The benefits of Barracuda’s channel-first approach

At Barracuda, we’ve had a channel-first approach since our inception 20 years ago, and we’re proud of that. Our partner program is the foundation that drives co-selling and active partnering between our channel partners and our sales teams, from pricing and deal protection to marketing and lead pass. Our teams are working together, ultimately to help keep customers secure.

There are other vendors in the industry that have oscillated between direct and indirect models and some that just haven’t elegantly figured out the co-sell motion or don't understand a channel-first approach. But we’ve always made understanding and supporting our channel partners a priority.

That’s why we’re pleased to see that our partner program is again being recognized with a 5-star rating in CRN’s 2023 Partner Program Guide. This is the 11^th year in a row that Barracuda had been recognized with this honor, and we think that means we’re on the right track.

Building on Barracuda’s strengths

One of Barracuda’s strengths is our ability to offer choice for our partners and for our customers. That is a key part of supporting the evolving needs of our partners in terms of technology form factors and buying vehicles. Whether partners are selling hardware, software licensing, or virtual solutions; whether their selling annual or multi-year licensing, MSP licensing, or transacting in the hyperscaler marketplaces, we offer solutions that will work for them.

The strength and breadth of Barracuda’s security portfolio, which is designed for the SME market, also helps partners bring a wide variety of enterprise-grade technologies to their midmarket and small business customers. At Barracuda, we believe every business deserves access to cloud-first, enterprise-grade security solutions that are easy to buy, deploy, and use, and our channel partners help us make that a reality.

For the midmarket and small businesses in particular, customers and partners are looking to reduce the number of disparate point products and vendors in their environment. We help our partners provide more technology solutions from a single vendor with our platform approach, which benefits the efficiency of their business and the efficiency of their end customers.

Taking partner enablement to the next level

The Barracuda partner program also provides a strong foundation for our channel partners who want sales and technical enablement. We offer both on-demand training and certification on Barracuda Campus and field-based partner academies, which have really been embraced by our partners, as well as publicly available resources such as our award-winning MSP industry blog: SmarterMSP.com.

Now, post-pandemic, we are continuing our annual Discover partner conference. We're bringing Discover to the United States in June, and I’m really looking forward to connecting with our partners there.

We’re always looking to continue to improve our partner program and the ways we support and enable our channel partners, and I’m excited to build on the strong foundation our program provides.