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SentinelOne preparing partners for programme
The cloud security player is working with its channel to ensure they are taking advantage of PartnerOne
It has been six months since SentinelOne soft-launched its enhanced partner programme, and the vendor is on track bringing its channel into a position to move to the revised scheme.
The security player’s senior management has placed great emphasis on building out the security player’s channel ecosystem, and earlier this year, at its Partner Summit in April, it launched the PartnerOne scheme, which will come into full effect in February next year.
The programme is structured around four tracks tailored to different types of partners: manage, for MSPs and MSSPs; sell, for resellers and solution providers; build, for ISVs and technology partners; and deliver, for system integrators and service providers.
Lisa Roberts, senior director for UK, Ireland and Northern Europe channels at SentinelOne, joined the business at the start of the year with a view to helping the firm grow its channel business, and has been heavily involved with bringing partners up to speed with the programme changes.
“What it’s going to do is allow all partners, no matter what [route to market is], to benefit quite considerably in terms of the benefits and the capabilities that we’re going to offer to them to take to market,” she said. “So, build, sell, manage and deliver. One size does not fit all in our partner ecosystem, we need to make sure we’re sympathetic to that. So, we’ve upgraded our programme to make sure that we are benefiting each of those partners. We’re giving them the ability to take advantage of benefits such as rebates, deal registrations, the commercial benefits and technical benefits to take SentinelOne to market.”
Roberts said the vendor had opted for a soft launch to provide the time and support partners might need to embrace the enhancements and gain the certifications they needed.
“To make sure that we can have those consultative conversations with our partners to say, ‘Here’s where you are today; here’s where you would like to get to; let’s help you to get there by 1 February,’ and then we can build in the certifications, the pipeline, the expectations, the MDF investments, to ensure that they are able to achieve that by that date,” she said. “And that’s what my team have been working on really closely, especially from a UK perspective.”
Preparing partners
The vendor is expecting around 100 partners to make the elite grade of the programme, and efforts are under way to make sure those at that level in the UK are fully prepared. Roberts and the team are working with VARs, MSPs and MSSPs, as well as those specialist security boutiques who also take its products to market.
“It isn’t an overnight thing,” said Roberts. “Our certifications take a bit of time investment. We want to make sure that we’re there to support them through that. We’ve put together a focus partner strategy to really work with those partners.
“We want to make sure we absolutely are hand-holding them and in lockstep to help them to achieve it,” she said. “That obviously unlocks more benefits for them.”
Roberts said SentinelOne has recently marked the first half of its fiscal year, and was on track in preparing partners for the arrival of the scheme.
“We are where we need to be at this point,” she said. “In the second half, it’s just going to be finalising certification to ensure we have the pipeline created to warrant the elite status for a lot of our partners.”
