Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Anar Desai - Inside the Channel Evolution of Palo Alto Networks
This week on Partnerships Unraveled, we’re joined by Anar Desai, VP of Ecosystems at Palo Alto Networks, a company that’s grown from 5,600 to over 19,000 employees during his tenure. Anar shares a front-row perspective on leading channel strategy through explosive growth, shifting from single-product sales to platform-led transformation, and embedding AI into both partnerships and operations.
In this episode, Anar unpacks:
- Why in-person presence and improvisational skill matter more than ever in channel roles.
- How platformization is redefining partner value, especially through long-term services.
- The real AI opportunity in the channel, boosting enablement, collapsing sales cycles, and driving revenue.
- Why integrity, intentionality, and transparent feedback loops are essential for trust and longevity in partnerships.
Whether you’re building a next-gen partner program or navigating the delicate balance of incentives and alignment, Anar’s insights are a must-listen for anyone operating at the intersection of growth and ecosystems.
Connect with Anar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anard/
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, Anar. How are you doing? I'm doing great. How about you, Alex? Excited to have you on today. Maybe if the uninitiated you could give us a little bit of an introduction about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, appreciate the kind words. I've been. I've had the honor of being the VP of ecosystems for Palo Alto Networks for about almost seven years now and it's been phenomenal growth. During that time We've gone from a single product company to a multi-platform company and it's been exhilarating to be a part of. And then, prior to that, I was also lucky enough to be a part of some other great growth stories. So I joined Nutanix when it was slightly over 300 people and when I left it was about five years later. It was about 5,600 people. And then, prior to that, I just had a phenomenal learning experience at NetApp, doing a bunch of different roles for about a dozen years. So it's been being a part of all of these high growth organizations has been just. I've been really lucky to be a part of it and learn a lot along the way.
Speaker 2:Nice, I'm hoping you bet the stock market as well as you bet the right company.
Speaker 1:Cause I wouldn't take my advice on anything.
Speaker 2:We were discussing one of my favorite topics in the prep call, which is how the hell you interview and hire exceptional candidates, and you spotted a couple of challenges, maybe in terms of the interview procedure that people were doing online versus face-to-face. Talk to me about what that experience was like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's funny. I was thinking a lot about this since we first spoke and it's interesting because our CEO, nikesh Arora. Somebody asked him during an all-hands like what keeps you up at night? And you know his. His line is I sleep like a baby because I hired good people to do the right jobs Right. And you know it's. It's something that stuck with me and I it's. I've thought about that is how I interview people and you know some of the things. Over time, you have to change your interview style as well, so it's hybrid work comes in everything else, and one of the biggest things we instituted a couple of years ago was really emphasizing the importance of in-person interviews, because there's so much with what we do, managing partnerships that while a lot of the work is done via Zoom and hybrid work, hybrid methods for me to feel good about hiring people that that in-person check is key and the things you can find there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I'm sort of half smiling. I'm slightly jet lagged at the moment. I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Denver and San Diego and pride myself on being able to build digital relationships, but I think I did more work in five days than I did in the previous six months right getting around the table, actually being able to talk strategy, go for a few beers afterwards. It does a lot more than anything you can possibly do digitally yeah, there's.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, I know it's uh in vogue now to talk about in the office and being in person, but there's truth to that. Right Like when we're getting, especially if you think about, what we ask our partnership managers to do is we're working with people. We're trying to bring commonality to people who work at different organizations to drive the right solutions for clients, right organizations to drive the right solutions for clients right. And you need to be able to understand. When we're evaluating talent, we need to be able to look at what their in-person presence is. We also need to find ways to test what their situational awareness is and how they pick up on nonverbal cues, and that's something that's really hard to translate through a video format, right. And then the other thing that was interesting I was at an offsite last week at our headquarters and one of the sessions was that they brought in a specialist on improvisation and it made me think back to about 10 years ago when we were building the channel at Nutanix and we said what do we really need to look for?
Speaker 1:And part of that was the key part of being an effective partner manager is your ability to improvise and think on your feet, right, like when the situation changes, how quickly can you pivot? And you know, I can tell you, or at least my opinion is. You know you can try to suss that out through a virtual interview. But you know if, if the people we're interviewing are well-prepared like I would be in that scenario I would have all my notes on the screen as I'm there and what we're really testing for is if you're asking the top seller at a top partner or a top client lead or an account manager or a top engineer to go bet on you and what your company and the solutions you're bringing you know that's not always going to be a scripted conversation, so the people who are the best at what they're going to do are going to be able to think on their feet and still achieve an outcome that both you and your partner feels good about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't agree more, and I think, especially with AI now, what you're able to do online digitally in terms of improvisations, it's gone up a factor of 10, right. So, having those cues, maybe on some of the softer stuff which I think we like to think that we're very sort of logical beings but half of this is just done on being hey, persuasive, charming and maybe a bit funny, Talk to me about some of the softer stuff that you look for from an EQ perspective that you can only really sense face-to-face.
