The Gately Report: More Services, Certifications Coming for Qualys PartnersThe Gately Report: More Services, Certifications Coming for Qualys Partners

Qualys partners are getting more services and certifications for bigger revenue opportunities with the cloud security provider.

That’s according to Barb Huelskamp, Qualys’ senior vice president of global channels and alliances. This month, Qualys unveiled its Managed Risk Operations Center (mROC) Partner Alliance. Select Qualys partners can expand their revenue streams by offering advisory, onboarding, integration and remediation through a unified managed service to help clients identify, quantify, assess and mitigate cyber risks.

MSSPs can expand their service offerings among Qualys’ installed base of enterprise customers.

“Launching this mROC partner alliance is an opportunity for our partners to drive a new service and service-attach opportunity when they are positioning the Qualys platform,” Huelskamp said. “First, this will help them reduce their customer’s risk before there's even an active threat against a rapidly expanding attack surface and tools sprawl. Vulnerability management has evolved, and it's requiring a more proactive strategy, safeguarding business continuity versus reactively managing threats that have already occurred. This requires security teams to shift left, embedding security earlier in the process before they even impact critical business systems."

Related:Qualys Launches Next-Generation Security-as-a-Service Platform

The company's Enterprise TruRisk Management platform (ETM), Huelskamp said, gives partners a single, centralized risk orchestration platform.

"ETM helps enable this mROC offer," she said. "It provides more value for our partners, long-term account stickiness, and improving customer satisfaction and outcomes.”

Key Service Areas for Qualys Partners

mROC provides an opportunity for four key service areas for Qualys partners, Huelskamp said. Those include a cyber risk advisory managed service, onboarding and integration services, continuous risk monitoring services and risk remediation services.

“We're spending a lot of time with our partners, particularly [global systems integrators] and MSSPs, walking them through, briefing them on this service opportunity, providing demonstrations and supporting them in how they evolve to offer this service to their customers,” she said. “We remain 100% partner-led on services. I think it's a big differentiator for us. Not all of our competition does this. So it's going to be driving more services, more profitability as they continue to position the broader Qualys platform.”

Channel Futures: Cybersecurity services are in high demand. How is Qualys helping partners meet that demand?

Related:Qualys Partners Get New Risk Operations Center

Barb Huelskamp: We're going to continue to invest in the technology and the innovation of our platform, and lean into our partners for those services. This year, Qualys will create a certification path for partners for sales, pre-sales and post-sales support. We're going to continue with the current training strategy that we have, providing both virtual and in-person training at no charge to our partners. And mROC really is that next step for our partners who are providing managed services for a whole new revenue stream.

CF: Qualys this month unveiled TotalAppSec, its new AI-powered app risk management solution. How will Qualys partners benefit from this?

BH: We have a very partner-centric strategy so we will be rolling out campaigns with our partners and making sure that we are enabling them on this new opportunity. Qualys is committed to staying ahead of emerging threats and providing partners with cutting-edge solutions. The forefront of addressing AI cybersecurity challenges is with our TotalAI solution, designed to de-risk organizations’ AI workloads, particularly focused on generative AI and large language model (LLM) applications. My team's job is to make sure that we're getting ahead of that with partners, helping them understand the solution, the value to their customers, how to position that, and the integration of that across the broader platform and other technologies that they are rolling out to their customers.

Related:Qualys to Drive More Business Through Channel Partners

CF: For its fourth quarter of 2024, Qualys reported a 10% increase in revenue and 8% increase in profit. What role do partners play in Qualys’ financial growth?

BH: I think we've done a good job earning trust with the partner ecosystem, actioning the partner-centric strategy we've been talking about all year, and that's been instrumental in reaching new markets and new customers through our partners. We have seen strong channel revenue growth overall in this past year, particularly higher growth with partners in new business and customer expansion, and a notable increase in new customer deal registration and cross-sells. I think it really reflects the strengthening brand awareness, the strategic market position and the trusted relationships we have really grown with our partners over the course of the last year.

CF: What’s the latest with Qualys’ partner program? Anything new coming for partners?

BH: First, the mROC partner alliance is a great opportunity. Second, we’re launching new partner certifications. We rolled out those enablement paths last year and have really learned a lot. We are going to be expanding that with formal certifications. Our partners have actually been asking for this. They want to be recognized for those highest achievements and provide that recognition in front of customers, recognizing the investments they've made in their certifications and their competencies with Qualys, so we're going to be rolling that out this year.

Qualys partners have been asking for formal certifications. Smile Studio AP/Shutterstock

I mentioned our focus with GSIs and MSSPs. This is the group of partners most ideal to be engaging on that mROC opportunity. I also believe it's a huge growth area for us. We are putting additional resources on this partner type. That includes more channel managers, as well as partner sales engineers to help activate and grow their business with us. Last year, we rolled out a new MSSP portal for them based on feedback from our partners, and we're going to continue innovating on that portal to better serve them.

