Suresh Balasubramanian, Qualys | Qualys QSC22

This is texturong TV. Hey everyone. We're back here in value in Las Vegas for the qualisqse 2022 show.

It's been an amazing two days we've had. we've had everyone from the koalas CEO sumar sumed charcot to customers to analysts to end users. We really had a really good chance to get the flavor for what is here.

So if you couldn't make it, we hope you enjoyed this and as I said, you know numerous times. The Qs at the koalas is amazing. They do this show anybody could come.

Yeah. No, there's no admission. Yeah, you can come in and sit in and partake and and besides this big show here in Las Vegas.

They used to do a sort of mini road show on it. This year was in Atlanta in Boston. I think San Francisco.

Yeah. So if you do get a chance and you're involved in security quality qsc's great show. Don't miss it.

My next guest he actually was with us last year at QSC. He had just started within the month. So he's got a year under his belt.

We expect to hear a lot more from him now. It Suresh I'm gonna need your help. That's fine balance of Romanian Bala supermanian, and I had it but I spoke too much and forgot it.

Anyway Suresh welcome and thank you for being with us today to be here. Thank you. So it's been a year.

It's been a minute. Yeah, before we even talk about this whole QSC and everything Philistine. How's the year been for you?

Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Alan and thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, it's been a little over here as you said and it's been an amazing journey for qualis as you can see some of the we hit some very important milestones for the company.

If you will there's this last year, you know, we were we celebrated our 10 years as a public company and God the honor and privilege to ring the bell and hashtag which is phenomenal. I think that was an exciting time sure. You also celebrated 10 years of our office in Pune.

But again an amazing amazing accomplishment in this in this day and age, you know to build build that kind of a center of excellence in India. So it's been a lot of a lot of fun the company and in along with you know, these Milestone events. We've also experienced a tremendous growth as you can see from all the information we share with with the street and We're really starting to see a change in how customers and the market perceives us.

So yeah, I would say it's been a it's been a fun right, you know. I want to put a little color on what these two highlights that you just spoke about because they're related and and it's an important. Look I've been in the security game for three years and see them coming go and you know companies big and small.

It's interesting. Because it ties into the both of the events. You mentioned generally speaking.

public security company right reaches size and scale that they lose their ability to innovate. Yeah. There are a decenter.

Yeah centered in their corporate Development Office. Yeah and their mn18. Yep, that comes there are indeed.

Yeah. Koalas, 10 years in is a public company at the same time. They went public made a big investment.

In in Pune in here in this case, but in developing an R&D engineering, yeah organization that continues to innovate and deliver. Yeah products. Yeah, there's over 20 products on the platform.

Yeah today. Yeah, and so you don't have to go out and spend your equity and cash on buying Innovation, right Innovation lives here. Yeah, right and that that's that's different.

That's a very different formula. That's true. That's then a lot of companies.

So congratulations. Thank you. I think one of the things that I see come through over the next over the last two days.

Is this qualis platform? You're dealing up in the team kind of. Went from a waterfall kind of model to to microservices and devops and everything.

And they've built a hyperscale platform. There's only you know, a handful of companies out the world that I've hyper scale. Yeah, and that platform Is the basis The Rock?

That everything is now seems to be built on yeah. We see all these new products right the cloud product. Yeah, true risk and and we've spoken to everyone.

Yeah all built because you have that platform that platform is the is the Innovation. It's kind of accelerate. That's true.

Anyway, though. That's mine. Look I who my I just sit here doing these now that you got it, right?

But let's let's hear it from you though. What did you think? Yeah.

Now I think you hit the nail on the head on a couple of things there. I think it's it's, you know, especially insecurity. You got to have a rock solid product because we're you know customers depend on us every day to help them.

Keep stay safe. So that's job. Number one.

We're also very fortunate to have the kind of customers we have because they really push us to do better every day. And so Innovation engine the platform the feedback we get from customers, you know, the quality conference is a great example, all of that really feeds into us, you know, pushing us to be better, right? So in a way For me as a marketer as a CMO, I couldn't ask for a better set of tools if you will to deal with I have happy customers who are ready to talk.

We have I think over 12 or 13 customers here at the community. I spoke to half of I know I know and and you know, and you know what it takes to get a customer to come take the time out of their day to come to a conference to talk on behalf where you know, so if you just sort of put that into in that equation together, we're very fortunate and we're very honored that these customers, you know took the time and in many ways, they're helping others figure out, you know how to get out. That's what were they do it right do it.

That's what makes this community go right? Exactly exactly. Are you agree and again, So where I I sit in a little I have a good seat to view these things.

