Cyndi Doyle, VP of Global Channel at Snyk
Application security platform vendor Snyk is looking to better enable their partners, particularly in the growing area of AI security, and to make those relationships deeper and less transactional, with enhancements to their Global Channel and GSI Partner Program.
“During the past several years, Snyk has seen significant growth in revenues,” said Cyndi Doyle, VP of Global Channel at Snyk. “We want to continue that growth by channel changes that will make partners less transactional, for those who have deeper relationships with Snyk.”
Doyle stressed that the dynamics that have propelled Snyk’s growth to date are changing.
“When I joined Snyk in 2021, what we found was the company was growing very very quickly and a lot of that was COVID-related,” she said. “COVID had a huge impact on sales acceleration in the early 2020s because a lot of work was being done at home and developers started to use security tools to ensure that their product was secure. This growth accelerated very quickly and you saw us double and triple in sales within a four year period. That was a primary driver that led to Snyk’s expansion and growth.” Doyle also noted that Snyk acquired eleven companies over the last four years.
“We were really focused on being a true application security company that is a developer,” she said.
Customer demands are now changing, however.
“There is a lot of consolidation going on in the market and a lot of companies are now looking to a singular platform to securely protect all the different areas within an application,” she said. “We have a lot of customers who now to look to a single product that can help protect the entire application. As the threat landscape has changed and evolved, our buyers have become more solution focused, and being more of a transactional-based organization just wasn’t enough for us or really enough for our customers. We’ve also seen more customers who want a platform and a more complete solution and our partners really help us with that.
“We are really focused on ‘how do we help customers with the next gen of challenges they are faced with,” Doyle stressed. One of the biggest ones that we can help them with is specifically around AI. With the explosion of coding tools, we can ensure developers are working more efficiently and securely even in this new age of AI security. We are really focused in this next wave on AI security and supporting customers with that. That’s the new route that we are focused on, around AI security.”
This has a fundamental impact on partner relationships.
“Over the last four years, we have been very focused on the power of the partnerships but I think that one of the biggest changes Snyk has made over the past year is that we moved from being a transactional-based organization with partners to really building out more strategic solution focused partners,” Doyle stated.
The goal is to empower partners with the resources and opportunities they need to build thriving, future-focused businesses alongside Snyk in the rapidly evolving world of AI security.
“Because we built all these different integrations and solutions, and with the changes as our product became more of an enterprise focused solution over the last couple of years, it has really given us an opportunity to build better and stronger relationships with our partners that have more cohesive solutions that we can bring to customers,” Doyle said.
“One of the biggest changes when I moved into this role last year was to really focus on building out the regional relationships that are most clearly working with the customer, that our sales teams know and understand and that they want to work with because they either have a DevSecOps practice or an application security practice or now an AI security focus,” Doyle added. We took this step to focus on who are the right partners in this space. We are a pretty specialized organization and a specialized sale. We need partners who can articulate the value we bring. Those are the partners to focus on.”
These priority partners, a blend of System Integrators, Security Consultants, Value-Added Resellers, Cloud Partners, and distributors, are critical going forward.
Snyk particularly wanted to focus on a subset of priority partners
“These partners and three GSIs are the ones we are hoping will drive 90% of our business and our revenue,” Doyle indicated. “Those are the ones where we are building business plans and execution models, who we have executive sponsorships with. We are doing QBRs. We are bringing deals to these partners and they are bringing deals to Snyk.
“We are really focused on the sales and technical enablement of these partners so we can ensure the solutions they are bringing to market are the ones customers need,” Doyle added. “Snyk has also done a huge investment over this past year, more than doubled our partner team across the world and we have done that to make sure that we are building the right relationships and we have the right coverage model to ensure that our partners have a really good experience working with us as well.”
To this end, Snyk is making key updates to their Channel and GSI Partner Program.
“We used to have different tiering structures across the Americas, EMEA, and APJ because we have a lot of large scale global partners,” Doyle said. “We wanted to simplify that so it would be a much easier, more consumable partner program for partners to understand. One of the things we were really focused on was how do we make the global program structure more streamlined. How do we help partners make margins and deals where they are working really closely with us.”
The answer is changes to the global discount structure designed to maximize partner profitability and drive sales.
“This is not a change to pricing but to the discount structure partners were getting,” Doyle said. “Higher margins have been rolled out for priority partners and partners that source deals for Snyk and bring Snyk opportunities. Platinum and Gold partners will receive increased support through a suite of exclusive benefits designed to fuel growth, enhance profitability, and position them as leaders in the AI Security space. Platinum and Gold partners will be prioritized for select Snyk-sourced opportunities, positioning them for high-value engagements. Each Platinum and Gold partner will have a dedicated Regional Partner Manager to provide tailored guidance, strategic alignment, and ongoing support.
“We have also made changes to the renewals program to ensure they are more motivated and incented to help us with our renewals,” Doyle indicated.
“We also brought in some new programs,” Doyle stated. “We have an MDF program that is going to be focused on our priority partners. Having this strategy is not new for the market but it is for Snyk. And we are doing that to work on prioritizing investments that will directly help our partners and ourselves drive pipeline and also invest in customer specific solutions and campaigns that will help us address some of these larger customer challenges around AI security.
“We also released an implementation program so partners can build things like a jump start service, with a hybrid managed service style delivery that they can bring to customers like AppSEC as a service,” Doyle continued. “This is specifically for priority partners. We also have revamped our sales and technical pro certification available on the partner portal, and we will continue to invest in that.”
Doyle summed up the new partner approach.
‘Prioritization and focus have been a core part of the strategy and will continue to be this year and I think all through 2026 as well,” she said.
