SonicWall Partner Program Updates Coming

Bob VanKirk, SonicWall‘s president and CEO, was on hand at RSA to talk about what partners can expect in the coming months.

“We’ll be updating our partner program,” he said. “We’ve seen incredible growth out of what we have called our MSSP program in the past. We’re redoing that program altogether so that it will allow a much broader set of partners to participate and take advantage of, for example, monthly billing and if the number of users goes up or down, you’re only paying for that number. So we’re expanding that program, allowing a lot more partners in. We’ll be expanding that offering. It was just a few solutions. Now what we’re doing with all the changes, it used to be OK after the products were out, hey, what can we send through the MSSP program and service provider program. Now at the front end before a product even is going into the life cycle development, the PMs have to justify why or where is that going to fit in the partner program and the service provider program, which is a whole different approach that contributes to our seeing so much strength there.”

Everything SonicWall has done in recent months, including restructuring and bringing in new talent, is based on better understanding its more than 17,000 partners, VanKirk said.

“A segment of partners is saying, Hey, I don’t want to buy everything up front,'” he said. “And we will provide that flexibility, no question. But others, and where we see the majority going, they want to pay on a monthly basis. We want to understand where our usage is, toggle it up or down. So we’re accommodating that. And it means changing our systems up. It means redoing the program. And then at an overall level, we’re totally redoing our SecureFirst program.”