In an exclusive interview with CRN, Rajic says the company’s new Wiz Partner Alliance program sets the stage for accelerated channel growth.
The launch of the new Wiz Partner Alliance program will provide a strong foundation for accelerated channel growth in the next phase for the fast-growing cloud and AI security vendor, according to Wiz President Dali Rajic.
In an exclusive interview with CRNRajic, who is also COO at Wiz, said the new channel program announced Monday will enable opportunities for a “much deeper collaboration” with partners than what the company has had in the past.
[Related: Wiz Unveils Revamped Channel Program, Major Partner Services Push]
The launch of the Wiz Partner Alliance program comes as Google’s planned $32 billion acquisition of the company is expected to close next year.
Regardless of the ownership status of the company, working with solution and service provider partners for Wiz is “embedded into our platform vision,” Rajic said. “It is so core to what Wiz does.”
The planned acquisition by Google, which was announced in March and would be the tech giant’s largest M&A deal to date, should only increase the momentum for Wiz and its partners, he added. The U.S. Department of Justice recently cleared the deal, setting the stage for the acquisition to be completed in 2026, Wiz and Google said in previous statements.
The new Wiz Partner Alliance program provides “the blueprint of the partner dynamics and engagement future, and hence it’s only going to be expanded,” Rajic said. “I don’t see anything changing with that.”
The refreshed Wiz channel program will introduce a new services track to boost partner delivery of services as well as a new three-tier structure and improved discounts, according to Wiz.
What follows is more of CRN’s interview with Rajic.
What prompted the move to refresh your partner program now?
The evolution of the channel model has really been kind of the quest [for Wiz]. If we look at the industry as a whole, it’s really dynamically being shifted. The traditional VARs cannot be traditional VARs anymore—because some of those technologies are either, a.) expiring or, b.) becoming not as strategic. They’re still necessary, but not as strategic. Then secondly, the cloud service providers are driving a lot of agenda inertia on transformation and migrating workloads and/or entire data centers into the cloud. All this is happening at a pace where [it’s] “AI everything.” And cybersecurity is a board-level concern for just about any company. And then we’re seeing the sprawling of all these SaaS- and cloud-born businesses. So the entire partner community has been dynamically shifted around and rearranged through this.
What it means is, giving a customer something and providing some resourcing alone doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. What customers are really looking for is a complete, embedded approach, end-to-end, from data center into cloud. And [they’re looking for] expertise on mapping these journeys, expertise on staff-augmenting these customers–and expertise on really not being tied to a technology you represent necessarily, but rather being tied to the customer’s initiatives. Within all this, customers are turning to partners and saying, “Hey, I need you to provide me with guidance, not just a suggestion of technology. How do I maximize my ROI?”
So within all this, Wiz has always looked at, how do we become conduit, accelerator, the core kind of central nervous system of all these activities? So [that way] we can help partners, we can help customers. [We can] secure them, provide speed and agility, insight and knowledge—and really through our platform and the automation that’s embedded in it, up-level the skillset and ability of our customers to do things that historically they have not done before.
What are some of the updates in the new program that are most important for partners to know about?
[One is introducing] multiple tiers. Not everybody is created equal. Not everybody has the same practices and offerings. So we wanted to meet partners where they are, by creating these different tracks, based on the competency, and on us really driving the services through partners. Because they’re more embedded and broader, across the customer base, than we are. We’re focused on Wiz. They’re focused on Wiz plus seven other things. So the competency paths also entitle partners to not just greater access within Wiz, but also different financial reward models.
The ultimate goal is we’re going to build [comprehensive] intelligence into the platform at a detailed level. So that if I’m a customer and I have a project that comes up and I use Wiz, I can just take a look at which partner has what competency that I can just call on, at what degree do they have that competency. And then I can just pick and choose who I want to engage with. We want to put the power of information in front of our customers, and we want to encourage partners to really become more embedded with our mutual customers.
With the new services program, are you looking to replicate the success you’ve had with some partners so far around service offerings?
Correct. This was kind of our grounds to learn what the best framework is, with some of these partners that leaned in, and wanted to be early and/or first. But that is really the goal. Based on training, delivery and [security assessment] variables that a partner decides they want to invest in—we then, together with them, really embed into their practice, their offering. This is not [about] bolting Wiz on, or creating something completely new outside of the standard motions and rhythm of the business.
We do provide NFRs [not-for-resale licenses] across all tiers. We want you to not just understand the platform, but really understand it in a way where you have an environment that you can educate your teams on, where they can build expertise.
We’re approaching it differently, where we’re saying to partners, “Where do you want to go with us?” We’re here for whichever way you choose. You don’t need to decide today—you can start and then just move gradually across the tiers.
It is a more structured approach [than] was offered up historically. Now there’s a clear model that provides a structured approach with tiers a partner can select into that requires specific accreditations and certifications in order to be part of that tier. That then also comes with financial rewards, which come with a much deeper collaboration with those partners, even across highly technical and product-level resources made accessible to those partners.
What is important for partners to know when it comes to the planned acquisition of Wiz by Google?
It’s business as usual for us. Everybody, of course, has all these concerns. “Are you going to be Google-fied? Are you going to [see changes]?” I’ll point back to the logic of, when you propose an acquisition price like Google did for an asset that has built its core competence around multi-cloud, that has built its core value proposition around multi-cloud, that has really distinguished itself on horizontal security across all [public clouds]—it is at the core. Which means that the multi-cloud DNA that has fueled the company, which has fueled the value we’re driving to customers, is 100-percent our core focus. And I don’t see that changing.
If you take a look at the momentum we’re having with pretty much every [public cloud platform] out there, we just crossed $1 billion of [total contract value] with AWS—which is a big number, which puts us in rarefied territory. And we got there, I think, two or two-and-a-half months faster than what even our aggressive ambitions were. So the momentum is still strong in the market. We believe that with investment, we’re going to actually be able to accelerate this momentum. And we believe that we’ll be able to continue providing customers value, [through] meeting them where they are, as opposed to worrying about anything else.