Skyhigh Security this month launched the Skyhigh Security Altitude Program, a global initiative the company said provides its partner community – value-added resellers, strategic integrators and managed service providers – with “incentives, tools and information designed to help them earn more.”
The move follows the March 2022 decision which saw Skyhigh announced as the new name for McAfee Enterprise Secure Service Edge (SSE) portfolio.
As IT World Canada reported at the time, the “name will be familiar to many; in January 2018, McAfee acquired a cloud security company called Skyhigh Networks, whose technology is the underpinning of some of the McAfee Enterprise SSE offerings. The new company’s portfolio now includes Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Remote Browser Isolation technology, Cloud Firewall and Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).”
According to a release, the program, which went live this week, incorporates three core principles: simple, predictable, and profitable, and puts partners at the center of a strategy designed to “capture the SSE market, which had revenue between US$2.4 billion and US$2.6 billion in fiscal 2020 and is growing by 19-21 per cent year-over-year, according to Gartner.
Highlights of the new initiative under the Simple banner include the following: Instead of incorporating multiple partner tools, the program runs on a unified portal provided by Channel Mechanics, simplifying partners’ interactions with Skyhigh Security. It includes a range of deal registration protection procedures and three tiers of participation, including Registered, Essential, and Advanced.
To achieve these tiers, partners use the platform to arrange training for their staff at Skydiver University, a new online sales certification training tool designed by Skyhigh Security to educate and help partners unlock additional benefits.
The portal, said Kenneth Fox, chief executive officer of Channel Mechanics, is “designed as a single place for partners to digitally engage with a business, such as registering a deal, downloading up-to-date content, or claiming a rebate. It dynamically presents unique offers to partners based on partner level, certification and geography. Meaning they can easily and quickly retrieve content and programs relevant to them.”
In an interview this week with Channel Daily News, Paul Barbosa, chief revenue officer with Skyhigh, and Scott Goree, the firm’s global channel sales leader, outlined what led to the formation of the new partner program.
“We recognized early that splitting McAfee into Trellix and Skyhigh meant that our channel needs would be very different,” said Barbosa. “Almost immediately, we started planning for a channel program that was much more simplified in its nature that ensured a high degree of profitability for our partners both on the front and the back end. We were going to be driving into a high growth market that had unlimited opportunity.”
He estimated the SSE market is currently worth about US$5 billion and currently “no one competitor has more than seven per cent market share.”
Goree said discussion with partners prior to the launch led to the creation of the three core principles: “We listened to them about what we needed to design as a program. Having one that was complicated was just an impossible feat because some partners will opt out just based on complexity.
“The building of complexity is easy. I can layer on stuff and the temptation is always there to layer on more and more and then it becomes unwieldy. Making it simple is hard.”
He described the Canadian market as “important,” and said from a channel perspective, the goal will be to focus on a few partners, but have “deeper relationships” with them.
“We have over 500 customers, and it’s a multi million dollar line of business for us,” said Barbosa. “We feel like we’ve got an incredible base of loyal customers in the Canadian market. And many of them are looking to extend their cloud security portfolio across the SSE domain.”
