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Cybersecurity vendor Fortanix on Thursday launched its first partner program to meet global demand for its Self-Defending Key Management Service (SDKMS) appliance, a cloud-ready hardware security module (HSM)-as-a-service offering.

The Fortanix Partner Program has a flat structure with contract options for resellers and MSPs, including a referral program. The program offers partners “strong incentives with attractive margins, deal registration, and protection including expansionary and renewal incumbency,” the company said.

Fortanix’s Ambuj Kumar

Additionally, the program includes joint marketing, comprehensive sales enablement, product training and more.

Ambuj Kumar, Fortanix co-founder and CEO, tells Channel Partners his company is seeing strong demand for SDKMS, so to meet this demand and to grow its go-to-market efforts, the company now is aggressively focusing on channel partners.

“Fortanix is also launching a channel-friendly SDKMS appliance,” he said. “The FX2200 is an ideal building block to implement SDKMS in a private cloud or as a managed service.”

Encryption has been a difficult sell for partners in the past, and specifically, legacy HSM and key management offerings have been the weakest link, Kumar said.

“The legacy solutions are complex, siloed and difficult to operate,” he said. “This has led to two issues: (the) level of technical expertise required is very specialized, limiting the ability for partners to deliver the solutions and value proposition effectively; (and the) customer satisfaction levels are very low, limiting expansionary and other services opportunities. The Fortanix SDKMS solution offers HSM-grade security with no compromise to simplicity. Fortanix’s solution is simple to set up, manage and maintain. Partners can focus on being trusted security advisers by creating solutions for their customers that enhance business value and mitigate security risk.”

Business partners are the “cornerstone” to Fortanix’s growth strategy to deliver “innovative runtime encryption solutions” to protect customers’ data, keys and application, Kumar said.

“Fortanix provides strong incentives with flexible consumption models that give us a variety of services and offerings options to best address the diverse needs of our growing client base,” said Martin Vargas, director of sales at Axcelerate Networks, an initial Fortanix channel partner. “Fortanix’s SDKMS solution makes HSM and secure key management more accessible than ever for a growing number of use cases across private, hybrid and multiple clouds, where in the past HSM use was limited.”