We've been talking to partners, finding out what they need next. That MSSP portal provides a unified platform for their client subscription security services and how they manage all of those customers. It's really been providing them with enhanced operational efficiencies, enabling them to increase their revenue opportunities. So we're going to continue to spend time innovating with our MSSPs on what they need in the portal, how they approach their customers and more resources to support them.

And then finally, driving net-new business. That has been particularly successful for us with partners. We really want to double down on that, especially in enterprise. We've had notable growth in deal registration for net-new [customers] last year, and after surveying and talking to partners, we're going to try some new pilot programs this year with some select partners, rewarding them in different ways for those deal registrations and new [customers], whether it's a SPIFF or additional deal incentives. That's kicking off this month. In SMB and SME, we strive to be 100% dedicated to building our business with partners. We made huge strides in these customer segments last year, and this year we're going to be leaning in even more.

CF: Is Qualys’ partner ecosystem growing? If so, what’s fueling the growth?

BH: It is growing, but I think an even more important metric is that more partners are transacting with Qualys. We've seen an over 20% increase in the number of partners actually transacting with us. I don't know the exact percentage that our partner community is growing, but it's been growing at a pretty steady rate, especially as we have built trust out in the market with a partner ecosystem and stated our commitment to a partner-centric strategy. We've certainly attracted more partners, but I think more importantly we are activating more partners through the enablement that we've put out there, through the tools that we've put out there and the engagement in the field. Our sales team is proactively engaging with partners in co-selling motions, and so we're seeing a lot more partners creating and closing business with our sales teams.

CF: AI is the hottest topic in cybersecurity. How is AI benefitting Qualys' partners?

BH: As it relates to our partners, they count on us to be thought leaders, not just with the innovation of our platform, but also helping them understand how to be thought leaders in front of their customers. Our partners are like a virtual sales organization, so we are spending a lot of time with them. We have monthly newsletters. We have monthly webinars. We have office hours. Partners can just dial in and ask questions on any particular subject. And as we announce all of these solutions like TotalAI, like TotalAppSec, we are proactively establishing communications with our partners to make sure they can proactively get the information that their customers are seeking and help educate them to position that, to integrate it into their portfolio, to integrate it into their services.

CF: What’s the latest in terms of feedback from partners, their latest needs and challenges?

BH: Cybersecurity is a crowded market. It's a competitive market and we've been focused on how we differentiate. For me, it starts with our platform. Our partners love the Qualys platform. They love that we lean in and we are 100% service-led. When you think about that differentiation, there are a lot of tools out there. Partners want to make sure that they're providing differentiated value, and I think this new mROC service is going to allow them to provide that differentiation. We've also been engaging partners proactively in historically direct accounts. Qualys customers recognize the value that we bring with our partners, and when we go in and co-sell together, it typically results in more Qualys solutions being sold, customers’ awareness about what our single orchestrated platform can do for them alongside those partner services. So that's been a differentiator as well for our partners.

CF: What do you find most surprising and dangerous about the current threat landscape?

BH: We have threat actors out there every day, so that proactive vulnerability management is key for any organization to make sure that they've got business continuity and that they are reducing risks before they impact critical business systems. This requires security teams to shift left, embedding security earlier in the process to reduce risks before they occur. I think our platform allows you to do that. The services that we are rolling out with our partners allow us to do that and proactively address it before you're managing post-threat.

Our CEO says something often, and it’s simple and profound: If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. With our platform and these services, our partners can really provide prioritization about what is most important based on the impact to your security posture and your environment. 

CF: What can partners expect from Qualys in 2025? Will 2025 be a particularly significant year for Qualys and its partners?

BH: We're going to continue to modernize our partner strategy and our program. I think we've shown that commitment, investing in joint growth, investing in our partner competencies and investing in their services. Where we want to grow, we are doing that first with partners, and we've proven that. Trust is a currency in the channel ecosystem and I think we've done that, proving our commitment there. We'll continue to demonstrate that with mROC and with training.

We've made significant investments in how we develop and reach new markets together, reach and expand current customers together, with things like marketing development funds, with the resources we put in place to enable our partners, and investments we're making in the back office to support that. You need to make investments to roll out certifications like that. We're investing a lot in developing these mROC services with our partners, in the briefings and talking to ETM-interested customers, bringing our partners to those conversations and helping them develop those services. We're going to remain focused on the innovation of our platform through growth in our partners. We've got to continue investing in their competencies, and we're going to do that across the entire ecosystem. We've got a nice, large partner ecosystem with resellers, distributors, GSIs and MSSPs. We've got a growing tech alliance organization. We've got great relationships with our cloud providers, and we're going to continue investing in how we grow together, facing our joint customers.