Illumio is looking to strengthen partners in a growing zero trust segmentation market by significantly enhancing their global partner program.
Todd Palmer, Senior Vice President of Global Partner Sales and Alliances at Illumio
Today, Zero Trust Segmentation vendor Illumio is announcing significant changes to their global Enlighten Partner Program. Prompted by increased demand for zero trust segmentation, the changes enhance curriculum and training, and provide improved pricing for resellers, as well as renewals for both MSPs and resellers.
“Microsegmentation is a massive opportunity,” said Todd Palmer, Senior Vice President of Global Partner Sales and Alliances at Illumio. “There has been a massive increase in the number of regulations and increased cost of breaches. Companies need to assume that there will be breaches and need protection from damage. Gartner has said that by 2026, 60% of enterprises will be using a segmentation solution, up from 5% in 2023. They need solutions to help protect their organizations, and our partners are leaning in right now because they recognize their opportunity.”
Palmer emphasized that microsegmentation is closely connected with segmentation.
“Our focus has never changed,” he said. “It’s all about visibility and providing macro or micro level policies throughout the enterprise. For example, production should never be talking to non-production.”
Illumio is announcing a comprehensive curriculum and complimentary hands-on training designed to make it easier to sell, implement and operate Illumio solutions.
“The key here is comprehensive,” Palmer said. “We had training before, but all of our partners have sellers and presales technical resources, as well as professional services that implement them. We have broken our curriculum up by user, including presales and post sales, which makes it more comprehensive. We have added more hands-on labs and more RFP. Illumio is a technical sale, and we want our partners to learn how it will be used in the customer’s environment.”
The new pricing program is focused around MSPs.
“The pricing for resellers has not changed, but the pricing for MSPs has changed,” Palmer indicated. “We took their support into consideration and reduced their costs. This is something that really helped partners.”
Price protection is something that Illumio has offered before, but changes have been made.
“We had it for renewals before, but it wasn’t as clear as it needed to be,” Palmer said. “This is not just about managed services. The major change is around renewals, but we also made installs more profitable, to give the partner a stronger option between investing in Illumio or reselling it as a managed service.”
A no-cost services enablement program has also been introduced.
“We provide a lab environment and a dedicated team of resources to shadow on first engagements with the partner to make sure they will be successful with their customers,” Palmer said. “We can also train partners how to deliver implementation and integration services.”
The program’s training has been simplified significantly as well.
“We always had tiers, but we have now simplified them from four tiers to two, to make it easier to understand,” Palmer stated. “The benefits and requirements of the tiers are different, but training is available for all.”
Palmer also noted that the tiers are based more around partner investment than revenue.
“The training requirements are around technical qualities,” he said. “We want partners in our top tiers that will invest in Illumio. We want partners to build a business with us because we make a significant investment in them.”
Illumio is looking to pick up a select number of quality partners with the new program.
“We are not on a recruiting tear, and are focused on very targeted recruitment in newer markets or industries,” Palmer said. “We just want to get the right partners and invest in them to try and grow their business. We have also focused on what different parts of the ecosystem want. For example, large federal integrators and GSIs care most about training while resellers wanted price protection on purchase and renewal.”
