Trustwave updates programme to emulate US success

Security vendor rolls out partner programme refresh in bid to emulate US growth in EMEA

Security vendor Trustwave has updated its partner programme in a bid to transfer its US success to EMEA.

Founded in 1995, the Chicago-headquartered firm focuses on the payment card data industry security standard (PCI DSS) market, and has 1,200 employees and 2.7 million global customers, following a number of recent acquisitions.

Speaking to CRN, Brooks Wallace, Trustwave's vice president of sales, said the programme is geared towards transferring US growth across the pond.

"We have seen really good growth over the last 18 months in our partner base in the UK and we have nearly seen them drawing parity I suppose with the US, where we have been seeing tremendous growth over the last 24 to 36 months," he said.

"It's nice to have seen the UK catch up with the success we have been having in the US and on the back of that we are rolling out an enhanced programme that encompasses our managed security services, our vulnerability management and our threat compliance management."

The programme update – which becomes effective in EMEA on 21 July – will see Trustwave offering its partners a more "complete offering" within its sales kits, which now include sales training presentations, customer presentations, quick reference guides and white papers and data sheets.

Wallace also explained the updated programme will feature more engagement with partners to measure goals and success through quarterly review meetings. He said that in order to achieve this increased monitoring, the vendor is upping its EMEA channel staff by 30 per cent.

Trustwave is also developing a forum to get more feedback from its partners which involves quarterly calls and annual meetings with key partners, to "bring together the key heads from our channel".

In April, Trustwave announced it was being acquired by Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) for about $810m (£544m), but Wallace remained adamant the acquisition will not cause any disturbances to the vendor's channel.

"We have had a lot of questions from our partners about what change will come from Singtel. The acquisition has not been completed yet but following the close of the acquisition, Singtel plans to combine their ICT with our portfolio of managed security services under the Trustwave brand, without any reduction in our services, technology portfolio and staff as well," he said.

"So everything kind of remains the same and we are trying to keep it as continuous as possible."