Relationships are at the heart of everything an MSP business does and needs to succeed. In order to deliver the best service offering possible to customers, an MSP first needs a strong relationship with vendors and other third-party providers.
So, the Barracuda MSP team was particularly excited to learn that its partner program was being recognized as one of the channel’s best available to service providers in the channel by CRN in its annual Cloud Partner Program Guide. This annual list serves as a practical map for solution providers navigating the ever-changing cloud landscape, helping them to locate leading technology suppliers with groundbreaking cloud offerings and unique partner program benefits.
To get a better understanding of how Barracuda MSP assists and enables their partners’ growth through their partner program, check out the Q&A we recently had with Neal Bradbury, VP, MSP Strategic Partnerships at Barracuda MSP, and a CRN-recognized Channel Chief.
Q&A with Neal Bradbury
Q: You’ve spent so many years in the IT channel and working with partners. What does being included on this list mean to you?
The entire team at Barracuda MSP take great pride in being named to CRN’s Cloud Partner Program Guide, as it serves as a reflection of our commitment to our MSP partners. Each partnership is formed with the shared goal of protecting our clients and helping partners grow their business, and our cloud partner program is a driving force in helping MSP partners achieve that.
Q: What do you think is most important in an MSP partner program?
I would say education and enablement are two of the most important aspects in any MSP partner program. The more resources your partners have at their disposal, and the more they know about your solutions and your business, the better positioned they are to thrive. Being confident and capable in delivering service using a vendor’s solutions provides them additional credibility and trustworthiness in their customers’ eyes, which strengthens their current partnerships and helps them win new business.
Developing resources that educate and enable MSPs, particularly related to security, should be a major focus when building a partner program.
Q: What features and aspects of Barracuda MSP’s partner program separate Barracuda from other vendors?
In addition to providing security and data protection solutions to partners in an MSP-friendly pricing model, we also provide access to exclusive partner success resources such as comprehensive onboarding, award-winning technical support, online training and certification, dedicated partner account managers, and a sales and marketing enablement resource hub.
Barracuda MSP’s enablement hub, the Partner Toolkit, is available exclusively to partners and designed to empower them to effectively market, sell, and support Barracuda MSP solutions. Other highlights include:
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- Barracuda Campus — A free, on-demand training and certification resource; courses for everyone — technicians and sales and marketing professionals, alike
- Knowledge Base — A self-serve database of hundreds of technical articles with helpful tips on hot topics and answers to FAQs
- Sales and Marketing Enablement — Rebrandable collateral, email templates, and prebuilt presentations; sales training cheat sheets, presentations, e-books, and more.
Barracuda MSP partners benefit from an onboarding offering that gets their team up and running with our solutions quickly and effectively, an experienced Professional Services team that provides the highest level of customized support, easing partners’ workloads and enabling them to focus on growing their business.
Last year, Barracuda MSP introduced Managed Workplace RMM, the first RMM tool in its class to include a built-in security assessment tool that enables MSPs to quickly assess customers’ networks; deliver multi-layered security including advanced, agent-based DNS and URL filtering that helps MSPs to protect end users from accessing malicious web content; monitor anomalies; and, seamlessly recover data in the event of an attack.
Q: What are the benefits for MSP partners that join Barracuda’s partner program?
By joining our program, MSP partners can:
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- Create comprehensive service offerings. With our broad solution portfolio, MSP partners can offer multi-layered security and data protection solutions. Flexible deployment options and the ability to specialize where they want, gives them full control.
- Deliver, more easily and more profitably, robust, scalable services powered by Barracuda’s purpose-built platform. From our multi-tenant management console, to our team of experts ready to deliver our services offering on your behalf, we’re here to help Partners grow their business.
- Demonstrate more value to their customers. With built-in reporting on threat and activity levels, we make it easy for MSPs to show the unique value they provide to each customer. This positions them to be a valuable extension of their customers’ business, builds customer loyalty, and fuels future growth.
Q: What offerings are included in Barracuda’s program that can help MSP partners build a cloud offering?
We offer a diverse set of solutions and services to help our partners create their own cloud offering. Barracuda’s specializations include backup and disaster recovery, protecting cloud applications with our Web Application Firewall (WAF) and line of email security solutions, such as Barracuda Email Essentials, Sentinel, and Managed Phishline end user security training service, cloud security, data protection, and a remote management and monitoring (RMM) tool in the form of Managed Workplace. Barracuda MSP’s partner program is adept at helping build a cloud offering, regardless if it is a public, private, or hybrid cloud offering model.
Q: What enablement and training resources does Barracuda provide for partners?
Barracuda offers specialized technical training that best fits your schedule, technical cloud certification, specialized sales training, and assistance with cloud service delivery. Beyond those specifics, we also supply field support, on-demand training and education, and trial offers of its products and services to partners.
To help partners market and sell their cloud solutions, we host customer and partner events, assist with branding and demand generation through specialized local staff, and offer specific partner marketing resources. These resources include downloadable marketing materials, account management, a partner portal with customizable dashboard based on profiles, a managed services community platform, configurations and troubleshooting tools, and customizable collateral to help build a successful BDR practice.
Visit us at www.barracudamsp.com to learn more about our award-winning partner program.
Photo: Akos Nagy / Shutterstock
