Malwarebytes has rolled out a revamped partner program designed to offer more consistent requirements and rewards that are more closely suited to a member’s business model.
Included as well in the new offering, which debuted during the RSA security conference in San Francisco this week, is a membership track for MSPs and an upgraded version of the vendor’s OneView operations console.
The Malwarebytes Premier Partner Program, or MP3, replaces a series of programs with different rules and benefits for resellers and managed service providers in different parts of the globe.
“We had this scattershot approach to our partner community,” says Mike LaPeters, vice president of worldwide MSP and channel operations at Malwarebytes. “We want somebody to identify that I partner with Malwarebytes, not that I’m a gold MSP and a silver reseller.”
The MP3 program contains four tiers: registered, silver, gold, and platinum. The MSP track, which is open for enrollment now, requires members to generate $100 of recurring Malwarebytes revenue a month at the registered level, $750 a month at the silver level, $3,900 at gold, and $5,000 at platinum.†
Like those qualifications, the prices members pay for licensing at the silver level and above are monthly too. That’s a change from the past fee structure, in which partners paid varying amounts deal by deal based on the number of seats involved. “Now we are on a true usage-based model,” LaPeters says.
Malwarebytes has also replaced the 13 volume-based rates it previously charged for its endpoint security and other products with a single price for each system at each of the program’s four tiers.
“We did a real streamlining of our pricing,” LaPeters says. “We now have three products, four levels. Each product has a price per level.”
Those prices are designed to compare more favorably than before with similar offerings from other providers, according to LaPeters. “For a period of time, we were significantly the most expensive out there,” he says. “Now we’ve got a competitive price that enables us to position true value and gives the partner a chance to not lose on every deal because pricing was too high.”
Between the reduced fees and the discounts partners earn at elevated tiers in the program, LaPeters continues, roughly 90% of MP3 members will pay less for Malwarebytes software than they have in the past.
All but registered program members get free access to online security certification courses as well. “If you’re silver, you get one per year, if you’re gold, you get two per year, and if you’re platinum you get three per year,” LaPeters says. “This way, we are truly saying that if you invest in us by partnering with us, we’re going to invest back in you and make you better at providing security services for your customers.”
Additional benefits include an assigned account manager for anyone at the silver level and above, plus dedicated technical resources and a listing on the Malwarebytes website at the gold level and above. Platinum members get a dedicated solution architect and premium access to 24/7 support. “If they call in, they get front-of-the-queue service,” LaPeters says.
All MP3 members get a OneView account. The new edition of that system launched this week comes with functionality for sending monthly reports to customers via email. “They show here’s all the things we did for you this month. Here’s how many devices were compromised. Here’s how many we quarantined. Here’s how many we cleaned,” LaPeters says.
Included as well in the new OneView release is global policy management functionality for groups of endpoints. Global command execution abilities that let technicians run automated multi-step processes across customer accounts is due as well within weeks. In recent testing of that feature, LaPeters says, an MSP with customers impacted by an infected Microsoft Excel macro created a process that automatically searched for affected endpoints, quarantined them, and then remediated the problem.
The MSP specialization introduced today is the first of what will eventually be several in MP3. A track for resellers is scheduled to arrive in two months, and a “Techbench” track for computer repair shops will follow a month later. All three tracks will have the same tiers, and partners who qualify at a given level in one specialization will get the same status in the others, as long as they complete appropriate training courses.
“If you’re a gold reseller, you’ll be a gold MSP. If you’re a gold MSP, you’ll be a gold Techbench partner,” LaPeters says.
Malwarebytes plans to transfer partners into MP3 gradually over the next few months. “It’s probably going to be 25-30 partners a week,” LaPeters says.
Previously vice president of global channels at AlienVault, where he grew worldwide MSP revenue from nothing to nearly $100 million annually, LaPeters joined Malwarebytes last summer. His new employer is hoping for similar results.
“The more [MSPs] that we sign, the more access we’re going to get to the customer community,” LaPeters observes, noting that Malwarebytes has fewer than 1,000 MSP partners at present and plenty of room for expansion. “We have a long way to go before we cap ourselves on market penetration,” he says.
