As head of Partner Technical Alliances for the last 3 years, I've had the privilege of growing the XSOAR Marketplace. Having joined just after the Demisto acquisition, my journey with Cortex XSOAR Alliances started with the idea that our technical partners should have more input, ownership and control over the content in our product. While the repository was always open-sourced, I proposed a way to allow our partners to genuinely contribute and be credited for their work. We knew that by working with our amazing technical partners, we could scale up the ecosystem much more quickly than going it alone.
This strategy has been a success and the numbers prove it. I was fondly rereading my blog post from exactly two years ago introducing a new feature called “Partner Owned Integrations.” Launching the Partner Owned Integrations program required a true multi-faceted collaboration including UX and product updates, engineering and process changes, legal processes, documentation and enablement, and marketing to bundle it all together. Prior to the launch of that new program allowing Partners to control their contributions, the main focus was on Demisto content; I pulled some stats from that blog:
- Then: 17 partner owned integrations. Now: 188.
- Then: 360 total integrations. Now: 850 content packs.
But to truly change the way customers can build their security environments, we needed to offer a next level: the ability to sell content packs directly within the product! This brought about a whole new set of challenges for my team including creating a new SKU, working with revenue and finance and tax, creating private repositories and build processes, enabling partners, and interfacing with Ariba and SAP. We were the first SOAR platform to make content, such as playbooks and API keys, available via a subscription, and there was nor prior precedent at Palo Alto Networks so we had to build the plane as we flew it. Then in August 2020, we proudly launched Marketplace with Cortex XSOAR 6.0. It introduced the marketplace to the UI within the product, better searching, and a new notion of a “content pack” to organize playbooks with scripts and fields all together in a single-click downloadable package. The XSOAR PM team worked wonders on that major release. This changed the game for both customers and partners alike and further enabled us to scale up partner contributions in an organized fashion. We would love for you to consider joining the Marketplace, too.
After all of that preparation, we only needed one more thing: something to sell! Working with some of the best partners in the industry, in October 2020 we released several curated content packs under the “Premium” label and we were off running. Since that launch, we’ve grown Marketplace premium listings carefully and intentionally. We have invited select partners into the Premium label, but controlled how the platform grew so as to not overload our sellers. We’re pleased to have over 30 Premium offerings available today from some of the best names in security.
Among these incredible partners, I am so excited to feature the largest and most well-known brand of security intelligence on the planet, VirusTotal! This partnership forges a new road by seamlessly connecting VT data with XSOAR playbooks and intel management in one. And best yet: if you’re not already a VT Enterprise customer, you can activate it with a click in the Marketplace for a free 30 day trial or buy a monthly subscription. We also just recently launched a Private Offer feature for custom duration and pricing on most Premium offerings in the Marketplace.
What a wild ride it’s been and I can’t wait for what comes next.