SonicWall Adds Training, Marketing Capabilities to Channel Program

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During the first 150 days since its split from Dell last November, cybersecurity company SonicWall has onboarded more than 10,000 partners, including 2,000 that are new to the organization, in its SecureFirst Partner program.

And to keep the momentum going, the company is introducing SonicWall University to train partners globally on cybersecurity, and new global marketing programs and incentives aimed at helping partners deliver their offerings for SMBs. The theme of SonicWall’s new marketing program is “Fear Less.”

Partners have registered for SecureFirst in 90 countries. In addition, record numbers of partners have participated in SonicWall educational events, including attendance at this month’s SonicWall Virtual PEAK Performance, which more than doubled year over year to more than 1,300 partners.

Bill Conner, SonicWall’s president and CEO, tells Channel Partners the next 180 days will be include bringing out more new net capabilities.

“The innovation engine of SonicWall, day one, was like, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines,’ and it’s been going at Indy speed since,” he said. “We’re just now getting the laps in to just really make this a great race. So you’ll see lots more new products coming out and being launched. You’ll see hopefully a lot of SonicWall and these programs, and training happening with the partners. The real measurement at the end of the day is the partners’ success.”{ad}

SonicWall University includes specialized, role-based training and accreditation tailored to the three different audiences of sales, systems engineers and support team members. All of the training modules SonicWall uses to educate its own employees now are available to partners, and will be updated regularly with up-to-the-minute content based on the SonicWall Global Response Intelligent Defense (GRID) Threat Network, which collects real-time data from more than 1 million sensors globally.

“With that massive skills gap out in the market … and when you think about SonicWall’s target customer, SMBs and SMEs, they really struggle to figure out how to protect themselves, and so that places a huge focus on the channel,” said Steve Pataky, SonicWall’s vice president of worldwide security sales. “They have to turn to the channel to be their adviser and to help them protect themselves from these threats. So with the combination of that, and how dynamic and fast this threat landscape is moving, we felt it was time for a fundamentally different approach to partner enablement.”

More than 5,600 individuals in the SonicWall channel already have earned technical certifications through existing SonicWall certification programs which will continue, the company said.

“Partners will be able to …

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… come into SonicWall University, earn a specialization in ransomware, secure communications and encrypted threats, and then be able to leverage the campaign elements to go and deliver solutions to their customers,” Pataky said.

The new marketing campaign is in response to partner requests to help educate prospective and current customers on the most pressing cyberthreats today, according to the company. Partners can access prepackaged campaign materials and apply for market development funds online through a new partner portal. Partners can earn special discounts and rebates for using these programs to drive business.

“This is a very unique approach in that we’re combining it and designing it for the channel, and we’re having it built into SonicWall University certification,” said Bill Odell, SonicWall’s vice president of marketing. “It’s built through the SecureFirst portal so all of those materials … will be available in the portal and on demand. The cyber landscape changes so dramatically, so we’re not just going to publish materials and let them be static. We’re going to update these marketing materials all the time so they’re constantly refreshed. So if a new threat comes out or we need to help educate the channel to address a threat in a different way, we can update that material in real time.”