Lacework, the cloud security provider, is launching its first partner program, designed for VARs, integrators and MSPs.

The company has initiated the global program with security partners such as Optiv, SHI and Tevora. It offers a security product for partners’ customers who operate workloads in the cloud.

Sanjay Kalra, Lacework’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, tells Channel Partners his company spent time with different partners to “understand their specific needs, and developed something that would help them with education, technology integration and co-marketing.”

Lacework’s Sanjay Kaira

“The challenge is that customers are new to the cloud and learning the ropes on how to secure their deployments,” he said. “The partners can play a vital role by being the guide and educating the customers on right architecture and solution for cloud security.”

Partners that work with the company said their clients increasingly are asking for security solutions for their cloud environments, Kalra said.

“We wanted to build a program that would support the efforts of partners to deliver effective security to their customers,” he said. “We are seeing … hockey stick-like growth and winning the majority of opportunities where we are on the table. The channel has far more reach than we will ever able be able to achieve and given that the market is new, partners are the primary advisers to customers and jointly we can provide a lot more value to customers.”

Lacework has created a pricing and go-to-market program that it manages with its sales reps in the field, Kalra said. It incentivizes reps to bring partners into deals and to create long-term relationships.

“We also are offering an opportunity for the channel to be able to complete the sales from soup to nuts,” he said. “The basic concept is that we want to treat channel as an extension of our company and provide them with the right incentives to transition from hardware business to SaaS and become experts in cloud security.”

The main barrier for partners has been awareness and understanding of how security works in the cloud, Kalra said.

“A big part of our program is education: We want to help partners explain to their customers not just the need for effective cloud security, but how to identify the right solution and then how to implement it,” he said.

“As more organizations look to take advantage of public-cloud platforms, they’re increasingly leaning on solution partners to help them define effective security strategies,” said Stefan Dyckerhoff, Lacework’s CEO. “They provide a hugely valuable service, and our goal with this program is to jointly create value for customers to deliver a best-in-class security offering.”