Speaker 1:You know, I think a lot of it is just your ability to listen and actually, like you know, I joke when you're listening and I try to teach the same thing, to tell the same thing to my kids.
Speaker 1:Are you listening or are you just waiting for your turn to speak?
Speaker 1:Right, and it's amazing to me how many people in this industry, no matter what direction they've been given here's the prep call. We do all the stuff for the meetings, but then when you get into the meeting and that's where that situational awareness matters, like just because you have something that you've worked really hard to get a point across if the conversation is changing and evolving in the minute, in the moment, can you still get your point across in a way that flows with where that conversation is going to drive the outcome? Or are you just going to? I prepared these seven bullets and I'm going to make sure I get them across in this meeting come hell or high water, right, and it usually lands flat when you have hey, I have a plan, I'm going to execute it no matter what, regardless of what's said in this. Next, you know, 30 to 60 minutes and it doesn't land and it doesn't move the partnership forward or the engagement forward and being able to look for that, I think, is critical.
Speaker 2:You touched on because I was actively listening in your introduction about when you joined Palo. It was a single product business. That's no longer the case. You've gone from a wild strategy shift from product sales to platform sales. How do partners help shape and define that transformation?
Speaker 1:being at a company like Palo, where we've built a pretty strong. We've built a strong business with partners with the single product, which is our next-gen firewall right. So what's really interesting is, as we've gone on this acquisition strategy over the last several years and buying all of these solutions that have helped us build these platforms like Network Security and Cortex Cloud, we have the benefit of a very strong install base with our partners, and our partners are also looking at cybersecurity as one of their main growth vectors. So being able to attach a brand that most of their sellers have experience and trust in and also their clients are seeing value in as we expand into cloud security, into SOC automation, into SASE, we've got the benefit of having more telemetry out there. As the world evolves, as AI and cybersecurity continue to mesh together and are closely aligned into the brave new world we're heading into, you need to go with a partnership that you trust, and most of the large partners in North America have built high trust, high integrity relationships with Palo Alto Networks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the thing that I always sort of love about partnerships how that defines your product strategy is almost. Partners can become the absolute leading experts, not just in terms of how the product is used but how the product is sold. How important is gaining that feedback and how that drives your sort of culture and your strategy for your organization.
Speaker 1:You know it's, it's getting feedback is important because we have you know we have we're in the process right now of launching, of revamping our partner program, because our partner program, led by my peer, michael Corey, is one that was built when we were a single product company. So what our partnership means right now to our partners and to our clients, we need to evolve what our partner program looks like so that we're building, we're tying the value and the incentives to the right expansion benefits around platformization that are going to be critical, that create the right incentive and benefit structure to move beyond just the core network security business to all of these other areas, that over time they shouldn't just be new areas to sell product, they should create massive services opportunities for our ecosystem.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes you touch on services there. I think sometimes people don't quite understand how important that service offering is to partners. Can you contextualize some feedback in terms of why that service's wraparound that partners are able to offer is so important and really is the lifeblood of their go-to-market.
Speaker 1:I think it's interesting because you know I've always worked for manufacturers, right, and we always think that you know a lot of legacy thinking is that it starts and stops with the product resale, right? No-transcript, that that's different. You know our product margins are high and our service margins are low. On the partner side, their service margins are high and their product margins are lower, right, and that can drastically change what the financial makeup is of a partner organization.
Speaker 1:If we can do that now, how, that, how that really matters in this transition from you know, this transition and this journey we've been on over the last several years around moving from you know one product to multi-product and multi-platform, is that you know, especially if you think about a product like XIM, which we've seen significant success over the last couple of years, that represents a SOC automation and transformation opportunity for our partners, which that's the brains of the organization of most of these customers that we're selling into and that can be potentially a 10 to 15 year services engagement with a client. So you want to talk about being super sticky with these clients, transition a stock transformation solution and help then help that client manage that and actually show how we're improving their mean time to remediate, mean time to respond. That is uh, that is transformational for partner businesses and a and that can not just from stickiness to a client but really long-term profitability of each client that they are successfully able to launch that within so we've.
Speaker 2:We've touched on how partners are helping guide your program and your strategy. That's bidirectional, right. You're also helping guide partner strategy, improving services opportunities, but we're at an inflection point now when it comes to go-to-market, obviously, ai. One of the things that I think we all understand is how AI is going to be embedded in your product and in your operations. But the channels application is still a little bit complicated. Maybe people don't have that absolute clarity in terms of what AI in the channel really means. What do you see as some of those near-term use cases for AI when it comes to programming?
