The two industry giants are doubling down on enabling migrations from ‘legacy’ providers to CrowdStrike’s cloud- and AI-native Falcon Next-Gen SIEM offering, executives tell CRN.
CrowdStrike and Accenture announced an expanded partnership Wednesday that will see the two industry giants accelerate their efforts around enabling modernization of the SIEM tools relied upon by security operations teams, executives from the companies told CRN.
In particular, the companies will be working together to facilitate migrations from “legacy” providers to CrowdStrike’s cloud- and AI-native Falcon Next-Gen SIEM offering, the executives said.
[Related: CrowdStrike’s ‘Incredibly Strong’ Platform Strategy Driving SIEM, AI Growth Surge: Partners]
The two companies are “going all-in” on each other, making this a “major moment for both parties to transform the SOC of the future,” said Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike.
While its origins go back several decades, SIEM (security information and event management) continues to provide the logging, analytics and search capabilities that many security teams depend upon for responding to and mitigating cyberattacks.
Migration Challenges
For Accenture, No. 1 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 for 2024, CrowdStrike’s advancements on AI-powered security capabilities — such as with the vendor’s Charlotte AI technology — have stood out in the market, according to Accenture Senior Managing Director Rex Thexton.
“With what CrowdStrike has been able to do with Next-Gen SIEM and Charlotte, we see it as a huge opportunity to migrate from legacy [systems],” Thexton said. “Legacy has been relatively sticky for the last 10 years. It’s been very hard for people to migrate to new technologies.”
Accenture is positioned to be a crucial partner for CrowdStrike in this regard, Bernard noted, given that the global system integrator was behind implementations of the prior-generation SIEMs for many large customers.
“Who put in the SIEMs of yesteryear? Accenture. So they’re very familiar with the space,” Bernard said. “And what our customers need is migration of data from legacy SIEM to next-gen SIEM.”
Ingestion of other third-party data for use with CrowdStrike’s Falcon Next-Gen SIEM is another opportunity for a service provider partner like Accenture, he said. Thus, “there is a broader data strategy that Accenture is leading.”
Security, Cost Benefits
Key advantages with CrowdStrike’s Next-Gen SIEM approach include improved security outcomes through providing a modernized approach that makes full use of cloud-native technologies and AI, according to Bernard.
The CrowdStrike offering also provides greater efficiency — allowing the system to be managed with fewer security professionals — as well as a lower overall cost, he said.
Without a doubt, the requirements around migration of data and deployment of such a powerful system are “driving the need for partner services” such as from Accenture, Bernard said.
The reality for customers, according to Thexton, is that they need help from trusted partners to update their security operations practices with a modernized system such as CrowdStrike’s Falcon Next-Gen SIEM.
“These are complex integrations, and these are mission-critical systems for our clients,” he said.
“They want someone that’s been there and done that before at that scale — and I think that’s what we bring to the table,” Thexton said.
Ultimately, he said, CrowdStrike and Accenture are “looking at an opportunity to drive significant automation at scale with the combination of the two companies — which I don’t think can be matched.”
