Dell's SonicWALL to Emerge as Independent Company With More to Offer Partners

DELL SECURITY PEAK 16 — With its pending separation from Dell, SonicWALL on Monday announced its new Secure First Partner Program and previewed its Cloud Global Management System (GMS) at Peak16 in Las Vegas.

Nearly 750 attendees, including 216 preferred partners and 135 premier partners, are participating in the event. A hot topic at the conference is Dell selling off its software division, and what this will mean for partners.

In June, Dell announced it was selling its software division, including Quest Software and its SonicWALL security business, to private equity firm Francisco Partners and the private equity arm of activist hedge fund Elliott Management for more than $2 billion. The deal should close at the end of the third quarter.

Curtis Hutcheson, Dell SonicWALL’s vice president and general manager, said the buyers will be an “accelerator,” which drew applause from partners during the opening general session.{ad}

“They know security and they view us as a crown jewel, and they want us to be completely independent,” he said. “They are long-term buyers and they know our space … they’re really bullish on your story. You’ll see us move faster, you’ll see us under pressure … we’ve got to continue growing in North America.”

Patrick Sweeney, Dell SonicWALL’s vice president of product management and marketing, unveiled a new logo and said the company will simply be known as SonicWALL at the end of the third quarter.

As an “independent company, completely focused on security,” SonicWALL and its partners will be better able to increase market share across all enterprise categories, he said.

The enhanced partner program, which also will launch at the end of September, is open to all network security partners, and is aimed at reinforcing their roles as trusted security advisors and broadening their security practices. The program introduces expanded technical assistance and a new sales accreditation program with online learning tools and trainings on the SonicWALL portfolio.

The new assistance programs not only will train partners on up-to-date SonicWALL products and technologies, but will help them “broaden their knowledge of the very real threats their customers face, like ransomware, zero days and advanced persistent threats.”

Expanded financial incentives include incremental discounts for identifying leads, delivering proof of concepts, selling and implementing broader services by using more of the SonicWALL portfolio, and driving ongoing renewals.

Steve Pataky, vice president of worldwide sales, said the existing partner program, Dell PartnerDirect, created a network security competency inside of the overall program. After the separation, Dell will remain …

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… a “substantial channel partner for us,” he said.

“Now, as we transition out of that, we go back to having a standalone, dedicated partner program built for security partners,” he said. “And so the changes that you’ll see … will be very bespoke to SonicWALL. We’ll modify our requirements to be really dialed in and optimized for security.”

The program also is going to include a “renewed emphasis” on supporting MSPs, Pataky said.

“There are so many VARs that offer some level of managed service,” he said. “They absolutely deliver in a monthly recurring revenue fashion security services to their customer. And I think as we separate and become dedicated to SonicWALL, that’s another major area of focus that we can fortify.”{ad}

Delivered to partners as a low-cost monthly subscription based on the number of firewalls under management, SonicWALL Cloud GMS allows partners to “deliver high caliber SonicWALL security to their customers,” the company said.

“The SonicWALL Cloud GMS solution will help our partners simplify management while improving network security,” Sweeney said. “As the need for hosted security solutions continues to grow, the SonicWALL Cloud GMS will provide a new low-cost threshold for small and medium businesses that have limited ability or desire to deploy in-house infrastructure and logistics and who are concerned about quickly and effectively securing data — wherever it may reside.”