By Anne-Marie Clegg - Alliance Marketing, Skyhigh Security
February 15, 2024 3 Minute Read
The Skyhigh Security Altitude Partner Program has turned one! As the Global Partner Marketing lead at Skyhigh, I’ve had a front row seat watching this rocket ship take off over the last year. In honor of this anniversary, Skyhigh Security is releasing new professional service and updated managed services provider (MSP) specializations. These additions to the Altitude Partner Program provide our partners with a differentiated route-to-market for our portfolio of products.
I thought this would be a great time to sit down and talk with the visionaries behind this launch, Scott Goree, Global VP, Partners and Alliances, and Hunter Haverty, Global Director of Channel Programs, at Skyhigh Security about how our program and these new offerings can help partners thrive in the exploding Security Service Edge (SSE) market.
Q&A with Scott Goree and Hunter Haverty
How did you choose the name Skyhigh Security Altitude?
Goree: We are evolving from a program where we were doing largely fulfillment to where we have partners adding value. The word “altitude” captures how we’re taking the company and our partners to the next level of growth. We’re particularly thrilled about how our MSP and professional service offerings will propel us to new heights.
How does the partner program complement your sales team?
Haverty: We have a direct sales team, but 100% of our business goes through the channel because we are committed to channel-first. It’s a collaborative process between our in-house team, our channel partners, and our technology partners.
What are some of the benefits of this program for Skyhigh Security?
Haverty: The program helps us expand into new global markets where we don’t have a large sales presence. To do that, we offer our partners not only industry-leading technology, but also a profitable revenue plan, training and certifications, and marketing support.
Goree: We do everything we can to earn and keep our partners’ trust. We see our partnerships as truly interdependent relationships that support our mission to provide customers with leading security solutions that will secure their data at scale and advance their digital transformation.
How does your new MSP and professional service offering benefit customers?
Haverty: For some customers, having a dedicated cybersecurity team can be cost-prohibitive. The MSP program enables them to outsource this function to specialized partners who have the expertise to manage security for them. The professional service offering equips partners with technical training to support customers during deployment.
These additions complement our existing value-added reseller and distributor specializations.
Skyhigh partners are equipped to guide customers in establishing the right data security strategy and solutions by offering a wide array of services.
How is the Skyhigh Security Altitude program different from others in the SSE space?
Goree: Our program is built on three tenets: simplicity, predictability, and profitability. Best of all, our program is simple—you don’t need a decoder ring to decipher it.
In terms of predictability, we offer a program that doesn’t change the rules—partners can trust that, once they get to a certain level, the goal post doesn’t move. By empowering them to deliver MSP capabilities and professional service, they can achieve more margin and gain a stronger foothold in their accounts. Otherwise, the program remains unchanged.
When it comes to profitability, we have up to double-digit rebates on the backend that provide some of the best profit margins in the market. Our partners need never worry about channel conflict nor losing renewals, because we protect the incumbency as well as new business.
What are some of the benefits of becoming a Skyhigh Security Altitude partner?
Goree: The main competitive advantage is quite simply the technology. We are an industry leader in SSE, where our technology is in eight out of ten of the top financial institutions. We’re especially strong in regulated markets like banking, healthcare, and the public sector.
Haverty: Then there’s the program advantage, because this program is easy to use, understand, work with, and make money with. We provide a single platform where partners can do everything: self-paced, on-demand training and certifications, sales enablement, deal registrations, MDF requests, and track attainment, investments, and the sales pipeline.
Goree: In terms of marketing support, resellers can leverage assets we’ve developed to deliver a co-branded message to the customer about joint value: messaging guides, newsletters, webinars, and customizable content, including thought leadership pieces.
Which Skyhigh Security products and services can partners sell? What are the requirements to join the program?
Haverty: Our portfolio is wide open once you become a partner. We have some basic qualifications around minimum annual booking values and training headcounts at each tier.
We have a comprehensive Altitude Program Guide in our Partner Portal that outlines the qualifications.
What excites you the most about this program?
Goree: I’m excited about the expansion to the different partner types and being able to flexibly tailor to the needs of the partner. According to Gartner, revenue in the SSE market amounted to between $2.4 billion and $2.6 billion in fiscal 2020 and is growing by 19% to 21% year over year1, so I’m eager to give more partners more opportunities to access this growing market.
1 Gartner, “Critical Capabilities for Security Service Edge,” John Watts, Craig Lawson, Charlie Winckless, Aaron McQuaid, February 15, 2022
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