The Fortinet Engage Partner Programme, launched in 2020, was explicitly designed to help organisations develop the expertise they need regardless of where they are in their growth journey. Its mission is to help partners at any level to build a profitable practice through technology and service differentiation that leverages the industry’s best solutions.
Many partners are facing the same challenges. Many want to evolve their service offerings or cloud capabilities to keep up with the changing digital landscape. This has impacted their ability to address the new opportunities provided by this evolving market. However, those who are able to diversify their business model can then successfully differentiate themselves from their competitors and grow their business.
While digital acceleration is transforming how organizations do business, allowing them to remain competitive in today’s market, it also impacts their ability to manage and secure their networks. Solution sprawl, an explosion of new edges and devices, and a work-from-anywhere workforce—coupled with the growing cybersecurity skills gap—have stretched IT teams to the breaking point. Increasingly, organizations are turning to partners to take over some or all of their IT infrastructure.
New Engage Programme Updates Overview
Fortinet announced important updates to evolve the Engage Partner Programme. These new updates are designed to create even more growth opportunities for our partners of all types. New Engage Programme offerings include -
New Preferred Services Partner Accreditation
For those partners with a mature and established professional services practice, the Engage Preferred Services Partner (EPSP) programme provides direct vendor support and additional accreditation to increase service sales and delivery excellence.
Qualified EPSPs receive access to specialized training and direct assistance from Fortinet experts to build new skills and expand their confidence in providing advanced end-to-end security support for their customers—including those with rapidly evolving and expanding network infrastructures. They can also collaborate directly with Fortinet Professional Support experts on implementations to leverage Fortinet best-practice methodologies, resulting in increased expertise and visibility while developing a more robust service portfolio.
New Growth Paths for Partners
Fortinet has created more entry points to make it easier for partners interested in joining the Engage Partner Programme and adopting the MSSP business model. Select partners, for example, are no longer required to have a SOC in place. Going forward, for those Select-level partners who have completed the MSSP Business Model’s NSE certification requirements, Fortinet will now provide a free FortiCloud premium license so these partners can more efficiently deliver essential managed services.
New Productivity Kits to Expand Cloud Service Offerings
Fortinet is now offering two Cloud productivity kits for Engage partners: a Cloud Starter Kit and a Cloud Enterprise Kit. Organizations can acquire and implement the technology they need to create an online environment to demonstrate how together with Fortinet they can secure data, applications, and users in the cloud.
The Starter Kit includes a pre-selected SKU pack of FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, FortiCASB, FortiWeb and FortiMail solutions. And the Enterprise Kit consists of a pre-selected SKU pack of FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, FortiCASB, FortiWeb, FortiMail, and FortiSandbox. Both kits also benefit from an 80% discount.
Expand Your Business Through the Engage Partner Programme
The Fortinet Engage Programme is designed to help partners grow their business with a profitable and highly differentiated security practice. First, Fortinet’s unique security solutions, built around the Fortinet Security Fabric—the industry’s first and truly converged security platform—ensure profitability through technology differentiation. Next, Fortinet’s commitment to innovation, boasting more patents than most competitors combined, and ongoing industry and customer accolades mean that your business immediately enjoys proven credibility. And finally a sustained sales, marketing, and executive support program enables long-term sustainable growth through productive, predictable, and profitable relationships.