SonicWall has introduced two initiatives designed to help its 10,000 plus partners secure customers in the shifting cyber arms race – SonicWall University to train partners on cybersecurity, and new global marketing programmes and incentives to help the SonicWall channel deliver their cybersecurity solutions and services for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).
“The response from SonicWall’s channel partners to our spin out far exceeded even our own expectations,” said Bill Conner, President and CEO, SonicWall. “We’re excited that 10,000 partners have already joined the SecureFirst Partner Program and pleased to welcome 2,000 new partners to SonicWall. Today, we are announcing major investments in education and marketing to help enable these 10,000 partners to assist their customers with securing their business. We know these cyber threats are shifting and small to medium-size businesses are increasingly becoming targets, but they often lack in-house expertise and rely on trusted partners to keep their infrastructure secure.”
To address the lack of trained cybersecurity resources available to SMBs and enable SonicWall partners to provide the best real-time industry offerings to their customers, the company has unveiled SonicWall University. This channel enablement programme is designed as an extension of the SecureFirst Partner Program, helping communicate insights SonicWall has gleaned from the SonicWall GRID Threat Network to the partner community in a structure they can learn from easily.
According to the company, more than 5,600 individuals have already earned technical certifications through existing SonicWall certification programs, which will continue. Now partners can also access SonicWall University with rich enablement content, tools and resources delivered via an on-demand, web-based platform. SonicWall University highlights include:
- Specialised, role-based training and accreditation tailored to the three different audiences of sales, systems engineers and support team members. This opens up training to new audiences beyond traditional post-sales technical certification.
- All of the training modules SonicWall uses to educate its own employees are now available to partners, and will be updated regularly with up-to-the-minute content based on the SonicWall GRID Threat Network.
- In addition to the curriculum developed by SonicWall, third-party content from industry sources as well as SonicWall partner-contributed content will be hosted. SonicWall expects this partner-to-partner collaboration and enablement to scale up significantly and accelerate knowledge transfer for all who participate.
“Since SonicWall became an independent company focused 100 percent on cybersecurity solutions and 100 percent on channel fulfilment, we have seen a massive spike in partner engagement,” said Steve Pataky, Vice President, Worldwide Security Sales, SonicWall. “The interest partners have shown in the SecureFirst Partner Program, and the early buzz by partners about today’s launch of SonicWall University, underscores just how big of a priority high-quality enablement is to continuing to deliver the best possible security solutions through our partners. With these enablement programs, customers can turn to any one of our army of 10,000 proven and fortified partners to protect themselves against shifting cybersecurity threats.”
In addition to SonicWall University, the firm also launched a major marketing campaign in response to partner requests to help educate prospective and current customers on the most pressing cyber threats today. Partners can access prepackaged campaign materials and apply for market development funds online through a new SonicWall Partner Portal. Partners can earn special discounts and rebates for using these programmes to drive business.
The goal of the campaign is to help partners educate their customers on how to best protect their infrastructure from today’s cybersecurity threats.
SonicWall University is available globally at no cost to authorised partners participating in the SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Program.
