Specialist
Former director at Tanium Inc
Agenda
- Tanium's endpoint communications solutions across endpoint management and endpoint security, noting the importance of SecOps (security operations)
- Industry dynamics, noting endpoint security companies such as CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) and Sentinel One (NYSE: S) and Tanium’s positioning and relevance
- Tanium’s sales approach and involved sales process
- 1-3-year outlook, noting opportunities, risks and impact of a potential IPO
Questions
1.
How would you describe Tanium as a company and what it does? The company has described its services as unified or complete endpoint management and endpoint security, with the tag line, “The Power of Certainty.” There is some confusion about whether it’s a cybersecurity management or a communications company.
2.
Does Tanium provide proper endpoint solutions, or does it interface and integrate with endpoint from players such as CrowdStrike, SentinalOne or legacy players such as McAfee? Or does it have its own software that either constitutes endpoint security or enhances what already might be in place from a third-party partner?
3.
Could a company aiming to protect its endpoints use solely Tanium, or would it need to partner with a primary provider specialising in or offering those types of solutions?
4.
You mentioned the notion of querying for details on endpoints in terms of where they are, what they’re serving. Is it also able to provide information about how the endpoints are actually functioning and performing? It would be an interesting exercise to have Tanium assess the performance of endpoint security across multiple providers and products.
5.
How important to Tanium and its users is the near real-time querying and data access capability? How is being able to have real-time capabilities a differentiating factor? For cybersecurity, whether it’s endpoint or SIEM [security information and event management] or network or cloud, real time seems to be the holy grail. It’s what a lot of these companies and enterprises are pursuing. How close is Tanium to those capabilities?
6.
Can you further discuss the platform itself upon which, as you mentioned, multiple modules are available? How is it architected, how is the platform deployed and how easy is it to use?
7.
What do you think are the most important or impactful modules? Tanium discusses its solutions in a broader sense, highlighting threat hunting, asset discovery and inventory, sensitive data monitoring, risk and compliance monitoring and client management.
8.
Patch management wasn’t specifically identified in the five categories we discussed within Tanium’s solutions framework. Where does that reside, and how many different modules would Tanium have within these five categories?
9.
What percentage of revenue do patch management and asset discovery and inventory account for?
10.
You’re saying the two modules, patch management and asset discovery and inventory, account for two thirds of revenue, and the other modules make up the rest. Is there anything else they’re doing? Are there any high-potential modules that might just require building the groundwork and bolstering the sales process?
11.
Will patch management remain relevant amid the cloud transition? Presumably, the product will be less relevant as patches aren’t as necessary because patches often are associated with your traditional on-premise licensed software model. Licensed on-premise software isn’t going away and is still ever present, whether in client-server architectures or the devices people use daily.
12.
Could you discuss Tanium’s TAM and what you expect for its growth? Could this be difficult to assess because, as we’ve discussed, it’s more of a proxy for the overall endpoint security market? Tanium has highlighted that one way to measure the market opportunity is that “endpoints are proliferating at a staggering rate, growing to an estimated 100 billion by 2025.”
13.
Do you think Tanium should be offering solutions for smartphones, tablets or networking devices? What are other areas that it currently is not involved in, but where there might be, if not a market need, then perhaps more specific customer needs?
14.
Would acquisitions be an avenue for Tanium to address the lack of anti-malware and antivirus software in its solutions or might that be too aggressive at this point? If the company is moving towards an IPO, it would be able to raise additional capital, and it would have publicly traded stock to potentially use as consideration for acquiring a company with assets it’s lacking.
15.
How do you think about the competitive landscape for Tanium? Do you think about CrowdStrike and SentinelOne? CrowdStrike seems an obvious competitor given its legacy and strengths in endpoint, how it talks about real time as a major differentiator and because it’s expanded to many different areas and modules. SentinalOne is considered an endpoint up-and-comer and went public in June 2021. Do you think more about companies such as Splunk and Exabeam, having discussed SIEM?
16.
When prospects engage with Tanium, it typically involves gaining intelligence about their security framework with a focus on endpoints. Who else are prospects talking to achieve that kind of goal or any other prominent purposes for engaging with Tanium?
17.
Could you discuss the sales cycle for Tanium? Sometimes it’s not readily apparent where Tanium is most applicable or where it can add value, and it seems this leads to a longer sales cycle. Is it a notably longer sales cycle than for comparable companies or products? Does it make sense for Tanium to align with technologies and products it works alongside so there’s a potential strong partnership for sales?
18.
What is the sales cycle for a Tanium vs a more traditional endpoint security provider or someone that’s involved in SIEM? It seems if you’re selling to the same enterprise, the sale cycle for Tanium has got to be longer not only because it is a sophisticated offering with multiple options and functionalities, but one that people are less familiar with. You mentioned the nature of the solution has elements that involves different parts of an organisation, so one might need additional sign-off.
19.
How should we think about Tanium’s revenue and growth? In March 2020, Tanium announced that its revenues in its just-ended annual period rose more than 50% Y0Y, exceeding USD 430m. What’s your 1-3-year outlook for the revenue base and its annual growth trajectory?
20.
How penetrated do you think large enterprises are? I’m assuming when you’re talking about large enterprises, you’re talking about the Fortune 100, because Tanium talks about half of the Fortune 100 being customers. It’s reasonable to then think that half are left, but I’m assuming a number of those are probably off limits for a variety of reasons. What is the sales model for Tanium if it turns its attention to smaller enterprises or mid-market companies? Will it try more of a self-service approach, which a lot of SaaS companies have done very successfully? It seems that wouldn’t dovetail particularly well with the sophistication and complexity of the solution set.
21.
How does Tanium address the churn within its sales team? Is it just a matter of people keeping their head down and grinding? Is it being more creative, whether it’s hiring or training or actually cultivating, and building a mid-market and down business, whether it’s self-service, whether it’s partnerships? If I understand what you’re saying correctly, that relatively recent 50% annual revenue growth number might have been notably lower this past year, and that might have continued.
22.
What do you think about a potential IPO for Tanium, and what kind of timing could make sense? It announced in October 2020 it had raised USD 150m and a valuation upwards of USD 9bn. If the company is undergoing a business model shift away from large enterprises as a primary focus and the lumpiness you alluded to persists as it tries to stand that sales structure up, it may not be the best time to go public.
23.
Could you discuss your 1-3-year outlook for Tanium?
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