Votiro has built a broader Zero Trust platform out of their original content disarm and reconstruction technology, and has formalized a channel program to deepen their channel presence, particularly in the APAC region, the U.S., and Canada.
Ravi Srinivasan, CEO of Votiro
Today, cybersecurity vendor Votiro, which has a 100% Go-to-Market channel strategy, but which has not previously had a formal channel program, is announcing their first, with the launch of the Votiro Accelerate Partner Program, which is designed to add quality partners and support them properly. It consists of three tiers, the standard metallics, which had not been in any informal version of the program. And while tiers for partner type had been around before, a new one, for MSPs and MSSPs, has been added for the first time. Votiro also called attention to the recent announcement of their Votiro MSP Dashboard, which enables partners and large enterprises to create and manage multiple tenants.
Votiro was Tel Aviv based since their inception in 2012. They moved to Austin in the U.S. at the start of this year as part of their decision to take a Series A capital funding round.
“Votiro began its life playing in the content disarm and reconstruction [CDR] space, and while they still do that, it has become subsumed within the broader Zero Trust framework,” said Ravi Srinivasan, CEO of Votiro.
“CDR is part of Zero Trust, but only one part of it,” Srinivasan said. “Our CDR looks at content flowing in and out of organizations through multiple channels. CDR by design didn’t trust any file to deliver safe and usable content. It leaves behind a lot of unknown bits – eliminating the unknown bad in a file. That’s the first stage in Zero Trust. Gartner originally coined the term CDR and tracks them as part of their overall endpoint security Hype Cycle, much like a remote browser isolation.”
Srinivasan indicated that while Zero Trust now has more commonality, in part the result of regulations, Votiro’s technology gives it a distinct advantage over many competitors in this crowded market.
“We are competing against the marketplace to apply Zero Trust to protect data, but they all do it through proxies,” he said. “What we do with CDR is closest to where applications interact with data. We don’t need a proxy because we are right there.”
Srinivasan said that they had built out their broader Zero Detection capabilities further over the last two years, to provide detection and analytics on the known bad things as well, and that their original CDR platform is now part of this broader Zero Trust platform.
“We sell one platform as an open API-based service,” he said.
What Votiro is doing with the channel program announcement is formalizing and expanding the Go-to-Market structure that they have been using in APAC, the region where they have been most dominant, into a global partner program.
“We have been channel-led from our inception, and the nature of Go-to-Market in APAC was selling us through a two-tier distribution market,” Srinivasan stated. “This expansion of a regional Go-to-Market involved formalizing the partner program for growth in North America and Europe. It also involved adding the MSP and MSSP partners as a fourth track, or sales lane, in our program, joining referral, reseller and distribution partners.”
The recently released MSP Dashboard, lets MSP and Enterprise Organizations display, filter and create reports on each of those tenants from a single control centre.
Previously, in both APAC and North America, Votiro used distribution to bring together their solution with other vendors in joint solutions.
“A couple of years ago we did two-tier distribution where a distributor would bring us together with vendors who made things like email or remote browser isolation solutions,” Srinivasan noted. Now the number of partners is much wider because of the role we play in Zero Trust security, so it is necessary to expand the umbrella.”
With the addition of the MSP/MSSP partners, the new program has four tracks, compared to the old program’s three. The tiers – standard Silver, Gold and Platinum levels – are new with the Votiro Accelerate Partner Program.
“It is different there now entirely,” Srinivasan said. “We didn’t have the formal program of three tiers before. We had tracks but no tiers. We’ve now put a tiering system in to help because of the demands we have seen in the markets we are entering, especially in the midmarket.
“Security is very competitive, especially when you enter a new market,” Srinivasan added. “Partners can combine their value proposition with what we already sell. We can add value to an existing cybersecurity portfolio, and we don’t make partners replace their old ways of doing things with ours. We offer a value-add proposition, where we don’t displace what they have, unlike some of the startups out there, but they add us on instead.”
Ingram Micro is Votiro’s primary North American distribution.
“The Ingram Micro deal has done very well for us over the last few years,” Srinivasan said. “We also have partners like Talos PCT for the government space – and can help to differentiate managed service providers. There are only so many ways you can detect threats – the known bad. The key is being able to add value for the unknown bad.”
Srinivasan highlighted Canada’s potential for Votiro.
“Canada is a green fields opportunity for us because of the customer base we go after – banks, insurance companies, and supply chain organizations,” he said. “Given that market opportunity, we have an investment in adding more partners in Canada, especially the MSSPs.”
Srinivasan emphasized that Votiro’s channel goals for the year ahead are straightforward.
“We will continue to execute as a channel led organization,” he said. “It’s now more than 90% of our revenues. My goal is to grow these four tracks significantly in the next 12 months.”
