 We're here with Daniel Bernard, who's CrowdStrike's chief business officer and leads the company's channel, alliances and partnership efforts, and the go-to-market strategy for the all-important SMB segment. And he's joined by Rahul Tikhu, who is the senior vice president and general manager of the client product group at Dell, the company's largest line of business. Gents, welcome. Good to see you. Great to be here, Dave. Good to see you, too. Guys, I've been really excited to have this conversation. Daniel, since we last talked at Falcon, CrowdStrike's annual customer event, the small and mid-sized business sector, it's so important. They struggle to protect their employees, their customers, and their data from cyber attacks, and they don't have the resources necessarily to do that. So when I found out about the Dell CrowdStrike Alliance, I was really intrigued. It's evolving. Daniel, what was the genesis of this partnership? How did it all come about? Well, the partnership with Dell is really a special go-to-market effort for us. If you look at Dell, roughly one-third of the PC market, some years more, and really an enterprise leader and a leader in all segments of customers, where do customers start their cybersecurity journey? It starts on the endpoint. So coupling these technologies together, the best computing devices and user compute in the market with the very best cybersecurity in the market, it just makes sense. Maybe you guys could each talk about the motivation for Dell and CrowdStrike forming this partnership. How do the respective strengths of each company better serve customers? Ro, maybe you could go first, and then, Daniel, you can chime in. Yeah, no, thank you for that question. The way I think about this is the world has become a lot more hybrid, sort of how we're working right now, right? People are working, paying, learning from it anywhere, anytime. And Daniel also tells us, like Daniel was saying, 90% of the breaches are happening at the endpoint. And so as we're designing solutions to block and respond to threats where they occur, whether it's on the device, the network, or the cloud environments that we work in, at Dell, we're delivering industries most secure commercial PCs that sort of foundational, that's built on top of our secure supply chain operators, hardware security using Intel V Pro, authentication, security using SafeID, hardware biosecurity feature called SafeBios. And it was only natural that with CrowdStrike we're able to now equip customers with extensive management capabilities that extend above VOS and integrate all of these security features into a single pane of glass that our customers can use. So I'm really excited about this partnership. Anything you'd add to that, Daniel? Just to add to Raul's comment, I think when you start moving down market, the buyer for cybersecurity, in many cases, is the same buyer for end-user computing. So we're able to solve these problems together, bringing not only the best devices to these businesses, but also cybersecurity that works, cybersecurity that is powered by AI, cybersecurity that stops the breach. The market knows Dell and knows Dell's leadership position. The market also knows CrowdStrike. And so I think what's special about this is we're bringing two of the leading brands, the brands that customers want, to the forefront, and the tech works together and it's easy to buy. So it's a pretty powerful value proposition for the customer. So I want to dig a little bit into the specifics of the Alliance for SMBs. What are some of the particulars in terms of what organizations can expect when they're working with Dell and CrowdStrike? Raul, specifically, what's in it for the SMB customer? Yeah, so we announced the addition of the CrowdStrike Falcon platform to our Dell Safeguard and Response portfolio back in March. Our Safeguard and Response portfolio is comprised of a suite of solutions that are designed to prevent, detect, respond, and remediate attacks in all sizes of organizations globally. You know, like Daniel was saying, CrowdStrike Falcon platform is an industry-leading cloud-native platform and we're really pleased to offer this solution to our customers. So, you know, we've expanded and broadened our Safeguard and Response portfolio. We're building on our best-in-class and scalable solutions and helping these small and medium businesses and their journey to zero-trust architecture. Another great thing that CrowdStrike brings to the plate is that it's FedRAM authorized, right? So if you think about this, this is the level of authorization required for defense contracts. So really, really excited. And, you know, we're ramping this set of offers for our customers jointly. So obviously, Daniel, you've charged your routes to market for SMB. I mean, this is a huge uptick in that channel. Maybe you could talk a little bit about sort of what that entails from your perspective, sort of what this brings to the SMB. Sure. And I think it's important to note, Dave, that this is really a cross-segment endeavor. Like Rahul was saying, the world's largest and leading enterprises, they purchase from Dell. And so our technology is fit for purpose for them. The Falcon platform is offered to these customers and the entirety of the platform through Dell. Then you have medium enterprises where it's fit for purpose. What we're doing scales so nicely across the stack, there's the critical missions for government that we work together on doing transformational work to bring leading cybersecurity to Dell customers and federal agencies. Then if you think back to your question, Dave, the