Speaker 1:I think you know the tools we have and even you know, if I look at my own team right now, we're pushing everybody to disrupt themselves with how they leverage these tools, because we can do different things right. We can put in, you know, and again we have the benefit with the company we work for. We're forcing every single person in the organization to lean in with AI Right, and it's a. It's a big thought experiment right now how they engage partners, how we can feed different information sources that we have into our LLMs and help us, help give us insights. So one is on the partner management side. We can buy cycles back for our own team by putting less time on some of these. You know, whether it's account mapping or doing some of this analysis, it can get us started.
Speaker 1:Now, the human touch is always required because you have to work with AI, not let it replace. So one part is how we cut out some of the tasks for our teams to help get them ready quicker. But then the next step of it is and I'm talking to a handful of partners about this right now is how do we build tools that can more quickly allow and enable our partners to position and get smarter on the new solutions or the new releases of our products that we're pushing out to the market, and how do we enhance their ability to position them in front of the clients. And I think we can cut cycles out to drive a lot more efficiency there, but we're still learning how exactly we get there 100%, and I think the thing I always encourage right is iteration.
Speaker 2:I think this area of the market is moving so quickly, both from our understanding but also how the technology is developing. You almost need that Google philosophy of continuous experimentation. I think the partners that really take that to heart and understand that version one isn't going to be anywhere close to version 10, they're the ones that are really going to see the benefit.
Speaker 1:Well, it also starts with the individual, right, because as I'm learning on my own journey, learning to use these tools a lot better, as I use it more, the tools get better, and that's not like it's because, you know, when I think about how I've learned stuff traditionally and you know is that it's very easy for humans to say, oh, it didn't work, didn't give me the answer, so I'm going to go find something else. There's a different learning with AI. With these AI tools, it's like ask it differently, change how you're asking it, what can you switch up? And then, as we're learning that experimentation at the individual level, that's teaching ourselves and then, as we teach that we need to apply that to partnerships as well. Right, and there's a nuance in there that I probably didn't say that the right way, but there's a you know you do have. The iteration is a key word, though I agree with you?
Speaker 2:No for sure. Hey, if I put two plus two into a calculator, it spits out the right answer every single time, right? I think where AI is amazing is we can put much more complicated questions in, but as part of that, depending on how we ask, is how the answers we get, and this is. You know, I do a lot of mentoring for people who are building their careers, because the bit that I really double click on them, which is the ability for you to be able to guide AI, will be your superpower in two, three years time, right? And so I think we're going to see rapid career accelerations for the people who have that superpower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting because you know I do a fair share of mentoring as well, I'm sure you do. I try to advise people to stay curious, and staying curious with not just your careers, but how you can channel that curiosity into leveraging these AI tools to come up with something unique and different. Ai tools to come up with something unique and different and, most most importantly, impactful, because there's a you can find tools, you can find AI applications to, or you can find applications for AI to. You know, make yourself more efficient and do other things, but when you really push yourself out of your comfort zone to get more to tap into that curiosity, I think that's where we're seeing really to get more to tap into that curiosity. I think that's where we're seeing really really unique and interesting and game-changing outputs come that we can really leverage differently with our ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the bit. You know a mentor of mine actually. He told me, alex, when we talk about AI, chase revenue, not cost reduction, and by that he meant people intrinsically go cool. I used to do this much work and now I can do it in half the time, but actually that's not the superpower. The superpower is how do I do this 10 times better, how do I go and implement it and drive it in creative ways so I can go and achieve more, not I can go home early.
Speaker 1:And that's how we need to look at the ecosystem overall. Right, if you're looking at it as an accelerator, then we can look at it. If we're looking at a way to cut costs, we're probably not going to find the answers that we're really looking for in terms of what we're really trying to drive, in terms of value, out of the ecosystem.
Speaker 2:And so you've touched on curiosity, which I think is a really important word. Another word for someone in your position is honesty, which is we often in partnerships need to be super upfront about what our priorities are. Sometimes our priorities might not fully align with a partner's priorities, and one of those instances, really often, is getting partners to do really tough actions that drive mutual value, new logo acquisition being one of them. Sometimes it's easy for partners to rely on. How do I ambulance chase, maybe get involved in some deals that are probably already going to close, which you can understand from a partner's perspective, but definitely isn't your priority? How do you encourage the right behavior?
Speaker 1:It starts with the honesty and integrity. You know it starts with the honesty and integrity, right? If we have a hard message to deliver. I ask my teams, and I ask our ecosystem partnership teams and our field sales team to deliver hard news early. If your client is telling us that they're dissatisfied with a specific partner, the right thing to do is to pick up the phone and tell the partner the position they stand in, right? If we do that, then we're OK. If we don't do that, then we get into some other messiness around, just whether what our role is in it might be and might not be, and it's really never our role. We are committed to the channel.
