Area 1 Security today announced its new partner program to allow partners to easily sell and deliver the industry’s only preemptive, cloud-native email security solution directly to North American clients. The two-tiered program supports MSPs, VARs, Solution Providers, cloud distributors, and technology alliance partners.
Email security today is fundamentally broken, and the current email security market is in transition. Secure Email Gateways (SEGs) were architected for the perimeter and are being replaced with Cloud Email Security (CES) solutions. Given the amount of legacy SEGs in service over the past 15 years, Area 1 estimates that the total addressable market for partners to help migrate those customers onto newer cloud-native email security solutions is upwards of $10B. Partners have the opportunity to help customers improve security and lower TCO by helping them with this transition. Area 1 is the leading Cloud Email Security provider and offers the only solution that preemptively stops Business Email Compromise (BEC), malware, ransomware and other sophisticated phish, which legacy email gateways and cloud email suites miss.
“Traditional email gateways — once the de facto standard for email security — have failed time and again to stop advanced phishing threats. There is also now an 80 percent overlap in baseline functionality between email gateways and Microsoft Office 365’s and Gmail’s native capabilities,” said Patrick Sweeney, president and CEO of Area 1 Security. “As a result, more enterprise CISOs are reevaluating — and ultimately replacing — their SEGs in favor of cloud-native email security. Partners and resellers must adapt to this shift now, or risk getting excluded from these purchasing decisions.”
Additionally, the business and economic realities of the COVID-19 pandemic means that partners must provide portfolio options that help improve customers’ overall TCO. For example, Gartner’s 2020 How to Reduce the Cost of Email Security Solutions report (ID G00726615) recommends that security professionals evaluate alternatives to a traditional email gateway. Area 1’s industry-first, utility-based pricing model aligns better email security performance with budget — while still guaranteeing partners recurring, SaaS-based revenue.
Area 1, which is committed to being a strategic, channel-first partner, offers the following benefits:
- Best-of-Breed Cloud Email attack prevention: Area 1, a Certified Microsoft Partner and a Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year, protects against BEC, credential harvesting, ransomware and other threats that SEGs miss.
- Technology innovation: Area 1’s broad and deep IP within predictive, preemptive threat defense allows unique opportunities to go broader over time, and help address customer pain points across a much wider surface area (email, web, social and network attack vectors).
- Profitability: Partners who leverage Area 1’s first-of-its-kind pay-for-performance (Pay-per-Phish) pricing model will gain easier access to organizations that are increasingly focused on vendor accountability and value-based solutions.
- Recurring revenue stream: As a SaaS solution, Area 1 Security creates a recurring revenue opportunity for its Channel Partners. The tiered program’s aggressive compensation model ensures Partners’ high profitability.
“Adding Area 1 is another key way for Sayers to help customers proactively identify threats and mitigate cloud security risks,” said Chris Willis, VP of Cybersecurity Engineering at Sayers. “We are pleased to deliver a leader in the email security and anti-phishing solution market, and support Area 1’s ecosystem growth.”
MSPs, VARs, Solution Providers and distributors who are interested in learning more can register for Area 1’s Channel Program webinar on August 13, here. The event will include an overview of Area 1’s preemptive and comprehensive email security solution, specific details on tiered benefits, and a demo of Area 1’s newly-launched Partner Community.
“SADA is pleased to see the launch of Area 1’s new Partner Program, providing Google Cloud Partners the opportunity to sell and deliver their cloud-native email security solution directly to our customers,” said Edrick Pirveysian, Director of Account Management, SADA. “This synergy furthers our commitment to providing best-in-class security to our G Suite customers.”
Partners are the new focus of Area 1’s go-to-market strategy, led by Sweeney, who has successfully transitioned multiple companies from direct selling to channel-first sales. Sweeney brings over two decades of channel partnership expertise, including transitioning SonicWall from direct sales to being a channel-first business.
“We are looking forward to Area 1’s new partner program offering the robust infrastructure needed to accelerate our joint sales efforts in 2020 and beyond,” said David Sinnott, president and founder of ProActive Networks & Security.
