**Editor’s Note: Click here for a list of March’s important channel-program changes you should know.**

Web security provider Blue Coat is taking the first step in what it calls “a new era of cloud.”

The vendor has launched a new cloud security platform and a new program for customers to pick from a list of vendors.

Blue Coat enlisted 14 security vendors for the Cloud Ready Partner Program, which provides what the company calls an “ecosystem” for partners and customers to cobble together security solutions to assist with cloud migration.

“We’re entering a new era of cloud, and that brings with it a host of fantastic benefits for both our customers and our partners. It also brings significant challenges from a security perspective,” said Peter Doggart, Blue Coat’s vice president of business development. “It’s how we bind those together and how we provide the ability to make that transition from where we are today to the opportunity of the cloud — making that a reality. I think that’s what we’ve got to do as an industry, not just Blue Coat.”

Doggart said the program mirrors how vendors like Blue Coat have worked with each other in the past, maintaining “robust relationships” in order to create comprehensive packages for their channel partners.

“We would help tie those things together, so when the channel partner goes into the customer, we’ve already got their back,” he said.{ad}

Doggart said it’s another question of whether the same will happen with the “cloud generation.”

“Can the channel partners effectively do the same thing — create kind of a heterogeneous architecture with multiple vendors to facilitate that kind of transition to the cloud and tie everything together?” he said.

The security platform includes controls for Microsoft Office 365 and integrates solutions from Elastica, which Blue Coat recently acquired. Customers will get visibility into shadow IT as a result of the Elastica integration.

The 14 ecosystem vendors include Centrify, HP, Oracle and Splunk.

“The boundaries between the cloud and the data center are dissolving, and customers need a way to analyze behavior across any and all applications and services,” said Ted Plumis, Exabeam’s vice president of channels.

Doggart said customers love the new offering because of their familiarity with it.

“They have spent a ton of money and many, many years operationalizing some of these vendors. And they don’t necessarily want to move away from them when they move to the cloud. They want to embrace them and use them in the same way. And this is what we’re doing with Cloud Ready.”