WatchGuard Technologies has expanded its WatchGuardONE partner programme, featuring multiple paths of entry via individual specialisations in Network Security, Secure Wi-Fi and MFA.
Each specialisation has its own set of knowledge-based requirements, including sales and technical training. Partners that attain specialisation in just one of these three product families can achieve full WatchGuardONE status, including financial incentives and sales, marketing and technical support, without revenue thresholds or product portfolio adoption requirements.
These new WatchGuardONE specialisations build on the success of the company’s existing value-based programme, minimising barriers to entry and ensuring maximum return on investment to make it easier than ever for partners to do business with WatchGuard.
According to a recent study from IPED Consulting, 44 percent of managed service providers (MSPs) report that recruiting and retaining technical staff is a critical or significant barrier to growth. MSPs also say sales and technical training are two of the most important elements provided by strategic vendor channel programmes. This is one of the reasons why WatchGuard continues to expand its focus on targeted education and training as the mechanism to gain partnership status and benefits within the WatchGuardONE programme.
“Partners don’t want to jump through hoops to reach lofty revenue thresholds or achieve vendor portfolio adoption criteria that doesn’t fit their customers’ needs – they just want to run their business efficiently,” said Michelle Welch, senior vice president of marketing at WatchGuard. “Whether they’re focused purely on network security, secure Wi-Fi or MFA, partners that invest the time can easily capitalise on the same financial incentives and support as our largest partners, regardless of their size, business model or revenue capabilities. We pride ourselves on continuing to make WatchGuardONE accessible to every partner, which in turn allows us to deliver the enterprise-grade security products and services that small and midsize customers need so desperately today.”
Achieving WatchGuardONE Status with Specialisations
WatchGuardONE has always been a value-based programme, rewarding partners for investing their time into earning knowledge-based requirements. As the company’s product offerings have expanded rapidly, from purely network security solutions to new segments like secure Wi-Fi and MFA over the past few years, these specialisations are a natural evolution of the WatchGuardONE programme. In the expanded programme, partners can earn WatchGuardONE status by specialising in just one of the available product families and achieve increasingly higher status and benefits by completing specialisations in multiple product lines. Financial incentives increase proportionally to the number of specialisations partners earn.
A Continuation of WatchGuard’s Partner-First Approach
Designed entirely to further enable and support partners’ businesses, these new WatchGuardONE specialisations are just the latest examples of WatchGuard’s enduring partner-first mentality.
The programme expansion comes on the heels of the launch of the WatchGuard Cloud platform, which reduces infrastructure costs, accelerates customer acquisition and minimises time spent on administrative tasks by centralising partners’ security management and reporting within a single cloud-based interface.
Additionally, WatchGuard takes pride in its extensive integrations with industry-leading remote monitoring and management (RMM) and professional services automation (PSA) solutions, like ConnectWise, Autotask, Tigerpaw and SolarWinds. These integrations enable partners to better manage their businesses with streamlined access to automated reporting, inventory management, help desk tasks, invoicing, ticket management and more.
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