TraceSecurity, a nine-year old, Baton Rouge, LA-based cloud security specialist, has opened up a partner program under the direction of Alan Fortier, its newly hired director of channel sales and former Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) channel executive.

The company, which concentrates its efforts on governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions, wants to enlist channel partners– resellers, managed service provides, consultants and auditors–to sell its security services and IT GRC products as a mechanism to widen its market reach beyond traditional direct sales. TraceCSO, the vendor’s flagship, subscription-based, cloud GRC offering aimed at SMBs, has been on the market since last October, when the company also changed its logo and tagline.

Fortier, who joined TraceSecurity after 15 years at Cisco’s partner organization, most recently building a channel program for the networking vendor’s physical security products, said that TraceSecurity expects within the next three years at least half of its revenue will be generated by channel partners.

The security vendor’s channel program is designed for partners to be able to easily build a ready-to-go SaaS security model to differentiate them from the competition, he said.

“While TraceSecurity has an excellent direct sales force, the natural progression of all great companies is to leverage the channel,” he said. “With the launch of this new program, I expect that within the next 2-3 years that more than 50 percent of our revenue will come from the channel.”

TraceSecurity’s channel partners will benefit from the vendor’s “unique services for managing an information security program including risk management, vulnerability scanning, policies, training, compliance and auditing,” Fortier said.

The TraceSecurity channel program includes sales and marketing support, technical training, deal registration, free evaluation software and tiered discounts based on level of participation. Partners referring potential customers to TraceSecurity can join at the Referral level and participate in revenue sharing. Resellers that present solutions and process orders can participate at the Reseller tier to maximize revenue opportunities. The program also supports technology partners with OEM and integration capabilities. Partners are free to participate in multiple levels at the same time.