Cybersecurity vendor Barracuda Networks launched a new channel program aimed at supporting MSPs throughout the entire customer lifecycle, from lead generation to first contact to service delivery to product renewals.
The Barracuda Partner Success Program is the vendor’s first truly global partner program, according to Jason Beal, vice president, worldwide partner ecosystems, at Barracuda. The program acknowledges the needs of the partner community as channel companies of all types—and at different stages of maturity—move toward diversification and the adoption of hybrid models that, for instance, combine managed services with product sales and project work.
The program was architected to drive customer success, which requires a strong collaborative effort, says Beal, who joined Barracuda last December.
To that end, Barracuda’s marketing, sales, and engineering teams will work side by side with resellers, MSPs, and hyperscaler marketplaces to address customer needs all along the customer lifecycle. “Our channel partners are an extension of our business. They help us with scale and reach, and delivery of customer success is not an exception,” he said
Barracuda has put the infrastructure in place to help partners accelerate time to value, achieve “full feature adoption” by customers, and expand their footprint to keep customers engaged for the long term, Beal says.
“Partners are critical in working with our marketing teams—and our inside and field sales teams—to go back to [existing] customers and say, ‘Let’s now expand the estate; let’s show you some of the next logical technologies that will help from a cyberdefense and data protection standpoint,’’’ Beal explains.
The Barracuda program, according to Beal, differs from the predominant traditional channel model that prioritizes product resale and volume. In contrast, Barracuda has built compensation into every step of the customer lifecycle to reward partners not for just pushing product but also providing services and product renewals, he says. Currently, partners generate $3 on top of every dollar of Barracuda technology they sell, and the new program will boost the multiplier to 5.5X, he says.
Supporting Agility
In developing the program, Barracuda took into consideration current market trends. Both customers and partners, Beal says, have a strong desire to streamline their supplier channel and to be more agile.
For instance, customers often ask MSPs to deliver products and services on top of their core managed service offerings. It isn’t uncommon for the same customer to ask for a service proposal one day and then request something different a week later, Beal says. MSPs have to be ready to pivot when that happens, regardless of their maturity level, and they need vendors to enable them, which is why Barracuda has added enablement tracks on its partner portal for MSPs and hyperscaler marketplaces.
To reaffirm its commitment to MSPs, Barracuda recently appointed Patrick O’Donnell as its SVP, worldwide MSP sales. “With the launch of the Barracuda Partner Success Program, we are taking action to make our programs more responsive, complete, and innovative. We want to simplify how partners experience and engage Barracuda,” O’Donnell says.
To ensure the program meets partner needs, Barracuda consulted its global partner advisory council and regional advisory boards. “This is what we call partner empathy,” Beal says. “Barracuda put itself in our partners’ shoes to better understand their needs and build a winning go-to-market strategy.”
