Partners First at OpenDNS

By Cisco Umbrella Guest Blog

At OpenDNS, we’ve always put the needs of customers and partners first. As we’ve grown in size and scope from a DNS resolution startup eight years ago to an advanced, cloud-delivered security company, we’ve gained the capacity to devote more resources than ever before to our users—in particular, our partners and the MSP community. Our partners have been right there with us every step of the way since the beginning. Whether it’s building features to help our MSP partners be more efficient, hiring new members to support MSP accounts, or getting more involved in the community with trade show and peer group sponsorships, OpenDNS is committed to living in the MSP world.

We’re building a product for MSPs, with MSPs

We know that, as a managed service provider, you face a specific set of challenges and opportunities. That’s why we’ve made our MSP product work the way you do and with the guidance of MSPs at every step. It’s this real MSP feedback that drove our development of PSA integrations, a multitenant console and, our most recent release, Centralized Settings, which allows MSPs to be hyper-efficient in managing and standardizing security.

We also recognize that MSPs operate under a different business model than large enterprises, leading us to create monthly billing, RMM deployment scripts and packaging that’s easy to understand. However, none of this would be possible without our dedicated MSP partners working with our MSP team to mutual benefit.

We’re building a team for MSP success

We know you’re aiming to be more secure, more efficient and growing. That’s why we’ve built a team dedicated solely to managed service providers. From engineering to marketing to sales to support, our MSP team has more than doubled in the last year while maintaining a culture of driving customer success. To be on the OpenDNS team, it’s not enough to just be good at what you do; team members must have the ability to put partner success first.

Our most technical team members have worked at MSPs themselves (our MSP Sales Engineer Jason, for example), giving them a deep understanding of partner needs and the best ways to address them. We’re deeply invested in partner success with the recent additions of an MSP-specific technical account manager, in addition to ramping up our sales and marketing team.

We’re adding more resources to help partners succeed

We’re currently on the lookout for the next member of our team: an MSP-focused product marketing manager. What does this mean for you? Once we have this position filled, we’ll be able to produce more (and better!) content, helping you to get the most out of Umbrella for MSPs and better position your MSP offering to your customers. We’ll have more collateral for partners to use, more webcasts and more resources to help partners grow their managed security service.

How can partners help?

The best reference for someone focused on enabling our partners comes from partners themselves. If you know someone great in the San Francisco Bay Area that you’d enjoy having on the other end of the MSP-vendor relationship, we’d love an introduction. Email me at [email protected] or send them the job description.

Dima Kumets is MSP Product Manager at OpenDNS. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.