Palo Alto on refreshed programme: 'New specialisations will drive partner expertise in high growth markets'
New improvements offer UK partners more differentiation, according to exec
Palo Alto Networks' revamped partner programme will enable partners to specialise in fast-growing areas of the cybersecurity market, according to its SVP of worldwide sales Karl Soderlund.
The revamped programme sits on four pillars: new specialisations around SASE, cloud and XDR/XSOAR that come with training and certifications. There are also specialisation incentives around SASE, cloud and XDR/XSOAR, as well as deal boosts and new rebates for its NextWave Diamons Innovator partners.
The third pillar is built upon expanded partner opportunities, which will include boosting deal referral incentives on all the cybersecurity vendor's products, along with exptended partner-delivered support across more of its technologies and new education credits.
The final pillar of the refreshed programme is enabling partner success with a host of resources and expanded certifications for new specialisations, as well as technology adoption discounts.
"[This revamp] further demonstrates our commitment to our ecosystem partners," Soderlund said.
"This is really a representation of what their market needs are and what they need to be the most competitive in the cybersecurity market space.
"These specialisation enhancements are an opportunity for us to invest in the partners that have been investing in Palo Alto Networks in these certain areas, and give them some return. We believe that's going to drive the partner expertise in high growth security markets."
His colleague Stuart Taylor, channel director of Western Europe, added that these improvements give UK partners a "unique" differentiation in what is an increasingly crowded market, both in terms of competitors and technology.
"The feedback that we have from our UK partners is ‘What areas should we focus on in cybersecurity? There are a lot of different areas to focus on'.
I think that the establishment of the specialisations enables them to have that differentiation into the UK market, where there's an increasing need for customers to use services for their cyber needs."
Soderlund added that SASE, cloud and XDR/XSOAR were chosen as the areas of specialisation based on trends they were seeing among their end users and how much they needed these sorts of specialisations from partners to improve their security postures.
"These are three areas where partners can get trained, enabled to differentiate themselves and really help their customers provide the best security solutions," he elaborated.
"For specialisation, there's going to be a subset of requirements and benefits; requirements are based upon things like performance, things like capabilities, things like engagement and if you hit those you will get a certain subset of benefits
"Those benefits are rich; they can be increased front end discount, we're introducing a new rebate programme for our partners that participate, there's going to be focused co-op marketing funds to drive demand generation, early access to enablement and a stronger alignment with our sales team."