Dell’s exclusive deal will see it make CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform available to customers though multiple routes to market, and has led CrowdStrike to conclude that even a well-established company like themselves has much to gain from the partnership.
Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike
Cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike and Dell Technologies have announced a new strategic alliance. It will be available through multiple routes to market and is targeted at businesses of all sizes.
CrowdStrike has many strategic partners, like most endpoint vendors, and even has an alliance for them, but they consider the new Dell partnership to be an especially important one.
“Dell is our only PC OEM,” said Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike. “This is critical to Dell as well. Endpoint protection and security go together like peanut butter and jelly. Cybersecurity is different from productivity software. It isn’t a check box at the end of the line.”
Bernard said that Dell was their preferred candidate among their PC competitors to partner with.
“It’s because of the Go-to-Market expertise that they have,” he stated. “Dell was the first of them to master solution selling with these devices, selling them across the entire portfolio. They really excel at bringing a full solution to the customer, which includes hardware, cybersecurity, workflow management, and optimization management. That’s what customers want – technology that is easy to buy and easy to use.”
CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform will be available to Dell customers in several ways.
“They are customized solutions for different segments and different buying routes,” Bernard said. “The first option is buying a Dell device, where you can – get Falcon on the box when you purchase it.”
That’s likely to be the most common route, but there are other options available.
“You can also buy CrowdStrike subscriptions through Dell,” Bernard indicated. “The advantage to the customer here is that you can use the account team from them that the customer is used to working with, in order to buy CrowdStrike by itself.
“Dell also sells recurring subscriptions on a monthly basis to SMB customers, which is part of how they are making strides in giving customers a better buying experience,” Bernard said.
Finally, CrowdStrike can be purchased through Dell as a managed services offering.
“CrowdStrike can be consumed as a fully managed operation,” Bernard noted. “Their professional services use CrowdStrike for their services.”
Officially, the products will be available “in the coming months.” Unoffically, they are all available now except for the managed services.
“Dell was being overly cautious in approving the language in the announcement,” Bernard said. “You can buy the Dell-CrowdStrike integration now, except for the managed services offering.”
CrowdStrike has very high expectations for this partnership
“This is about two market leaders coming together, excited about a shared goal,” Bernard said. “It’s different from a startup showing up and figuring out how to go to market for the first time. If you look at CrowdStrike today, we have 23,000 customers. Still, Dell has much more. There’s an opportunity to work with customers in every geo including some where we don’t have a presence. It will help us get more market share and consolidate the TAM.
“We are in the early innings of a transformation,” Bernard concluded. “We are the XDR platform of the future. Working with a partner like Dell will help us get there.”