SMB market, this is we're making it extremely easy to buy matters and positioning and making sure we're in front of the customer at the right time matters. And that's where what we're doing together on the box is so powerful. Helping Dell customers at the point of sale as they're buying their PC that they're going to use for the next three or five years, making sure that PC is fortified with the right security. And so we have a very compelling offer together with Dell, where we start a Falcon platform journey with those customers, leveraging our best and breed AI native technology so that organizations, many small and medium businesses, can not only detect and respond but also prevent attacks before they even occur. And if you think about the scale of Dell worldwide, it's really a huge market, the long tail of SMBs, over 50 million SMBs in the world. So Dell becomes a meaningful force multiplier for our business in this area. Can you guys comment on what the response has been in the marketplace? Are there any success stories that kind of demonstrate the advantages or better customer outcomes? What kind of evidence do you have that this is working? Well, first, this is a global partnership. So I think it's really exciting that off the bat, we've sold in every major operating continent large deals, as well as scale deals through SMB. We've worked together on healthcare providers, we've worked together in the federal space. We're seeing great commercial momentum across every segment. And then launching the on the box offering, we're seeing significant attach rates there already. So what I'm really excited about is what our sellers here in the field and what they hear is their Dell colleagues and peers calling them up saying that there's customer demand. We're seeing pipeline grow, we're seeing the sales results grow and everything is ahead of our expectations. So we're off to the races. There's still so much more in this partnership that we can do that we have on the roadmap in terms of new offerings and new capabilities. But off the bat, global representation, global scale, global reach and adoption across every customer segment that we're serving together. Thank you for that. Well, maybe you could address it as well. I'm curious as to, you know, are there typical use cases that stand out? I mean, Daniel mentioned a number of sort of industry applications. And how complicated is it for an SMB customer to actually adopt? Yeah, no, I think, you know, I'm, I'm a tech geek at heart. So I want to geek out a little bit and kind of demonstrate to you how one plus one plus one in this case is a lot of three. But what did it happen? You know, we have been working very closely with CrowdStrike and Intel. It is not just taking CrowdStrike's off the shelf solution and offering it to our customers. It's really a very tight relationship where Dell, Intel and CrowdStrike are integrating our solutions together. Right. So I'll give you a few examples of that. Right. First, you know, we're leveraging our secure commercial VC heritage. Right. Dell has a bunch of built-in protections that our competitors can't match, whether it's off most bios and firmware verification, whether it's indicators of attack that allow us to detect attacks in motion, whether it's hardware-based user authentication, secure supply chain, secure component verification. And then, you know, our solution also has all the hardware telemetry that we can make available to or we make available to the CrowdStrike Falcon platform where, you know, we are probably one of the very few as not the only PCWe architecture that's taking all this below the OS hardware security and integrating it into CrowdStrike's console. Second, you know, what do you think about Intel? Intel has a set of protections, too, that will Dell and CrowdStrike are leveraging. Dell commercial PCs were harnessing a bunch of Intel's VTrop protections. Think of, you know, some of the below the OS Intel features like Intel hardware shield, Intel bios guard, Intel boot guard. All of these things are leveraged as a part of our below the OS security suite. And we're also doing secure office firmware verification for the Intel management engine. The second set of protections Intel has this technology called Thread Detection Technology that's leveraging their integrated GPU, which is available on most Intel client platforms to do critical memory scanning functionality. And CrowdStrike is using this advanced memory scanning to find suspected malware in memory to detect fileless attacks. Not only that, and as you sort now think about CrowdStrike in the software layer, we just talked about advanced memory scanning, but CrowdStrike also had hardware enhanced exploit detection, which looks for other similar memory use exploitations. There are also device level security notifications where CrowdStrike's console is integrating all of the great telemetry that Dell and Intel are providing to make it truly an insights based single pane of glass that organizations of any size can leverage, right? So I think that's very unique, right? I don't want you to leave with a, it's just the CrowdStrike Falcon offer. It's really the partnership and how we're bringing the value of one plus one plus one equal to much greater than the sum of parts, which is very important for our customers. They don't have to do anything, they just buy the Dell commercial PC with the CrowdStrike offer and Intel V Pro CPUs to get all of these protections. I really appreciate that because this is more than just a go-to-market press release. It's deeper integration into the silicon, you're