 Hello, and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of splunks.conf virtual this year. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, and one of the great reasons of being on site with the team here is we're going to bring remote guests in. Remote guests, well, no stories too small. We bring people into theCUBE to have the right conversations. We've got Brooke Cunningham, area VP of global partner marketing experience. Brooke, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. Hey, thank you, John. This is my six.conf, but this is actually my first time being on theCUBE, so I'm delighted. Great to have you on. These new hybrid events, we can bring people in. You don't have to be here. All the execs are here. The partners are here. Great news is happening all around the world. You guys just announced a new partner program for the cloud called Partner Verse Program. This is kind of, you know, mostly partner news is okay, okay, partner news, partner ecosystem, but I think this is an important story because Splunk is kind of going to the next level of scale. That's to me is my observations walking away from the keynote. A lot of partners, great technology, great platform, a lot of growth with cloud. We had Formula One on. You guys have a growing ecosystem. What is the new announcement Partner Verse about? Yes, thanks, John, and you are spot on. We are growing for scale and Splunk's partner ecosystem is 2,200 strong. And we were so delighted to have so much partner success highlighted today on the keynotes. And specifically, we have announced an all new Splunk Partner Program called the Splunk Partner Verse. So we're taking it to new frontiers for our partners, really built for the cloud to help our partners lean into those cloud transformations with their customers. Great, bro, can you walk me through some of the numbers inside the numbers for a second? How many partners do you have and what is this program about specifically? Yeah, so 2,200 partners and we featured some amazing stories in the keynotes today around some of the momentum we have with partners like AWS, Accenture, Blue Boyant, a partner that just recently re-architected all of their managed services from Splunk Enterprise to Splunk Cloud because as they put it, Splunk is the only solution that can truly offer that hybrid solution for their customers. So all new goodness for our partners to help them lean in to get enabled around all of the Splunk products as well as to differentiate their offerings with a new badging system. And we're going to help our partners really take that to the market by extending and expanding our marketing and creating an all new solutions catalog for our partners to differentiate themselves to their customers in the market. You mentioned a couple of things I want to double down on this badging thing, get in some of the nuances, but I want to just point out that, and get your reaction to this, when you see growth, and I saw this early on with AWS, early on when they were forming, when you start to see the ecosystem grow like this, you start to see more enablement, you see more money making going on, more custom solutions, more agility. So you're starting to see these things develop around you guys. So what does all this badging mean? And what's in it for me as a partner? How do I win on this? Yeah, great question. So first of all, John, partner listening is a big part of what we do here at Splunk. And it's specifically a major part of what I do in my role. So we create a lot of forums to get that real deal partner feedback. What do they need to be successful with their customers? Especially as Splunk continues to expand our portfolio. And we heard some really clear feedback from our partners. Number one, they need more enablement faster, especially all those new products, they really want to get enabled around new product areas like observability their customers are asking for it. They secondly told us that being able to differentiate themselves to customers was key, and that showing that they had core expertise around specific solution areas, types of services, as well as specializations. For example, some of our partners that are authorized learning partners, they really wanted to be able to showcase these skills and differentiate that to their customers in the market. And they saw a role for us at Splunk to really help them do that. And so we took that feedback and really incorporated it into this new program. The badging specifically will help to address some of those things I mentioned. So for example, a lot of badging around those use case areas, security, observability, out migrations, as well as specializations, like I mentioned for things like partners that are doing learning specific partners that are really helping us expand our reach in different international markets and so on. Let me just ask question on the badge, if you don't mind. So you mentioned almost like you were going through like verticals. Is badging to be much more about discovery from a client and user customer standpoint? Are you looking to create kind of much more categorical differentiation? What's the purpose of the badge? Because I noticed it was like different verticals. I heard security and other things. Yeah, so I would say think of it as both. So for example, our partners go to market with us in many different ways. Some of them are selling, servicing, building. So there'll be partner motion badges to really differentiate the different ways that they're supporting customers from a go-to-market approach. And then additional badging to help really identify some of those specialization areas around whether that's plump use cases, in-person specializations, and more. For example, a specific badge that we're rolling out right here at .conf is around cloud migrations. And partners will be able to get started to get engaged on that badge in preparation for our full-scale launch in February. Well, they'll start to be able to take advantage of learning pathways, get their teams skilled up, and that will then unlock some new incentives as well as benefits that they could take advantage of. Things like accessing more of the Splunk cloud experience and the proof of concept platform and really giving their teams more capability and resourcing. You know, I saw Theresa Carlson in the hallway here at .conf and she and I were talking about how AI and data is enabling a lot of people to create these solutions. So, you know, you got kind of this almost like Amazon Web Services dynamic where it's growing really fast and we're hearing stories how data is driving value. We heard Formula One on theCUBE. The keynotes were given some examples. As you start to see this momentum kind of scaling up to the next level, if you're enabling customers, which you are with data, the monetization or the economic shifts, right? So in its healthy ecosystems, the partners create solutions, they deal with the customer, they're making some money, right? So, can you share your vision on the unit, on the economic equation of how partners are tapping into this? Because I almost imagine 1,000 flowers are blooming and then you start to see more value being created and Splunk also gets a cut of it, but there should be that kind of dynamic. Can you talk about that quickly? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, one of the things that I have the opportunity to do with our partners is study our partner's success and profitability. And some of the things that we learn from those studies with our partners is that what's really helping our partners to grow their practices with Splunk and their profitability with that business is really the stickiness that they have with their customers, being able to deliver solutions and services and really be those subject matter experts for their customers. And we know that our most successful and profitable partners are servicing their customers across the Splunk cases. So for example, many of our partners came from a security background and they are super deep, super knowledgeable around security and they are trusted by their customers as the subject matter experts around security. And so many of them are starting to lean in on some of the new additional use cases. Observability is a hot topic with our partners right now. It's a new and emerging use case for them to transition some of the same sense of data that they are addressing in their current deployments with their customers and bring new value with those new cases. So that's where we're seeing partner profitability grow. I love the channel dynamic there. We got indirect and value creation. I got to ask you about the data dynamic. Of course, we all know about the market and recent story, software is eating the world. Okay, software ate the world, okay. Now that's done. Now where data is continuing to drive the value proposition. And so that's going to have an impact on how customer, your partners serve their customers, ultimately your customer at the end of the day. How is that happening from a success standpoint? How would you talk to where people are in the progress of bringing the most innovative solutions? Where's the headroom? Where do you see that going, Brooke? There's, I would say there's just endless opportunity here. And we just see so much innovation in our partner ecosystem to create purpose-built solutions for their customers' business problems. And that's where I think the value of the data comes to life, really turning that data into doing as is really thematic for all the things that we're talking about here at .conf21 that our partners really see these opportunities and then to replicate some of those same solutions for other customers in the same cases. So for example, really specialized solutions for healthcare where they're providing access to all the data across the hospital or you heard in Garz keynote about unlocking the value of SAP data. This is just a huge opportunity, accessing all that data and really turning that data into doing. And we'll be talking even more about the new SAP relationship and the value for the partner ecosystem to go address those SAP data sets and their customers. We'll be talking more about that on our partner feature section, which is tomorrow in day two of .conf. Well, you guys have a nice mix of business in the partner ecosystem from small boutiques to high-end system integrators and everything in between. I noticed you're doing a lot with Accenture. Could you talk about how you guys are partnering with the large global system integrators because they are becoming their own clouds. So, you know, as Jerry Chen at Greylock says, as are these castles being built in the cloud with real competitive advantage with data. Again, this is a new phenomenon in the past, really two years just starting to see explosion of scale and refactoring business models with data. What's your reaction to that? Absolutely. In fact, we are really leading in with some of these global systems integrators and you heard this exciting news in Theresa Carlson's portion of the keynote earlier today where we've announced Accenture partner business group together and we're so excited about the Accenture and Splunk partner business group. It's gonna elevate the Splunk and Accenture partnership. Accenture has invested in thousands and thousands of joint professionals that are skilled up on Splunk. They are building purpose solutions. We have so many amazing examples where Splunk and Accenture work together to solve real life problems. For example, there's a joint solution that helps address anti-human trafficking. There's a joint solution that helped with vaccine tracking. I mean, just really powerful examples that are just really extending value to customers and solving real life data problems. Well, you guys have a lot of momentum, Brooke, congratulations on the success and partner verse. We're going to follow it again. It was built for the cloud. I noticed on the headline it says Splunk launches new partner program for the cloud. Was there a partner program for the on-premises and what's different about on the cloud? Was it kind of new? Everything is cloud. What does that mean, that statement? Yeah, absolutely. So we, as we've all seen, customers are leaning into the cloud. That growth and movement to the cloud just accelerated during COVID. And so part of that feedback I referenced earlier that we heard from our partners, they said, we need help. We need help moving faster. And so that's really the underpinning of the all-new Splunk partner verse program is to really help that acceleration to skill up our partners and give them the tools to be successful. And so with that, we did want to rebrand and reinvigorate it to really signal this newness. And as I was mentioning earlier when we were talking about the badges, it's really about making sure we're providing the partners the right enablement so that they can be ready and able to support their customers on this journey to the cloud, as well as the access, the resources, the support and the marketing so that they can be successful and really feature their expertise and value in the marketplace. Well, Brooke, I want to get one final question before we go, because I know you have a lot of experience in partner ecosystems over your career, and we just interviewed the Formula One CEO, Zach Brown, and they've been very popular with the Netflix series Driving to Survive. And I was joking with him, driving value with data. As channel partners and your partners look to the post-pandemic survive and thrive trend that people are going through right now, what should they be thinking about when they look at partner verse and how Splunk can help them drive an advantage, not only to survive, but to actually drive to an advantage? I just see this as an opportunity for our partners that haven't already leaned into the cloud and helping their customers migrate to the cloud. Now is the time. Rapid cloud acceleration is just essential for organizations to reach their most critical missions and their outcomes. And the Splunk Partner Verse program is a significant move forward for our Splunk partners. And we want to pursue a massive market opportunity focused on the cloud with our partners for our customers. So I just really encourage our partners to engage, participate, and join us on this journey. Well, there's a lot of evidence to support this vision with pandemic. We saw re-platforming and refactoring the businesses in the cloud at speeds of unprecedented deployments. So cloud can bring that scale and speed to the table. It's really incredible. Brooke, thank you very much for coming on theCUBE. Remotely, thanks to have you here. Thank you. This was a delight. I really appreciate the time, John, and very excited to have my first opportunity to be a part of theCUBE. Okay, you're a CUBE alumni. We are here in the studios, Splunk Studios for their virtual event here with all the top executives and partners bringing in guests remotely. It's a virtual event. Soon we'll be back in person. I'm John Furrier theCUBE. Thanks for watching.