Netskope, the cloud security provider, is adding technical training and certification to its global partner program for resellers, systems integrators, MSPs, distributors and technical alliance partners. They’re also getting new incentives to reach an expanded, global market.

The new preferred service provider tier creates a new class of Netskope partners that are “well-trained and certified to provide high-margin deployment and other cloud and web security-focused professional services,” according to the company. These partners will help Netskope keep up with an increase in demand for large-scale enterprise deployments.

Dave Rogers, Netskope’s vice president of channel sales, tells us cloud security continues to mature and “so do the partners our customers trust to evaluate and implement Netskope.” With more than 500 partners globally, more than three-quarters of Netskope’s business is now conducted through the channel.

Netskope’s Dave Rogers

“The sheer volume of new customers and new partners created the need to grow our program and to build a world-class team to support them both,” he said. “I sat with the leadership teams of our most strategic partners to understand what we could build together to better support our customers. We also spent time with our emerging partners to understand what they would require in order to make the investments needed to support their key customers. Our new program is a direct reflection of what our partners need to support their customers.”

Netskope also announced increased profit margins and incentives for resellers for driving upsell and renewal opportunities, even where the company drove the initial sale and transacted the business through a reseller.

“With the expansion of our program, we wanted our partners to have everything they needed to succeed,” Rogers said. “We built a new training program with several different customer-facing roles in mind and we established a Preferred Services Program to offer our partners the same training a Netskope employee would receive. It’s important for us to have direct and personal relationships with our partners, so we’ve also more than doubled the size of the Netskope team supporting our partners in the field.”

“Pervasive enterprise digital transformation efforts are dramatically expanding the attack surface, but many organizations are failing to transform their cybersecurity approaches to keep pace and are having difficulty supporting continuously evolving business models,” said Chris Stolley, Optiv‘s senior vice president of partner alliances. “By combining the actionable security insights and intelligence provided by technologies such as Netskope with Optiv’s end-to-end cybersecurity services, we can help clients align to new business models, enabling them to reduce enterprise risk and realize stronger, simpler and more cost-efficient cybersecurity programs.”

Netskope’s Cloud XD technology is designed for organizations looking to eliminate blind spots, and target and control activities across thousands of cloud services and millions of websites.