exploiting the silicon all through the hardware stack and it's integration with the CrowdStrike software. So I appreciate that nuance there and I don't really have to do anything, I just get it. It's Intel and CrowdStrike inside. Daniel, I want to ask you differences between S and M, small and mid, I mean. And so, you know, a lot of times the mid-sized companies, they don't necessarily have the, maybe a detail, a big sock. They might not even have a sock, but they got more resources than the small companies. Can you share with the audience the differences there and how they might think about security, you know, generally for those different constituencies? Sure. The first thing, Dave, is that everybody's thinking about cybersecurity. Companies that are super small, medium-sized, large, this is a top priority from an IT spend perspective. So that's what unites them all. Everybody is prone to the breach and ransomware and malware. They don't discriminate between business size. They're out to get everybody for financial gain and more. So that's the big problem statement that unites all these folks together, but how they operate cybersecurity is very different. If you go down to the S of SMB, there may not even be anybody operating IT, let alone cybersecurity. You ask them what a sock is and they're going to tell you they wear socks, they don't know what a security operation center is. So making cybersecurity that just works, that is easy to deploy, easy to configure with just a click, that's super important. And if you look at offerings that we have on the market like Falcon Go, it really personifies and brings to light that use case of a prosumer style application that just works. As you go up to medium enterprises, that's where use cases like EDR start to become much more prevalent where you need prevention, you need detection and response. You start to talk about securing identity, securing the cloud, understanding data protection as well. And this is really where the power of the Falcon platform comes to bear, where you start with one use case and you can grow to others without having to deploy any new software and of course no hardware in our business. That makes all the great hardware for that. So that really starts to speak to some of the differences. The other thing that I'd like to cover Dave and mention is half of the market or close to it is still using legacy AV. And if you go to the large enterprises they know legacy AV doesn't work signatures don't work reactive cybersecurity doesn't work. Businesses of all sizes needs something better needs something proactive needs something AI driven. And just as the digital transformation that we've all seen, and every other aspect of business has occurred. That is the transformation that together Dell Crowdstrike and like Rahul was saying Intel, that is what we're bringing to light for businesses of all sizes it has to be easy we have to meet them where they are. And it has to also be the right technology for the right market segment. So back to the little s that just needs something that's one click that works, and then you go up to the medium enterprise, and then need start to become a little bit more bespoke, more visibility, as well as more automation around remediation. These are all capabilities that you can get natively on the Falcon platform. I'm glad you mentioned that Daniel because when I when I really started getting into following Crowdstrike, you know I was lulled into this state of complacency thinking my antivirus was taking care of me at my end point and it's, it's clearly not things have changed. I want to make an observation and then ask you guys to comment. So, as we entered COVID we saw obviously big uptick in need for laptops and we saw the ascendancy of Crowdstrike in a big way, as we had to protect remote workers and then as we exited the isolation economy obviously PC demand you know ebbs and flows. But we saw this trend the premise of navigating the road to cyber resiliency in this summit is that the the worlds of data protection backup recovery etc. And cybersecurity were kind of an adjacency and now we see them throughout the year really getting smashed together in a big way do you see that do you see data protection as a fundamental component of whether you call it zero trust architectures or frameworks. Do you guys see that Raul maybe you could comment and Daniel I don't know if you have anything to add. Yeah, no I think I can start by saying that if you sort of think about what has happened in the world. You know the attack vectors have changed and the attack circumstances increased right data is sort of the new oil and data protection like you said is key to any industry it's key to protecting IP in any industry. So we're seeing a couple of different things right. So we're seeing finalists malware is now the dominant execution method for cyber attacks. Right. So, when you think about what Daniel was saying previously. Yeah, it made legacy gr software protections. So you cannot depend on legacy gr protection. So, you know, with crowd strike and heat, which is the upgrade and six point detection that I talked about that works on the basis of the underlying telemetry. Crowd strike is really reimagined how to stop these five less attacks data by using accelerated memory scanning algorithm. Right. That's really unique in what we're providing in the platform to protect these attacks. Second, what we're seeing is former attacks are also becoming prevalent. There was some industry research conducted by two term during the pandemic and 44% of the organizations reported at least one