'7 Minutes' with LogonBox Product Management Director Majid Latif

LogonBox hopes to entice partners with the latest version of its flagship SaaS password and identity self-service platform, designed to reduce time to market for partners and increase business.

Previously Nervepoint Technologies, LogonBox is a small UK-based vendor that sells a password reset self-service and single sign-on product throughout the United States. It wants to make some inroads into the channel.

Available to VARs, MSPs and ISVs globally, LogonBox’s platform helps protect businesses from data breaches and cybersecurity threats. The company recently partnered with U.S.-based Newscycle, a media-focused MSP with more than 10,000 clients. Newscycle offers LogonBox’s SaaS to its clients.

LogonBox’s Majid Latif

In a Q&A with Channel Partners, Majid Latif, LogonBox’s director of product management, talks about how his company works with partners and the advantages it has over its competitors.

Channel Partners: Tell us what customers love about your product or service. What’s the secret selling sauce?

Majid Latif: The LogonBox secret sauce is twofold. First and foremost, it is the plethora of functionality. Partners gain in so many ways, from providing a self-service, password reset (SSPR) help-desk portal to reduce IT tickets, to offering a single sign-on (SSO) portal and password management. This range of features is something only LogonBox offers and it is all part of the platform; no additional cost opens more avenues to partners, more ways to offer value to clients and opens more opportunities to expand into other markets.

Secondly, it is our support team. Being a technically minded business, we pride ourselves in the technical assistance we offer our customers. With a [customer satisfaction] score in the top echelons, we take every customer request seriously and endeavor to offer the best we can to assist their needs.

CP: Describe your channel program — metal levels, heavy on certifications, open or selective, unique features? Do you work with masters and/or distributors?

ML: LogonBox’s partner program is not about restricting feature sets to different types of partners. As a partner, you get the whole platform. Using role-based access, you are in control of what features to enable for each customer and you can up-sell other features when each client is ready. The program provides partners the support they need, from offering leads evaluations to pre- and post-sales technical support. We want things to run smoothly from start to finish and so our partner program reflects that.

The program is open to VARs, distributors, SIs and service providers that want to benefit from reduced help-desk tickets by offering customers their own password management portal … that want to go beyond and help increase productivity for customers through single sign-on and provisioning. We’re looking for partners that want to help their customers to increase profitability by streamlining the IT department.

CP: Quick-hit answers: Percentage of sales through the channel, number of partners, average margin. Go.

ML: We are in the early days with our channel outreach with around 20 percent of sales coming from the channel. Partner-driven sales form an important part of our business. We have around 20-plus partners, [and] with our new program we are focused on increasing this significantly. Our channel margins have been designed to be competitive and benefit our partners. We want partners to focus on …

… selling without demands or pressure from their vendor. That’s why our new program has done away with contractual sale commitments.

CP: Who are your main competitors, and what makes your offering better?

ML: Our platform offers a number of core functions; no one vendor offers the range we offer, so we cross a number of boundaries. LogonBox competitors are traditional self-service password-reset and password-reset vendors helping businesses to reduce password and overall IT tickets, such as PassPortal, ManageEngine and vendors in the single sign-on space. We even touch into identity management when you combine everything LogonBox offers. Due to the way SSPR and password-reset products have been designed and marketed, they are limited in scope; the opposite is true of SSO and identity management (IDM) vendors — these are all encompassing, costly and require a real customer commitment so tend to center at bigger customers.

LogonBox stands out in its ability to offer SSPR, SSO, password management and provisioning in a single solution to businesses without limiting in scope or incurring high costs. The result of this is that businesses from small, medium and large benefit — and because LogonBox delivers this in the cloud and as an on-premises virtual machine (VM), customers are not restricted in any way.

CP: How do you think your technology portfolio will change in the next three years?

ML: Juniper research estimates that cybercrime will cost businesses around $2 trillion by the end of 2019, and CyberArk recently reported that SMBs are losing billions through identity theft. What this shows is the threat landscape is not diminishing; it is only getting bigger. Solutions like LogonBox are built to not only provide convenience and increase productivity, but to increase security and support a business’ ongoing security operations. Modern platforms will need to keep up with the ongoing challenge; LogonBox will continue to invest in our platform security so we can continue to offer a platform that aids both convenience and security.

CP: How do you expect your channel strategy to evolve over that time frame?

ML: We work closely with our partners; everything we do is in close collaboration with them. As their trends and needs change, we are in step with them along the way, offering the right features they need to stay competitive. For example, LogonBox originally was a VM on-premises solution only. It was only through close collaboration with our partners that there became a need for a cloud-hosted SaaS offering to help them stay competitive.

CP: What didn’t we ask that partners should know?

ML: We believe in close collaboration; the success of a customer is through the collaboration of both vendor and partner. We are all-in with our partners from the start, initial setup and trials through to supporting the customer after sales. By adding a LogonBox cloud and on-premises solution to their portfolio, partners have something that offers unique value in a multitude of ways that is priced to be cost-effective in the market. LogonBox is positioned to offer partner values and with a recurring revenue stream.