SonicWall leverages their new firewall-as-a-service capability to put together three bundles around it, aimed at MSSPs and MSPs who meet revenue and training requirements.
Michelle Ragusa-McBain, SonicWall’s North America Channel Chief
Cybersecurity vendor SonicWall has announced the availability of three new managed services protection tiers based on SonicWall Generation 7 appliances. They are Threat Protection Security Suite, Essential Protection Security Suite and Advanced Protection Security Suite. They also make use of a new Firewall-as-a-Service capability that SonicWall just announced. These will all be available in February.
“We are best known for our firewalls,” said Michelle Ragusa-McBain, a long-time Cisco executive who joined SonicWall as North America Channel Chief two months ago. “Today we launched firewalls as-a-service. In terms of subscription and consumption, this is the first service of that kind we have launched. With there being a cyberattack every 39 seconds and a ransomware attack every 14 seconds, we have seen a 75% growth in our existing managed services. The idea of subscription models isn’t new for us, and we are doing well with that 75% growth, but we are continuing to enrich our model.”
The three suites available through a monthly building model are the Treat Protection Security Suite, Essential Protection Security Suite and Advanced Protection Security Suite. The bundles a range of critical firewall security services, including the Capture Advanced Threat Protection sandbox service, patented Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection, intrusion prevention and application control, and content filtering and reporting capabilities. Each of these firewall security services bundle includes 24×7 SonicWall support for end customers, including an online support portal.
“At the end of the day, there are 4300 security companies, and in this market we need to differentiate, making significant investments in our procedure and roadmap, including XDR, EDR and SASE,” Ragusa-McBain said.
She indicated that there were two tracks of partners in the program.
“There are separate overlay tracks for our Velocity partners and for our Strategic partners,” she said. The Velocity partners are the more transactional MSP partners. The Strategic partners are our MSSP partners, and MSP partners who meet qualifications of both monthly recurring revenue and training.”
Service provider partners have three levels – Protect, Power and Power Plus. They are also determine by levels of monthly recurring revenue, and there are increased discounts as you go up in tier.
“These are subject to change,” Ragusa-McBain said. “This will all launch in February so there is some time for details.” SonicWall will be running these offerings through dedicated Service Account Managers, and some of the requirements will have specialization certification requirements as well.
While the new offerings are being pitched as attractive to enterprises, Ragusa-McBain indicated that this does not mean SonicWall’s traditional SMB base will get low priority here.
“We have always had our sweet spot in the SMB space, and that is our heart and soul, in many areas like SLED, retail, and manufacturing,” she said. “With this, we will swim more upstream, but never forget the heart of what the company is founded on, which is SMB.”
Ragusa-McBain also said that SonicWall is deepening its commitment to its channel, because even though they were 100% channel before, greater support could have been provided on the operational side as well as through the partner program, which is undergoing a redesign.
“Before, we didn’t get out from behind the firewall too much to talk with partners,” she stated. “SonicWall really cares about our partners and we will show up in a meaningful way. As we go on this mission together, if you are an existing partner, I want you to let me know what’s working.”
