NextWave Partner Program Enhancements: The Next Phase in our Journey Together

This post is also available in: 简体中文 (Chinese (Simplified)) 繁體中文 (Chinese (Traditional)) 한국어 (Korean)

It’s an exciting day for Palo Alto Networks and our partners. Today, we announced several major enhancements to our NextWave Partner Program that will help our partners evolve their business models, drive more profitability, and become more valuable to our mutual customers.

We made changes to the NextWave Partner Program based on the needs of our customers and partners, impacted by the rapidly changing market dynamics. Today, organizations require a more integrated and automated approach to cybersecurity, along with a full set of partner-delivered services, to safely enable digital transformation via cloud adoption.  By enhancing the NextWave Partner Program, we open up a tremendous amount of opportunity for our partners, strengthen their overall experience, and make it easier to build a successful business practice based on Palo Alto Networks.

The demand for cybersecurity has drastically changed since we first introduced the NextWave Partner Program. Ten years ago, customers focused on protecting the perimeter of their networks with a firewall. Together with our partners, we disrupted that market with our next-generation firewall. Today, our mutual customers need protection from the endpoint, across the network, and into the cloud. Organizations require the help of trusted security advisors to safely enable digital transformation, to successfully integrate cybersecurity offerings into a hybrid cloud infrastructure and secure the network from the endpoint to the cloud.

We have always been partner-centric. Our collective success depends on enhancing our NextWave Partner Program to help partners capitalize on vast new opportunities in this next phase of our journey. The program enhancements we introduced today will boost program flexibility, fuel long-term growth and accelerate the transition to partner-delivered services.

NextWave enhancements include:

• New Profitability Initiatives: Streamlined program levels and tiered discount structures strengthen the value of the NextWave Partner Program and introduce new ways to grow together. Plus, there are four new partner incentives – Deal Registration, Partner Value, Distribution Value, and Renewals – that reward partners for executing predefined activities. There is also a new rebate for Diamond partners, allowing Palo Alto Networks to invest in our most committed partners. Additionally, there is a new deal referral that rewards partners for bringing specific SaaS opportunities to Palo Alto Networks.
• New Partner-Led Services Opportunities: Transformation Services, a new offering that includes tools, best practices, and procedures, will help partners implement a prevention-based architecture quickly and cost-effectively. To enable partners to help scale the delivery of cybersecurity services, we introduced Services Offering Kits. These kits provide the tools, training, and resources to help NextWave partners build or expand their Palo Alto Networks-based services practice. The first Services Offering Kit available to partners is Network Transformation. Additionally, Palo Alto Networks is introducing a new dedicated Managed Services Program, providing partners with a clear path for capitalizing on the rapidly growing managed services opportunity.
• New Systems and Processes: To ensure a seamless migration to these NextWave Partner Program enhancements, Palo Alto Networks made a significant investment in system and process automation. These automation advancements will simplify the quoting and approval process, accelerating the sales cycle and improve the overall partner experience.

When you look at how far we’ve come on this journey together, the results speak for themselves. Together, we are protecting more than 56,000 customers in more than 150 countries. We also protect 85 of the Fortune 100 and 63 percent of the Global 2000.

Today, we start the next phase of our journey, one that empowers our NextWave partners to capitalize on new opportunities, deliver coveted business outcomes, and create a superior partner experience. This program was built for us to excel together. The opportunity has arrived. Let’s seize it.

Learn more about the NextWave Partner Program enhancements in our upcoming partner webinars. We will share all the details around the breadth of profitability incentives, our commitment to helping our partners build their services-based practices, and the acceleration through automation. Register to learn about all the enhancements.