Cybersecurity vendor Todyl is giving every MSP partner—no matter how much business they’re generating—access to three key company resources: a customer success manager, an account manager, and a security manager. It’s part of an overhauled partner program announced this week, which also includes enhanced sales and marketing support and training.
“Looking back over the last 12 months or so, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in sophistication in the frequency of threat actor activity,” John Nellen (pictured above), Todyl CEO and founder, tells MSP Success. “And that’s coupled with continuing demand that’s continuing to grow for our partners, not only with SMB but in mid-market businesses who are in need of a unified, comprehensive solution to address those challenges. We want to make sure that we are in a position to help partners address these challenges head on.”
With consultation from their partner advisory council, Todyl revised the program to drive better business outcomes for MSPs and better security outcomes for MSPs’ customers, Nellen says. “We want to make sure that we’re able to support and accelerate [partners’] growth, revenue, and profitability while at the same time enabling them to not only navigate but succeed in a increasingly complex threat landscape.”
A Modular Platform
Established in 2017, Todyl went to market in 2020, and launched its original partner program in 2022. In March of this year, Todyl received a $50 million Series B investment, and well-known channel industry veteran Austin McChord, founder and former CEO of Datto, joined the board.
Todyl’s modular cybersecurity platform today comprises SASE, SIEM, SOAR, EDR/NGAV (next generation antivirus), MXDR, and GRC. MSPs can “pick and choose modules that they want to combine at the tenant level,” Nellen explains. “So we purposely built it to be as flexible as possible. Every business that they support, that they deliver networking security to, is going to be different. They all have different needs, different budgets. So we specifically built the platform so that they can select, choose, and compile different modules for every single one of their tenants.”
He adds, “We specifically selected these different technologies to bring together; that way, we have a much broader scope and breadth of visibility and control. So the ability to see more, stop more, detect faster, and respond more effectively.”
The platform has per-device subscription pricing with a one-year agreement. Nellen declined to disclose how many MSP partners Todyl is working with today.
Enabling Partner Success
Revamping the partner program with direct access to strategic collaboration and resources, and shifting away from the previous technical account manager model, is intended to drive more success for MSPs while helping them better protect their customers, Nellen says. Part of the revamp included bringing on Rick Hensley in May as chief customer officer.
“We want to better align our expertise with the needs of our partners to enable better success,” Nellen says.
Now, every MSP partner gets three assigned resources. “Every single MSP. It’s very important,” Nellen stresses
“The success manager is really focused on making sure that our partners—their teams—are successful with the platform … and leveraging the technology optimally,” Nellen says. “The detection and response manager, you could think of it as a security manager, they’re sitting with partners and their teams in Slack and Microsoft Teams. If something were to happen, there’s an individual that knows our partner, their tenants, the technology, and is ready to go and assist with that response. There’s nothing else like it right now in the channel.”
Finally, the account manager supports partners “with a wide variety of new go-to-market programs, serving as an advisor on the sales, the marketing, and the growth front, focused on growing their revenue and ultimately their profitability as well,” Nellen explains.
Two Obsessions
Nellen says Todyl obsesses over two things. “First is our partners; second is our platform. And we’re continuing to make very significant investments in our technology capabilities, growing talent specifically on product engineering and security. And we intend to continue to push the limits of what’s possible on the unified platform front through our unique technology.”
Last week, for instance, Nellen says Todyl launched a new machine learning-powered anomaly engine as part of their SIEM and SOAR. “What that does is allows us to identify even faster, even earlier in the threat life cycle, business email compromise and identity-based threats.”
As for the future roadmap, he says, “We have a lot of irons in the fire, and this is just the beginning of what’s to come.”
