategies is our strong managed services partner program, which we are expanding by equipping more managed security providers in each market. There are many partners, including some in the Indian market, that use Elastic to assist analysts in identifying what constitutes an attack versus what is simply an alert, making our AI innovations in this area particularly vital. Similarly, in observability, we process vast amounts of data, logs, and traces from applications, empowering analysts to quickly pinpoint root causes.
Our AI assistance in observability allows teams to collaborate with their Site Reliability Engineers to resolve issues promptly. While search and GenAI are complex, we strive to simplify them through our open inference APIs and other tools, facilitating developers’ work in search and accelerating AI development. For end customers considering the impact of AI on their business, navigating this journey can be challenging. They often look to a network of strong systems integrators in India for guidance on transforming their ideas into reality. Empowering that community is a key aspect of our go-to-market strategy.
Could you elaborate on the partner programs you have in place, particularly in the Indian market, and any specific incentives offered to your partners?
At its core, we have a tiered partner program consisting of three tiers: Select, Premier, and Elite. The purpose of these tiers is to ensure that we recognise, reward, and invest alongside partners who are committed to us. Our focus is not solely on the volume of transactions or dollars; instead, we emphasise building innovation and solutions together. We assess how many technical resources partners equip to support their customers, among other factors. As partners progress through the tiers, they receive increased discounts, providing greater incentives to collaborate with Elastic and more recognition for their investments. One of our strengths is our robust deal registration program, which offers substantial additional discounts for creating new opportunities that Elastic wasn’t previously aware of. While this approach may seem standard in the market, we believe our tiers, thresholds, and discounts are among the most generous available, aimed at fostering strong partnerships.
Additionally, we have a referral program for partners who prefer not to sell but often uncover new opportunities during service delivery. About six to nine months ago, we launched the Verified Managed Service Provider Program to validate the infrastructure and support capabilities of our managed services partners, allowing them to promote that Elastic trusts them to deliver services on our behalf. Currently, we are investing in enhancing partner enablement. Previously, our partner development was separate from our sales team training. However, starting this month, we are revamping all partner certifications and accreditations to align with our internal training content. This integration is crucial because our partners are an extension of us; treating them separately would be a disservice to both parties.
Are these programs specific to certain markets, or are they available globally across all markets?
They are available globally, and we have taken a global standardisation approach. What I’m particularly proud of is that many of these global standardisations in the program have actually originated from APJ. Over the past 12 months, much of what we’re doing and many of the initiatives we’ve implemented, have been developed as part of the global team, but with APJ leading the way. A lot of this progress is driven by what we’re hearing on the ground in markets like India, as well as other regions in Asia Pacific, where we have unique needs. In many ways, I believe we’re moving faster than other markets globally.
What percentage of your business are partner focused?
It is rapidly increasing each quarter. When I joined, one of the main goals was to address this issue. We’ve always worked with partners in every market, so I don’t want to imply that we haven’t. However, we want to make a significant shift toward a partner-driven, fusion market. What I mean by that is, if we look at the enterprise and public sector, in many markets, a direct sales approach with a vendor is still the best option. But landing and closing those customers still requires executive connections, total solution outcomes, and the value a partner can bring. So, we’re moving toward more of a co-sell model in that segment.
On the other hand, in the commercial, SMB, or mid-market space, it should be entirely partner-led, partner-created, and partner-assisted. We’re putting the necessary measures in place, such as distribution, lucrative partner programs, and discounts, to support partners in finding new opportunities. We have extensive plans for the next one to two years and beyond, focusing on additional marketing support and funding that we can provide in the market to help partners create new opportunities for us. Ultimately, we aim to achieve a well-balanced business model, where partner-created, partner-collaborative, and partner co-sell motions operate smoothly across the board.
How do you see the maturity level of AI adoption in the APJ regions evolving in the coming years? What are the challenges and opportunities?
In a brief conversation, Ashutosh Kulkarni, CEO, Elastic pointed out that in just the last year, there’s been a real surge in the adoption of GenAI use cases, particularly in India. He noted that because India doesn’t have the technological debt or legacy infrastructures of other countries, it’s leapfrogging ahead. He shared some fascinating stories and firmly believes that India is beyond the leading edge of AI adoption, moving rapidly forward. He thinks this will revolutionise every industry in India, with innovations spreading beyond. So, is it real or still a fantasy? It’s real, and it’s happening fast. The challenge and opportunity for partners now is figuring out how to connect with this movement, how their business models and ideas can jump on board. That’s why we’re excited to have these conversations with partners to connect the dots, brainstorm, and make things happen.
What will be your key focus areas for India in the next 12 months?
GenAI is a major focus for us. We have partners who are actively engaging in innovations, and it’s essential for us to support them and ensure we maintain our leadership in this space by delivering the right solutions and outcomes. For our broader partner community, it’s crucial that we equip them with the necessary services, tools, techniques, and capabilities. Ingram Micro joining the family is a significant milestone, as they have resources across the country that can provide assistance. Additionally, their portfolio includes AI, infrastructure, AIOps, and other areas that align well with our offerings. This helps partners quickly add Elastic to their solutions and go to market more effectively. We’ll be ramping up efforts in these areas moving forward.