So if I tell you we had about 265 vendor sponsors a text from across, you know, the eight or nine brands that we run. The single hardest thing for them is to get a customer to talk publicly. Yeah about what they do.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's near impossible. You know, it's the family the crown jewels that they just can't deliver.

So the fact that you were able to have that here and and decent company. Yeah, too. Yeah is a real testing out.

No, absolutely. We're very fortunate. We're very honored that they they took the time and that's really what it is at the heart of you know quality conference right for us.

We're going on 21 years. Now, I actually went back and checked the historical records to make sure that within you know misrepresent the numbers. It's true.

We are the two it's the 21st year and and that itself speaks a lot to the you know, the durability and the longevity of you know, what we do right I think companies and there are probably people here who've been coming for a good number of years. And and this time we had a lot of first time people are coming to the conference as well. So Yeah, we're very excited as a marketer.

This is a gold mine. If you will of you know content for you know, lead generation and demand generation and absolutely and and at the end of the day it's about sharing those stories, you know, because if you noticed a lot of the presentations and especially the language that you hear in these presentations are really focused on you know, risk reduction or driving better outcomes, and that's actually very heartwarming for me as a marketer because one of the transitions we've deliberately wanted to make is to move away from talking about vulnerability management reports or vulnerability reports or just you know, just patches or just misconfiguration. Those are all important elements, but at the end of the day we wanted to make sure that we start shaping The Narrative where we can start having and helping our Security leaders have better dialogues with non-security.

Stakeholders and so I think you know, I've heard feedback from very reputed industry analysts and others to say that they saw evidence of that in the two days. So which is very hard work as a market is that let me talk to you that marketer look. For the first time in the collective memory of many of our people out here the Tech Industries looking at layoffs.

Money investing is slowing down. The rounds are getting smaller a lot of companies who raised money as I are having a tough time raising more. We've never well I have I've been through these cycles that three or four times.

But a lot of people out here have it and they're a little bit shaken when you see companies like Facebook meta just laid off 11,000 people what's going on in Twitter, but even Salesforce laid off hundreds of people this week. Yeah. But security security generally was even immune from that.

It was like a double right? Do you think it will continue to be immune to macro conditions how this is a public company 10 years, right? How do you maintain the market position and in what could be a bad economy, right?

Yeah. No, I think there's this kind of two ways to look at that. Right one is yes, the macroeconomic trends are you know, not in favor of a lot of you know high growth of any cost kind of a model you definitely see a lot of sentiment shifting from, you know companies that were being rewarded for just buying their way to growth To now the sentiment is you know sensible growth, right?

Fortunately. We've always been like that. So that's kind of in a way, you know, we've always as a company operated that way and so that continues to be the same.

It doesn't really change. It's just because the macro environment is different fortunately security. While the budgets may be immune in the sense that they're not getting slashed 50% 60% The buyers are getting more cautious.

If you will right in the sense. I don't think they are quite ready to throw money at the problem. Whatever money is required.

They're not just ready to renew without asking questions, or they're not you know. They're not ready to just go and buy another 10 different point products and solutions. So we're definitely see that macroeconomic trends.

And not so much the budgets going down. It's more about being more careful about where they and who they do business with and how can they get more for the same amount of money? Right?

And fortunately, you know, if you look around here as well, you know, a lot of our messaging talks about hey, you can consolidate, you know your security staff on to call us and get the benefit of not just the monetary benefit. But you know, you can reduce your total cost of ownership your security posture actually strengthens, right and you can make security simpler and make it simpler talk more business outcomes, you know, we had a customer who came all the way from Australia, right you talked about I've done bread. Yes formerly was done and Bradley.

Yes. So, I mean that's a great Testament to how we are well positioned to navigate these times, right? So I think in a way I would say yes, it's by no means is it, you know, any less challenging but I feel like as a company as a as a technology provider.

As as a how we're viewed in the market. I think we have a pretty good story to tell and and customers seems to agree as well. So yeah, so that's love it but it makes it interesting.

So, you know, does that old Irish property right now you live in interesting time, right? That's right. Certainly are living in interesting times.

That's for sure. Anyway Suresh I want to thank you stopping by thank you for the perfect guys to finish off our coverage here of koalas QSC. 2022 in Las Vegas, maybe we'll see you at RSA in April.

Absolutely. Like I'll be there Francisco hardly. I'll be there right?

Thank you. Thank Allen. Thank you.

We are that's a wrap. We hope you've enjoyed two days of coverage here at QSC. If you didn't catch all two days, we will be replaying these recordings on our Tech strung TV broadcast over the next weeks.

You can also be able to catch them on the qualis website. But until then hey, I hope you enjoyed it. This is Alan Schimmel for Tech strong TV.

Take care.