Changes to the global WatchGuardONE Partner Programme aim to make it easier for partners to find a way to the top status via a specialisation. This is part of a partner pan-European recruitment campaign, especially seeking MSPs, and also reflects some changes in the product range. Individual specialisations in Network Security, Secure Wi-Fi and multi factor authentication (MFA), now each have their own set of knowledge-based requirements, including sales and technical training, it says.
Partners that attain specialisation in one of these three product families can achieve full WatchGuardONE status, including financial incentives and sales, marketing and technical support, without revenue thresholds or product portfolio adoption requirements,
Jonathan Whitley (pictured), sales director for Northern Europe tells IT Europa that the purpose is adding more types of partner while also aiming at the SMB market; and not forgetting the managed services sector.
“This is really an evolution of the existing WatchGuardONE programme that takes into account our broader product range, while at the same time accounting for changes in the channel; in particular an increased shift towards MSPs. Historically, WatchGuard has focused primarily on firewalling and a smaller number of add-on products that customers needed to secure the network perimeter. We still see this as the core of our offering, but over the past years we have seen demand from the midmarket to respond to more complex threats, such as ransomware, at the same time as new regulations like GDPR have become a requirement. As a result, we have broadened our product offering to allow our midmarket customers to have deliverable and enterprise grade solutions to address these challenges.”
It is also seeing that as security requirements become ever greater, the midmarket moves more towards working with MSP partners to ensure they have a cost-effective working solution, he says. “WatchGuard is reflecting this in our partner programme by enabling our partners to become experts in more than one solution area. Under the new programme we have streamlined some of the requirements as well as reducing the exams to more relevant focus areas. The aim is to allow our existing channel to deliver an increased number of solutions to their end user base as well as bringing in new partners we are not currently working with.”
Although the channel is becoming more specialised, a key shift he sees is the requirement for managed solutions. The midmarket especially does not have the resources to employ security specialists, but it nevertheless has a requirement for rock solid security. MSPs can offer this with the added benefit of predictable billing and costs, he says. It is hard to put a number on the MSP channel, however.
“WatchGuard has worked for many years now with some of the largest MSPs in the UK that have built solutions and financed their offerings using WatchGuard tools and in some cases used their own financing options. These partners have been at the core of WatchGuard business for a long time now. What we also have done is to tailor our WatchGuardONE programme around the requirements of MSPs, so that options that allow flexible monthly billing are also available from WatchGuard. On the technical side we have invested in new tools and ensured our new solutions such Authpoint MFA are available as annual or monthly billing options.
“The three specialisations reflect our three specific product areas. A key point is that it is now possible to become a specialist in an area that does not involve firewalling. We feel this is an important step for WatchGuard in broadening our appeal in the partner community. “