Speaker 1:The problem is, sometimes clients have a difference of opinion. Who knows where they're getting it from? But we can't just tell our partners what they want to hear, right? We need to tell them what we think, and that's what just being a high integrity individual and a high integrity organization is all about. And we need to be transparent, right? Not just like like. A lot of times, these things don us to that point and the real question is are we communicating transparently and effectively on time throughout the process, or are we waiting weeks at a time, because when you don't hear from your business partner it's like, would you go? You just can't. You can't go dark on people, because then you know that makes emotions and reactions probably much worse, if it's been. But as long as you're staying in touch with them and you're being honest about that engagement, I think we usually end up in a pretty good spot yeah, I think a good rule for life a slightly, slightly painful conversation today prevents a really painful conversation tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Right, and having that integrity to call out, let's not say bad behavior, sub-optimal behavior, um, I think can course correct early and it sort of brings people in line yeah, and you know I mean, look, I I understand why.
Speaker 1:You know, look everybody, I'll never fault anybody for trying to maximize their comp plan. But you know it's okay as long as you have a tough plan. But you know it's okay as long as you have a tough discussion on. You know, here's what's okay, here's what's not okay. We can usually get through it by the end of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I sometimes, sometimes I think you know that misalignment or suboptimal behavior it's actually usually a misunderstanding around what long-term success looks like, right, which is if, hey, if you tread on my toes now, we're just not going to have as productive as a relationship over the next three to five years that we both want. This is sort of what I need from you. This is how I can support that action.
Speaker 2:How do you sort of you mentioned high integrity organization how do you galvanize that attitude, that culture? Because it is hard to encourage people to have some of those harder, tougher conversations it can be quite easy for people to fall into. Let's just whisper sweet nothings and move on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean a lot of it is just, you know it's continual, you know it's a challenge with what makes. What makes things challenging sometimes. Is turnover on both sides of an organization right, because, look, there's just a like the world we live in, people leave partners, people leave manufacturers, and whatever behaviors you may have known from your previous place of employment may not apply now. So we have to reinforce what our rules of engagement are consistently across the board, with both our internal teams and our external teams. And you know, especially when you're dealing with organizations as large as you know, the collective cybersecurity community trying to sell more cybersecurity solutions to clients, there's going to be messiness involved. So it's like we, like I asked my teams to make sure that our teams understand what the rules of engagement are. Whenever we have, whenever I have, escalations with our clients, I try to get down to what's the what's the core infraction versus, what are the feelings and what. How much of it is a? How much of it is a sequencing issue in terms of timing versus. Did somebody or was the intent to really do this, and a lot of that it's just through picking up the phone. I'll go back to this. Stuff doesn't get litigated through email. It doesn't get litigated through text messages. Usually you have to pick up a phone and we can figure out what happened pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:The strongest relationships I have in the ecosystem are ones that I can. You know we can have the most sensitive topic. There is a big deal happens. If I can have a conversation with somebody, we can usually get on the same page on what happened and what the next steps are to move forward together. But a lot of times, you know this age we're living in where everything's digital and there's so many different communication methods, that's where going back to just the going back to, you know, a phone call, a conversation, meet for coffee. That's when we can usually because people have a different reaction and a different engagement style eyeball to eyeball as opposed to being a keyboard warrior.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say it's quite easy to intentionally do bad behavior. It's really hard to do that, to my face, right, when we've built a relationship and I helped you win there and you helped me win here and we actually have something that we both enjoy and is productive, it's really hard to intentionally do bad behavior and I usually find that that intentionally bad behavior is actually just a misunderstanding, right, it's really. Oh, I did not know the rules of engagement properly and so I always want to see from my team when that partnership breaks down slightly. What I want to see is here's my responsibility and where that partnership breaks down, and I think that's where we build productive relationships.
Speaker 1:And that's the you hit on the key word. That is that we're putting that over the last couple of years, we're putting through the fiber of the sales organization here, which is what is the partner intentionality within the account right, and if we have a clear partner strategy that can usually and we document it we are upfront about what, memorializing what both of our commitments to each other are going to be we usually end up in a good spot when we don't have that intentionality and we're not clear with each other on what our intentions are. That's when the that's when the conflict sometimes arises awesome.
Speaker 2:I know it's been amazing having you on. Thank you so much. There is one more piece I need from you, because we are a proper partnerships podcast. We ask our current guest to recommend our next guest. Who do you have in mind?
Speaker 1:I think somebody who would probably have a great perspective on this would be I'd recommend Craig Weinstein at NVIDIA. He's been a friend of mine for a number of years but you know I joke with him that being a channel leader at NVIDIA over the last several years has to be such a unique, interesting place to live. But I bet he's got some great wild insights about what he's seen in partnerships living in the space he lives in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's going to be. I imagine that's been a wild ride. I'm excited to have him on, but thank you so much for coming in yourself. It's been awesome.
Speaker 1:Alex, it's been a pleasure. Thanks, bud, good talking to you.