Security vendor WatchGuard Technologies has revealed “significant investment” in its channel activities.
“We recognise that our partners are the life of our business and as such, continuous investments in the channel are necessary to continue to grow together with our partner base,” Jonathan Whitley, area sales director for Northern Europe at WatchGuard tells Channel Pro.
Whitley says the vendor is making a number of investments in rebates, cooperative advertising, turn-key marketing resources, its Security Pays incentive rewards programme and Renewals Manager tool.
Additional areas of investment include increased direct touch sales staff “who are focused on securing and growing key end user business through the channel.”
Whitley says the purpose of this is not to compete with the channel “but to further enhance their efforts and uncover additional opportunities.”
The firewall vendor recently welcomed new vice president of worldwide sales, Sean Price. He will lead WatchGuard’s global go-to-market strategy managing the company’s field, channel, and technical sales teams, as well as sales operations and administration.
“Sean’s experience in ramping up a channel-oriented business, with complementary business development skills and deep knowledge of service providers as a route to market, is exactly what we need to accelerate the growth momentum,” says Prakash Panjwani, chief executive officer at WatchGuard.
“Partners are energised and we couldn’t be prouder of their accomplishments to date,” says Whitley.
Nick Deane, sales director at WatchGuard platinum partner Rockford IT says he is pleased with the support the firm has received from its account manager and the vendor’s marketing team: “With the drive to get to a Platinum level partner and since then we’ve actually grown the WatchGuard proportion business by 66 percent,” he says.
