How A Philosophy of Agility Led to Our New MSP-Centric Partner Program

Today, we announced the expansion of our Global Partner Program with an eye on helping MSPs and channel partners everywhere benefit from the power of SASE.

From its inception, Cato focused on solving the problems caused by the complexity and rigidity of legacy IT infrastructure. The result was a new kind of infrastructure, one that brought the agility and simplicity of the cloud to network and security. Years later, this approach would be called SASE, but when it was introduced back in 2015, it was just called “groundbreaking.”

We brought that same philosophy to our channel partner program. The Cato Networks Global Partner Program was built to eliminate the red tape and help the channel be profitable. We introduced Flex Orders, Flexible Billing, Assured Margins, and more all aimed at simplifying life for our partners and helping them be more competitive.

You see, more than the features that make Cato’s program unique is the philosophy. Our motivation and ability to change things around to make our partners’ future brighter and their day-to-day more effortless. Agility goes a long way when it comes to channel strategy and alignment. We’ve seen vendors develop complicated, cumbersome, and demanding partner programs, thinking that thousands of channel companies should change and adapt because they say so. We know that it’s the other way around.  

BRINGING THE POWER OF CATO TO MSPs EVERYWHERE 

The updates we’re making to the Cato Networks Global Partner Program today once again embody this philosophy. We’re bringing better deal protection, enhanced discounts, assured margins on highly competitive deals, and we’re delivering more agility, especially for partners that sell Cato as a managed service.

For the past two years, we thoroughly evaluated MSP and partner needs and challenges. We heard about channel conflict, risk hedging where they committed upfront to full deployment scope but could only bill monthly, and the challenges of maintaining profitability in competitive deals.  

So we addressed partner risk and profitability with, you guessed it, greater agility. With ‘Flex Orders,’ we eased financing and lowered the risk on our partners. Our ‘Assured Margins Program’ (AMP) guarantees a minimum gross margin to our partners on every deal, even in highly competitive situations. We increased the deal-reg discount and created better differentiation with new tiers.

We also hired more channel managers to properly onboard these partners and work with them to build a solid mutual pipeline. We improved the partners’ visibility into their SASE opportunities with the new partner portal, adding real-time and robust CRM integration and an improved pipeline management interface. The revamped partner portal also contains arguably the richest collection of SASE training materials in the world. In addition, partners can register deals and leverage co-branded content and out-of-the-box ready campaigns to generate demand and educate their customers.

SASE IS HERE: WILL YOU PROFIT OR BE LEFT BEHIND?  

Disruptive technologies are changing the world we’re living in and the IT industry in particular. Legacy technologies are fading out, making room for something more agile, more flexible, and way faster.  The cloud has become the center of tomorrow’s enterprise network. Profiting from this revolution is no longer an option for the channel; it’s a must. The Cato SASE platform puts partners in the driver’s seat, letting them lead the SASE revolution and futureproof their business.