Within Australia, these vital few include at least two partners – Sekuro and Innablr.
The importance of the trans-Tasman area
The Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) area is particularly important to Sysdig, as it represents one of its top three Asia Pacific and Japan regions from a growth perspective, according to the vendor’s vice president and general manager for APJ, Gavin Selkirk.
Of these top three markets, A/NZ make up a third of its booking contributions within APJ, which is on par with the other two top performers – India and Japan. Despite this, Selkirk also said A/NZ is its most difficult business within the region as there’s a strong reliance on direct relationships between vendors and customers.
“It’s still a little bit too much fascinated with direct and we can see lots of large enterprises that have taken their business away from partners and have a direct vendor relationship now,” he said.
Even with a tight selection of partners within its ecosystem, Olson, who was brought on board in March is no stranger to the region; his family on his mother’s side migrated to New Zealand and splits his time between the country across both North and South Islands of the country and the US.
“I like people that don’t pull punches; … what I’ve learned firsthand is the people [in A/NZ] are genuine, they’re honest, they like a sense of humour, but more importantly they’re serious about the business that they’re in,” he said.