Sophos has always been a channel first company

Sunil Sharma 
Managing Director of sales, India and SAARC - Sophos

“Sophos Global Partner Program is a well-structured program, which is designed to make our partners increase their cybersecurity revenue, maintain their profitability and enable them to be security consultants to their customers.”  

Partner Program is important for business growth, and it can be more impactful for the businesses that have a channel model as their core go to market strategy. Sophos is a channel first company, which means it does business only through its channel partners. For Sophos, the ‘Sophos Global Partner Program’ is a core foundation of its channel strategy. A comprehensive, easy to understand, trackable and growth-oriented Partner Program, it is designed for a practical world which is always going to be beneficial for all.

The Sophos Global Partner Program is a well-structured program, which is designed to make its partners increase their cybersecurity revenue, maintain their profitability and enable them to be security consultants to their customers. Rebates and Market Development Funds (MDF) are its major tools to make partners grow in their business. Partners get much needed boost to protect more customers and go to the next level in their cybersecurity business.

A well-conceptualised channel model

A well-designed business model around channel partners is the first thing that is needed for making a channel ecosystem work for all. For example, at Sophos, the solutions are designed by keeping its partners in mind. There are features designed specifically for partners, such as the Sophos Central-Partner dashboard that allows partners to centrally manage their customer endpoints and firewalls from a single dashboard. Partners also have clear upsell and cross-sell opportunities with their existing customers, due to the broad portfolio of Sophos products that are available within Sophos Central.

The second most important thing is the communication channel between the vendor and partners; partners should be well aware of enablement tools, training and their growth path with the vendors they work for. Sophos has a dedicated communication channel through its partner portal for all its partners.

The third is to make the channel and the partner team as One Team to make the partner ecosystem a growth-oriented platform for all the stakeholders.