Appgate cuts ribbon on MSP programme

Security player Appgate has rolled out a managed service provider (MSP) programme to get zero-trust solutions in front of more customers.

The vendor has been building its channel, with Fiona Doak, the director of channel sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Appgate, making it clear to MicroScope in August that the firm is keen to work with committed partners.

Doak said the MSP programme had been in development for a while, but was key in arming partners with more flexible pricing options to pitch to customers.

“It extends our offering to our partners and increases their value in turn to their prospects and customers,” she added. “We’re expanding our programme all the time, having an MSP offering as well as the straightforward normal partner offering, having those two things gives us a much wider network of partners to go work with.

“More organisations are looking to their valued partners to run such service offerings for them, instead of doing it themselves. This does add a great deal of value to our partner network – they can stand it up as a service within their offering. We make it extremely flexible and easy for the partner, it’s very much theirs, there’s no upfront financial investment to do this,” Doak added.

Doak added that zero trust was one of those products that lent itself to being delivered as part of a managed service. “It’s an overarching infrastructure of products and services pulled together to provide a zero-trust network access solution to a client,” he said.

Those signing up to the MSP programme will be offered product training and marketing support. So far, the response from partners has been positive.

“I joined Appgate in March and we’ve got a good number of partners across the EMEA territory now that we’re building out through our distribution networks and our direct network of partners as well,” said Doak.

“All of them have been asking me since I got here, when will you have your MSP programme ready? When is it coming? It has been very positive.”

She said virtual private network (VPN) technology was being challenged by zero-trust offerings and it was a good time for its channel to go out and challenge the status quo.

“VPN is a 26-year-old technology. I’m still astounded by how much VPN is still being used, being purchased, when there are so many ways and means of offering that kind of solution in a more comprehensive and easy-to-use way,” said Doak.

“As we start to see the decline of VPN – and we will, it’s going to happen – and as zero-trust network access solutions will come to the fore, organisations [will see that it’s] easier, more flexible and more secure to do it this way,” she added.