New products will enhance Check Point’s MSP in Canada, while the recently announced channel changes will put more dollars in partners’ pockets.
Ron Dekker, Country Manager, Canada, at Check Point
Check Point has one of the larger-Canadian based staffs and channels in the cybersecurity industry. The company expects that the channel will benefit from both policy and product announcements made at their recent CPX 2024 event in Las Vegas.
“We are very committed to our channel,” said Ron Dekker, Country Manager, Canada, at Check Point, who is in his seventh year in the Check Point Canadian country manager position. “We have 350 plus employees based in Canada now. 250 of those are in our OTAC, our first line customer support operation. The remainder support our sales and channel operations.” The company’s business in Canada fits a common model, with 60% of the business being in the centres, 20% in the west and 20% in the east
The channel component consists of a broad range of partner types.
“They include many national and focused partners,” Dekker said. “Bell Canada was our national partner in Canada this year.
Dekker noted that all of Check Point’s growth pillars in Canada are doing well, as in the U.S., with their email business at the front of the pack.
“Harmony is our fastest growing business,” he said.
From a partner perspective, likely the most important product announced at CPX 2024 is the new Infinity AI Copilot, a new virtual assistant that uses natural language queries to assist in analysis and reduce human administrative time required by up to 90%.
“AI Copilot’s simplicity will be a game changer,” Dekker said. “The vision for this is things like Copilot being used for network security functions, like determining whether a gateway is at risk.”
Ang Valentini, Head of Channels for Canada, highlighted another new announcement, Quantum Spark, a small business firewall, that complements ten new Quantum firewalls at the higher end of the portfolio. Spark firewalls are AI-powered and deliver a 99.7% block rate of cyberattacks and scalable network security.
“Quantum Spark is really geared to the MSP market,” Valentini said.
Valentini stated that was important because while the MSP market is important for Check Point at both the high and low ends of the market, they are gearing up their MSP presence in Canada.
“We are end to end with GSIs, DMRs, distis, and VARs, but MSPs have been a focus area for us,” he said. “We have been selling MSP services in Canada, but we are now expanding into MSP partners as well.
Valentini also drew attention to the channel program changes that Check Point launched a month ago.
“We increased our basic deal registration from 6% to 12%,” because we wanted it to be competitive with the market,” he said. “We did a lot of competitor research to establish this. We also added new bonuses for specialization and for new customer discounts which are stackable.” The program was also simplified, moving from six tiers to four.
