Mumbai: Security vendor CyberArk has introduced additional creteria to its certification scheme in a bid to encourage its channel partners to take on more consultancy responsibilities on behalf of the customer.
CyberArk has introduced additional partner requirements, including a training “boot camp” where engineers pursuing the higher vendor certifications are tested in a lab environment on their ability to solve customer security issues.
CyberArk’s partners have historically relied heavily on the vendor to provide technical support and services, but over the last two years the security player has introduced sales and technology training online to push partners into generating more services revenue themselves.
“Online training is a first step but now there are more gates in certifying,” said CyberArk’s EMEA channel director Tim Goodwin.
“We have had more than 500 people take part in the online training so far. We want to make sure that when any one of those partners goes to the customer, they know what they are doing. We will give them that knowledge, but before we certify them, we want to make sure it has sunk in”, he added.
An engineer with the lowest level of technology certification with CyberArk is referred to as a CyberArk Certified Delivery Engineer. According to Goodwin, these engineers are certified to set up and implement CyberArk’s software but are not able to carry out more complicated tasks such as analytics and application-to-application processes, which now require the extra partner investment.
“We create a baseline, then we add more advanced courses that involve a number of levels of certification, with the top one being CyberArk experts on our platform. We want to work with partners that have the ability to develop skills which develop our technology.
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“This training will allow us to get knowledge out very quickly, but in terms of certifying, it is about the ability to go out onsite and actually put in some additional steps to make sure they are capable in that,” said Goodwin.
The EMEA channel director also said a re-registration program has been recently introduced which requires partners to undergo training when CyberArk updates its software. Goodwin said partners have 18 months to two years to complete extra online training once CyberArk has updated its product.
Goodwin also explained that the firm has made changes to the content of its online training programs to make them more difficult. He said there are plans to recruit a third-party organization to verify and quality-check its training content.
“It is all about differentiation; the only investment we are asking from our partners is their time. It is an investment for our channel partners to allow them to obtain more consultancy responsibilities which will allow them to generate more revenue from services. For our partners, the more people they have certified to help their customers with privileged management programs and the more revenue generating opportunities they have, the better,” he said.
CyberArk claims to employ around 700 people, serving 2,800 customers. The Massachusetts-based firm has European offices in the UK, Germany, Turkey, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, India and France. In India, the company works with 9 strategic partners which include HCL, Wipro, Taarak India Private Limited, iValue InfoSolutions, Network Intelligence to name few.