hardware level or bias level attack in town years 2020. And so when you think about that, and that, you know, the built in bias and former protections opposed into management engine for more education and then exposure of all of that to crowd strike single pane of class. You're able to really get underneath those attacks and control that right. And so in the end, when we think about key customer benefits, really what we're doing is reducing the attack surface. Significantly, improving the threat detection that together crowds trying to let Intel, whether the technologies are getting together and are setting up this whole idea of zero trust, right. Organizations are about better position to maintain policy compliance device trust as you sort of progress in that zero trust journey. Given that most of the threats are starting at the end point having secure devices sort of becomes foundational in a zero trust world. And then finally, optimizing security investments right is there's a lot of tools that are customers inches. Right. But in this particular case, they can actually bring a lot of their investments together into the commercial PCs Intel, we promote silicon and crowd strike as the XDR platform of choice to be able to really optimize get the full protection that they need. Great. I don't have anything else you wanted to add to that. No, Rahul, you said it very nicely. I just add from a business and market perspective. Really what's going on the operative term of the day is consolidation. It's not just between data security and endpoint security. It's really a wholesale consolidation that's going on in cybersecurity. If you look at cybersecurity today, there's over 3000 cybersecurity technology companies out there. And customers are saying, I'm looking for a platform. I'm looking for a platform that will help me solve multiple problems with a single form factor that will allow me to consolidate my spend that will allow me to get more output for the same inputs that are looking ultimately and most importantly to stop the breach. And I think what really differentiates crowd strike in this market is we were built for this consolidation wave that's happening right now. We've got 27 modules on the platform. We disrupt multiple categories of cybersecurity and we blend them together so that the customer has a single pane of glass and can manage end to end, whether it's EDR XDR identity threat detection response cloud security. We also use cases like Falcon for IT where we're replacing endpoint management technologies, hygiene and compliance technology. So the space is really littered with a lot of vendors and a lot of different point products and tying those things together into a platform is really important. Part of that consolidation also is a go to market consolidation where customers are looking to solution providers like Dell to say you're making great devices. Help me keep that device secure. It saves them a conversation with another vendor later or multiple vendors later so the operative term of the day is really consolidation. And I think we are driving consolidated outcomes, but we're also changing the way that we bring the software to market and that Dell brings cybersecurity to market by partnering bringing customers best of breed technologies, having it pre integrated getting our customers out of the integration business, taking care of that for them and working with trusted industry partners like Intel. It all comes together nicely and lands in the lab so that it's plug and play. You got to simplify in this day and age guys, we're out of time, but such a good conversation flies by. One last question for each of you. When you look ahead, you know, how do you envision the collaboration between your two companies evolving to stay ahead of these ever changing and emerging cybersecurity threats. Yeah, I can I can start and then people jump in. I think there's a couple of vectors that will continue to collaborate on. You know, first, we talked about hardware resisted security out being shown the attack service that will continue to be a big thing, right as we need to continue to go drive a layered approach to security below the OS above the OS hardware and software to really reduce that attack resistance. Second, you'll see new tools and capabilities think about artificial intelligence that's a big new technology bear alive that is going to also come into the space that can be leveraged by crowds try to go provide increases levels of threat detection response utilizing all this great telemetry and data that the product is generating in terms of but how it's being used. So I'll just draw a whole comment that services is a great area for collaboration that we're looking towards in the future collaborating on helping customers operationalized cybersecurity, helping them benefit from having a sock. These are areas where we can bring best of breed capabilities from both sides to help again meet customers where they are so we're going to collaborate more on the technology. So we're going to continue collaborating and refining the go to market and enhancing the overall customer experience of helping customers operationalized cybersecurity. Guys, guys, great job today. Thank you for keeping the little guys safe. A couple of big companies doing doing your part really appreciate your time. Thanks a lot Dave take care. Okay, keep it right there for more conversations live and on demand from our Palo Alto studio you're watching navigating the road to cyber resiliency a summit to educate and inspire companies to improve their cyber defenses. We'll be right back.