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January 06, 2023

Palo Alto Networks secures customer successes with the Microsoft commercial marketplace

Palo Alto Networks is a global cybersecurity leader, helping customers of all sizes and complexities advance securely through trusted intelligence, automation, and flexibility with comprehensive security offerings spanning cloud, network, and operational security. With cloud security as one of the three main pillars of its business, Palo Alto Networks is turning to Microsoft commercial marketplace as a central procurement vehicle that takes the friction out of the complex B2B buying process.

Palo Alto Networks

“Co-selling with Microsoft allows us to solve two of the CIO’s biggest challenges: the migration of public cloud and cybersecurity.”

Prem Iyer, Senior Vice President Ecosystem Partnerships, Palo Alto Networks

Forging security

Fourteen years ago, Santa Clara, CA-based Palo Alto Networks began as a network security leader. Today, it has the most comprehensive cybersecurity platform across network security, cloud security, and security operations. The constantly changing and expanding security landscape, coupled with enterprises shifting to hybrid work, has created a significant demand for cloud security. Palo Alto Networks is now focused on centralizing procurement on cloud marketplaces which contributes to its 30 percent year-over-year growth.

“The need for cybersecurity and the change towards centralizing procurement on cloud marketplaces has never been greater,” said Prem Iyer, Senior Vice President Ecosystem Partnerships, Palo Alto Networks. “This convergence has driven our opportunity to work through the commercial marketplace with Microsoft and explode our joint business together.”

Partnering with Microsoft

Palo Alto Networks integrates its products and services with Microsoft Azure to offer a variety of joint solutions to help companies protect apps and data, respond swiftly to attacks, and adjust and update policies across digital environments.

Since Palo Alto Networks began selling through the commercial marketplace in 2019, it’s seen consistent double-digit growth each year. Becoming a Microsoft Azure private MEC (multi-access edge compute) partner is further driving its success and highlights how the commercial marketplace can serve as the center of gravity to help ISVs with co-sell opportunities and a meaningful channel to reach customers.

Most recently, Palo Alto Networks released availability of its VM-Series Virtual Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) technology via the commercial marketplace. This particular technology helps enterprises secure private and mission-critical data and applications across industry verticals, such as healthcare and manufacturing, which require meeting the latest in private wireless network technology.

Simplifying with Marketplace

For Palo Alto Networks, selling through the commercial marketplace has three very clear advantages for its customers.

“Our customers benefit tremendously from marketplace,” said Iyer. “Through increased efficiency they can come to one catalogue and buy every cybersecurity solution they need. They are also shopping with confidence because they know these solutions have been certified by Microsoft to deploy and run well on Azure. Finally, they can shop smarter by decrementing their Microsoft Azure commit while at the same time solving their biggest cybersecurity challenges.”

Customers transacting through the marketplace can receive private offers that have curated terms specifically for them. They are also able to lock in SaaS pricing over multiple years, allowing them to strategically budget out years in advance. The ability to decrement their Microsoft Azure commit allows them to take every dollar that they use towards procurement of Palo Alto Networks transactions to reduce what their commitment is and obtain additional discounts on cloud infrastructure and pricing towards future buys.

Maturing the Marketplace Channel

Palo Alto Networks also sees direct benefits from focusing on the marketplace as a go-to channel. It can reach every market segment from small and medium-sized business all the way to Fortune 500 companies. The simplified sales process that the customer sees also extends to companies like Palo Alto Networks where B2B transactions are traditionally complex.

“Being able to centralize and streamline transactions through marketplace makes it easier and faster for our joint customers to get the cybersecurity solutions they need, at the time they need it,” notes Iyer. “Leveraging Azure takes care of tax issues, currency conversions, making it smooth and not a burden for us so we can focus more on unlocking growth like never before. Co-selling with Microsoft allows us to solve two of the CIO’s biggest challenges: the migration of public cloud and cybersecurity.”

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