Larissa Thomaz, Partner Account Manager at F5 Brazil, tells us how F5 supports its channel partners in the Latin America market.
What does your position entail?
F5 conducts all its sales transactions through partners. Within the ecosystem of the channel team, I am responsible for enabling and activating these partners in Brazil, shaping the strategy and establishing market entry plans with them.
Can you explain how your company works with channel partners?
First, we respect our channel partners and the entire ecosystem. We are straightforward in how we deal with this ecosystem, working hard to help our partners expand their businesses and position themselves as key partners for their customers. Our distributors are extremely aligned with our objectives.
Enable, activate and reward are critical values of our strategy.
We understand that the Brazilian market has its particularities, so we need to understand the needs and operational profiles of our partners. This is fundamental to building trust and elevating sales potential. We work together with F5’s sales and engineering teams to enable our partners. Additionally, we activate partners through marketing and business plans, aligning discounts with the sales strategy.
What is your management philosophy?
For me, it is about being transparent with our partners and expecting them to be transparent with us as well. This undoubtedly leads to success and ensures we are all heading in the same direction. It is essential to understand the business of each of our partners so that we can contribute to their growth.
Do you work differently with channel partners in Latin America compared to other regions?
F5 has a global channel program, UNITY+. In Brazil and LATAM, we follow the global strategy regarding Go-to-market priorities with partners. However, we develop and execute our own tactics and activities locally.
How do your partners deliver F5 solutions to end-users?
One of our goals is to enable our partners so they are prepared to provide services and support end-customers with our solutions. For this, the teams dedicated to this activity within the partners go through the F5 certification process to validate their knowledge.
How do you ensure channel partners flourish in a highly competitive market?
To maintain a competitive edge, it is essential for F5 to stay closely aligned with partners through a partnership program that supports their growth. This involves having clear market entry priorities with sophisticated AI and Machine Learning solutions to protect applications, APIs, and the multicloud environments of customers served by our partners. It is crucial for partners to effectively articulate the ‘why’ of this opportunity.
Our F5 Distributed Cloud Services platform allows CISOs and their teams to visualize, control, and protect the entire digital environment across all clouds, running all types of applications and APIs, thereby securing projects that support business processes for banks, government agencies, telecom operators and companies across all verticals.
What are the latest trends you see emerging across the channel?
With the rapid and strong change in our IT market, the initial belief that all traditional applications, including those essential to business operations, would quickly migrate to the cloud has proven oversimplified. It has become clear that different applications require different environments: public cloud, private cloud, colocation, traditional data centers or edge. This diversity arises from the fact that no cloud or environment is universally suitable for all applications.
Companies need flexibility to choose the most appropriate environment for each application. Partners who understand this varied landscape and adapt to the diverse needs of their clients are poised for success.
Which regions do you see offering the most opportunities for your company?
As a leader in the cybersecurity sector, F5 is recognized for its solutions that optimize any application, any API, anywhere. This reputation is reinforced by the company’s flexibility in consumption models and a strong commitment to application security and delivery. We see great opportunities throughout Brazil. If I could give advice to partners, it would be: find two or three solutions in which you excel, understand the business benefits they bring, and prospect clients with the same business problem. This can be done anywhere in Brazil.