Proofpoint, a SaaS (software-as-a-service) e-mail security, e-mail archiving and data loss prevention (DLP) vendor, wants a bigger presence in Canada and has introduced a new channel program that promises more discounts and margins in an effort to recruit more partners.
Dave Crilley, director of channel and international marketing at Proofpoint, says the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor focuses primarily on the large enterprise market with its security, DLP and e-mail archiving and eDiscovery solutions.
Today, roughly half of the company’s overall revenues go through the channel; however Crilley says the eventual goal is to become an “all-channel company.”
While the vendor also has an office located in Toronto, Crilley admits that Proofpoint’s presence in the Canadian channel is “fairly small.”
“In Canada, we’re looking to recruit more partners,” he said. “Our goal is to grow very aggressively this year and since our presence in the Canadian channel is fairly small, we’re looking to establish a better footprint with VARs (value-added resellers).”
With the launch of a new partner program called the Proofpoint Advantage Partner Program earlier this year, Crilley says partners can receive more resources and support from the vendor in the form of online and instructor-led training, better discounts and a better pricing structure and high profit margins.
The program is broken down into three partner membership levels: Authorized, Select and Elite. As part of the program and depending on the partner level, partners can take advantage of things such as the Proofpoint Partner Portal, increased profit margins, market development funds and lead sharing.
“Our new channel program is designed to really showcase our desire to provide more margin and a better money-making proposition for partners,” Crilley said. “Like a lot of American vendors, we don’t have the presence in Canada that we’d like to have. We’re not about putting resellers on every street corner, but we want to work closely with resellers that focus on the enterprise market like we do to really drive value.”
Crilley says the Proofpoint solution portfolio offers partners and customers a flexible deployment model, depending on how the customer wants the product to work. The Proofpoint solutions can be deployed as a hardware appliance, virtual appliance, or through a hosted services and software model, Crilley explains. In addition to this deployment flexibility, organizations only need one unified appliance architecture, since the anti-spam, anti-virus, policy-based encryption and reporting capabilities are all centrally included and managed on a single device.
Channel partners can receive margins in the double-digit range for these solutions, Crilley said. Currently, the company’s products are being distributed across the U.S. and Canada by Computerlinks.
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