Discover 23: Barracuda Expanding Channel Team, Investing More in Partners
Barracuda is stressing the partner multiplier to generate more revenue for partners.
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Barracuda
Barracuda‘s business continues to expand from a top line and product platform perspective, said Jason Beal, VP, worldwide ecosystems (pictured).
“But partners are challenged,” he said. “You talk to the average partner today and they’re resource constrained. The limitations on their growth and their opportunities to help end customers typically do come down to resource availability. They need efficiency. You talk to partners and they say, ‘Hey, I need support for the vendors and the distributors to be an extension of my business. I need investments in making the quote-to-cash process more efficient. I need to get the information sooner.’ And they’re really looking for a lot of the product training.
“There’s no shortage of demand on our partners, given what’s happening in the world today with the democratization of hackers and cyber crime. Our partners are on the front lines. They’re the ones that are getting squeezed by the bad guys and the bots every day. So the more resources, the more support, the more help Barracuda can give them, the better that we’ll have a successful partnership.”
Barracuda can help partners facing challenges due to economic uncertainty, Beal said.
“With a company like ours that is over 90% subscriptions and SaaS, if partners have a need for our technology, it’s on demand, it’s ready to go,” he said. “Whether they’re selling into midmarket and/or SMB, there’s demand for data protection, there’s demand for cyber defense. And that’s a blessing that we’re all in this industry and that they’re in that industry.”
For example, a Barracuda partner recently received a call from a customer in the medical industry saying their IT was a “mess” and they can’t hire anybody, Beal said.
“That was a Sunday at 6 a.m. and by end of day Wednesday they had a purchase order (PO) for managed services, a $5,000-a-month contract,” he said. “It included all of that partner’s products and services, including Barracuda email protection and data protection. Imagine that value proposition. That end customer probably would have had to spend at least three times that on one person in their IT department. One fully burdened IT person is going to cost you $180,000 a year. We see it every day. So is there some global macroeconomic uncertainty here, there and everywhere? I think so. But what we see with our business and with our partner business, I just think we’re in a pretty good spot. And the demand for data protection and cyber defense within the SME space remains strong.”
Beal said Barracuda has long been a “pioneer” in its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) approach with its email protection against increasingly sophisticated email-based attacks.
“We’ve made some updates around our products,” he said. “A hot topic right now is AI-based phishing and … impersonation protection is is a hot topic. We’ve got some of the best technology in the industry to help our customers.”
Another hot topic is application security, Beal said.
“We announced toward the end of April some new plans around application security,” he said. “We’ve gotten incredible feedback from the partners. It’s ML-powered vulnerability, API, distributed denial of service (DDoS) and bot protection, all in a zero-trust security approach. It’s super easy for partners. That’s what they’ve asked for, to make it really easy to deploy and build a managed service around application protection. In this world of more and more DevOps, and more and more apps, there’s this renaissance in application security as a service.”
One of the big industry trends taking place is the movement toward customer success, Beal said.
“Companies like Barracuda are really investing a lot in customer success from a human resource, to data and telemetry, and automations and tools,” he said. “And all of that is meant to help your customers on board get time to value, remain happy, customers, consume more and then be retained. And there’s a shared success model with Barracuda and our partners for the end customers throughout their life cycle. Many partners have moved from resale to managed service, which helps the MSP with their company valuation, their end-customer retention and customer success. It just takes that to the next level. So what we want our partners to understand is we’re here as a partner in the entire life cycle for your end customer.”
Barracuda and its partners can generate more demand together, Beal said.
“We can close more business together,” he said. “We can drive time to first value in adoption of our technology better together. We can expand that estate within our mutual customers better, and then we can ensure that together we’re hitting our gross and our net retention rates. So that’s a different approach. In the old days, you sold these big systems, collected a big check up front, waited 365 days or 1,000 days later on a three-year contract and you went for a renewal. In today’s industry, it’s more around that quicker entry, product-led growth, show that value that you’re getting and then really build that customer lifetime value over time.”
At Discover 23, Barracuda is showing attendees its partner multiplier and the opportunity for them, Beal said.
“We will show that there is $1 billion partner economic opportunity and we want them to leave the show knowing how to go capture that incremental $1 billion dollars,” he said. “So if they sell that dollar of Barracuda, it can generate $5.57 in this partner economic opportunity. If they leave the show knowing how to go capture that, then they’re going to make their own businesses a lot stronger and they’re going to help their customers even more. So that’d be a great takeaway, knowing how they can maximize that multiplier for every dollar of Barracuda sold and participate in that incremental billion-dollar opportunity.”
At Discover 23, Barracuda is showing attendees its partner multiplier and the opportunity for them, Beal said.
“We will show that there is $1 billion partner economic opportunity and we want them to leave the show knowing how to go capture that incremental $1 billion dollars,” he said. “So if they sell that dollar of Barracuda, it can generate $5.57 in this partner economic opportunity. If they leave the show knowing how to go capture that, then they’re going to make their own businesses a lot stronger and they’re going to help their customers even more. So that’d be a great takeaway, knowing how they can maximize that multiplier for every dollar of Barracuda sold and participate in that incremental billion-dollar opportunity.”
Barracuda on Tuesday kicked off Discover 23, its first annual Americas partner summit, with news that it’s expanding its channel team to provide more support for partners.
The conference is taking place this week in Denver. Barracuda is celebrating its 20-year anniversary with 150 key partners.
At Discover 23, Barracuda is showcasing its latest innovations in email protection, application and cloud security, data protection and network security.
Barracuda Details Partner Investments at Discover 23
Jason Beal, Barracuda’s vice president of worldwide partner ecosystems, said his company is expanding its channel team to better support and assist partners.
Barracuda’s Jason Beal
“I’m seven months now into the job, but I represent an investment by the company in our global channel strategy and working with partners,” he said. “We also will be announcing on stage the addition of Maria Martinez. She is in week seven as a new vice president of channels for the Americas. We also are announcing Karen Ward, who is running our vice president of MSP sales.”
Barracuda also is hiring a global director of partner technical enablement, Beal said.
Barracuda Networks’ Maria Martinez
Barracuda’s Karen Ward
“On our website, you can see we have five open positions in the United States alone for channel sales executives to work directly with our partners and to help them with technical enablement,” he said. “And then you’ll also see on the external website that we have outside and inside channel managers that we’re adding, All of these resources are meant to just get closer to our partners, make it easy for our partners to do business with and have the support that they need to expand the partnership.”
Barracuda is also sharing details of additional partner program investments. It plans to launch a new partner program, that will combine its VAR and MSP partners for the first time, this fall.
See our slideshow above for more from Barracuda Discover 23.
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