The formalization of the community-based integration network Carbon Black has always had is tied to the development of their new Predictive Security Cloud.

Jim Raine, Carbon Black’s director of technology alliances

Endpoint security vendor Carbon Black has formally announced the Carbon Black Integration Network (CbIN), a technology partner program designed to improve cybersecurity through integrations with Carbon Black’s open APIs. Carbon Black also announced that both LogRhythm and Phantom are now part of the CbIN, and have already used Carbon Black’s open APIs to build productized integration with Carbon Black’s Predictive Security Cloud.

Carbon Black has always had a strong commitment to an open API ecosystem, and has had over 80 technology partners already build more than 120 supported integrations with them. This begs the question of why this program is only being announced now.

“It’s a formalization and clarification of what we have already been doing,” said Jim Raine, Carbon Black’s director of technology alliances. “We originally created a community-based integration network  for this. We wanted to avoid the kind of pay-to-play, fee-based program, which really limits the type of partnerships that can be established – especially with startups. With the community-based integration network, we encouraged everyone, including competitors, to integrate, in interest of the customer. We are now formalizing the program, at this time, and timing it with our new Predictive Security Cloud.”

The formalized program will have the same philosophy as the original one.

“We won’t have any fees!” Raine said. “We have established a stake in the ground there. This is about making a community come together. It’s about leveraging all the integrations that we currently have with the Predictive Security Cloud, and shifting them over to the cloud, enabling the product to be hosted. What we have to do from a partner point of view is make sure they can access our API, and have access to the data, so that they can enable the product as cloud services.”

Carbon Black has a ‘the more the merrier’ approach when it comes to technical integrations.

“We are an implementer –  not a firewall and not a SIEM,” Raine said. “We need an open system and integration network to allow companies to integrate, and want to  streamline the process. We integrate with competitors today. We have integration partners who are so new to the market, that they want to make sure their integration with us works, even before they announce their product. Our customers have told us that they want to be able to integrate with everybody – not just the better known players who sell to the Fortune 100.”

The CbIN is all about engineering alliances, not go-to-market ones, although Raine noted that the one sometimes leads to the other.

“Go-to-market isn’t directly a function of this program, but it exists,” he said. “We have relationships which are closer, but those are handled by our corporate development side. This program does tend to identify partners who we could work with that way, however.”

Raine also thinks that the way Carbon Black runs its alliances program works to the benefit of channel partners.

“These programs typically can have a structured and stiff way of operating,” he said. “The channel wants to know how to tie services into the mix, and that usually requires some kind of integration. If it doesn’t exist, they have to tie that together themselves. All these integrations make it easier for them to create solutions, and gives them far more leverage to do things that matter more to their customers.”