Cloudflare Updates Partner Program, Adds SASE, Zero Trust Managed Services
Zero trust is increasingly top of mind across all organizations regardless of size.
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Cloudflare’s Matt Harrell said his company is committed to the growth of MSP and MSSP partners who share its mission of helping to build a better internet.
“We’ve been building out the Cloudflare partner network for years, working alongside businesses of all sizes and types including our worldwide SI partners like Rackspace, as well as partners across EMEA, APAC like Blazeclan, and Kingsoft in China, to name a few,” he said. “Working with enthusiastic, targeted partners has given us the opportunity to build a program to deliver a robust, yet tailored program to support our partners’ ever-evolving needs from network transformations and application modernization, to zero-trust solutions and onwards.”
The advanced managed services partner path is the entry point for partners that are providing managed IT services for small to midsize organizations by leveraging Cloudflare’s platform. These partners will have access to tools that will help embed Cloudflare into their services offerings to deliver outcome-based SASE and zero-trust solutions.
The elite managed services partner path is reserved for global partners that possess resource-intense engagement in IT consulting, advisory and large-scale services in the large enterprise segment. These partners will have access to dedicated technical and sales resources, as well as a named partner success manager to guide growth and business development around their Cloudflare-based services practice. In addition, these partners will have access to executive leadership and marketing programs to develop joint go-to-market functions.
Services-only partnerships are invitation-only for partners to deliver general professional services, technical services such as application modernization via Cloudflare Workers development, implementation and migration services, and security assessments.
Gary Alterson is Rackspace‘s vice president of security services.
“Rackspace offers expert consultative services and 24×7 managed support based on Cloudflare’s web application security, secure internet access, gateway and browsing technologies,” he said. “With Rackspace Elastic Engineering for security and Cloudflare’s cutting-edge cloud solutions, we’ll be able to help our customers fast-forward to a modern, zero-trust approach to securing their teams, applications and infrastructure.”
To support the new services program, Cloudflare has introduced a new certification course that provides the foundational tools for “creating the Cloudflare customer experience.” Course highlights include best practices for services design and implementation, and providing ongoing technical and relationship management.
Highlights include:
A new enablement path for MSP partners with L1/L2 support and account management.
A new customer success enablement path for services partners.
New specialist accreditation for Cloudflare zero trust.
Regional resources are dedicated to helping partners develop, drive and expand their Cloudflare-based services offerings, specifically centered around SASE and zero trust. Moreover, all partners can support the provisioning and deployment of Cloudflare’s zero trust suite of products.
In addition, Cloudflare is developing a licensing plan that enables MSPs to sell their services powered by the Cloudflare One platform.
Partner feedback will always play a critical role in driving the Cloudflare partner program, Harrell said.
“We’re fortunate that based on the strength of customer demand, we receive a high volume of partner applications, many of which are from MSPs that are looking for best-in-class zero–trust solutions to protect their clients,” he said. “Some of the feedback that we’ve received through these partner surveys is that while partners love our technology and our engagement model, they would like us to make it easier for them to license, provision and manage all of our technologies on behalf of their clients. These program changes are designed to help partners accomplish that.”
Cloudflare’s partner program has made it easy for partners to deliver a broad range of services to their customers across security, performance and reliability from a single management platform, Harrell said.
“One of the most pressing solutions we are now seeing across the board is zero trust, and this expansion of the program will allow our partners to deliver this technology quickly and easily by making it easy for partners to license, provision and manage our technology on behalf of their client,” he said. “We are now extending zero trust to our partners, but this is just one part of the Cloudflare platform that is powering the security, performance and reliability posture of organizations worldwide. Our partners are molding this into their business with a comprehensive competitive advantage. With Cloudflare’s global network being one of the largest and most interconnected in the world, this allows us to continuously build and deploy solutions that are critical to the market.”
Cloudflare has been building the pilot program throughout this past year, and it’s eager to work with the next cohort of service partners, Harrell said.
“We’re just getting started in providing a tailored and targeted foundation for the Cloudflare partner ecosystem,” he said. “During the initial launch phase, we are working with a select group of partners, and are looking forward to expanding and growing with even more partnerships. Our goal is to enable partners that are creating cloud-based security solutions and that want to join us, to further our mission to help build a better internet.”
Cloudflare has been building the pilot program throughout this past year, and it’s eager to work with the next cohort of service partners, Harrell said.
“We’re just getting started in providing a tailored and targeted foundation for the Cloudflare partner ecosystem,” he said. “During the initial launch phase, we are working with a select group of partners, and are looking forward to expanding and growing with even more partnerships. Our goal is to enable partners that are creating cloud-based security solutions and that want to join us, to further our mission to help build a better internet.”
Cloudflare has updated its Channel and Alliances Partner Program to support secure access service edge (SASE) and zero-trust managed services.
The Cloudflare partner program improvements focus on extending security, performance and reliability to more customers. In addition, they provide a services-first approach for partners.
Cloudflare partners with companies of various sizes and markets. Global system integrators include Accenture, IBM, Rackspace and Wipro.
Easier For Partners
Matt Harrell is Cloudflare‘s global head of channel and partnerships.
Cloudflare’s Matt Harrell
“Zero trust is increasingly top of mind and we’re seeing this across all organizations regardless of size,” he said. “We have already been extending our zero-trust services to everyone, from SMBs to the Fortune 100 and the top federal governments that rely on Cloudflare to help keep them secure. With this, we want to make it easy for partners to consume our technology in ways customers expect and need in this evolving landscape.
There has been a significant uptick in the number of security incidents businesses are facing, Harrell said.
“This calls for a modern zero-trust approach where businesses don’t automatically trust requests to their corporate resources and instead need to verify every single request before granting access,” he said. “Cloudflare has been delivering this in a simplified way. And we’ve now created a new MSP-oriented licensing model to make it easy for partners to license, provision and manage our technology.”
As part of this, Cloudflare has launched new product-level training and accreditation for its zero-trust portfolio, Harrell said. That makes it easier for partners to understand how to position and deploy Cloudflare’s solutions. Moreover, it creates paths for MSPs to earn the managed services accreditation around Cloudflare’s portfolio of products.
Scroll through our slideshow above for more on Cloudflare’s updated partner program.
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