'They're all channel companies until a deal gets interesting' - LogRhythm VP on SIEM rivals
Ross Brewer questions the channel commitment of other SIEM vendors
LogRhythm EMEA vice president Ross Brewer has slammed the firm's security information and event management (SIEM) competitors, claiming they lack commitment to their channel partners.
LogRhythm was recently named an SIEM leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, and now Brewer (pictured) has claimed that the security vendor's competition are hampered by uncertainty around their channel commitment.
While Brewer did not name any other vendors, LogRhythm is joined in the top-right corner of the Magic Quadrant by IBM, HPE, Intel Security and Splunk.
"[Being channel focused] has served us very well against our competitors in the top right that have all had challenges around the schizophrenia of whether they're a channel company or a direct company," he said.
"They're all channel companies until a deal gets interesting or it gets towards the end of the quarter and then they tend to go more direct and that's not something that we suffer from, so it puts us in good stead with the channel community."
LogRhythm recently put its IPO rumours to bed by announcing a round of fundraising that led to $50m (£37m) worth of investment.
The vendor is in the process of increasing its partner resources, Brewer said, and he expects to announce the appointment of a "leader" in the partner team soon.
He explained that LogRhythm's 100 per cent channel strategy is allowing it to "move up the food chain" when it comes to the size of the partners it works with, partly down to uncertainty surrounding the future of other vendors.
"These companies are being broken up, components are being sold; no one knows what the strategy is, no one knows what the future is and no one knows what the services business is going to look like because they're being broken up in some cases," he said.
"With this uncertainty, what is the development road map? What's the engineering plan? In many of these instances they don't know because they're up for sale or that division is up for sale, and then they don't have the same relationship with the industry and that solid reputation of standing by the channel."
Jason Holloway, managing director at LogRhythm partner Bridgeway, agreed that knowing a vendor is 100 per cent committed to the channel allows a partner to focus on growing its business.
"It's fair to say to say that some SIEM vendors have markedly different approaches to the channel," he said. "For some it's a lip service only. Some use it as a way to identify opportunities and then try stealing the end-user accounts directly."