Last week, SonicWall hosted over fifty enthusiastic partners across 14 countries at our Asia Pacific and Japan Partner Summit. Phuket with its lush and leafy surroundings and dramatic beach sunsets proved a popular location for our APJ Partner conference. Our purpose was to clearly articulate the vision for SonicWall as we build our solutions and capabilities to fight in an era of unprecedented cyber security challenges. And we cannot do this alone, it’s the combined effort of our products and our partners’ services that allow for our customers to be protected.

When we say we are a 100 percent channel company, it’s not a claim we take lightly. We are reliant on our partners and their commitment to work with us and be the trusted advisors for their customers.  Keeping up with the cyber threats is difficult, but especially so with smaller and mid-enterprise businesses where there is a limitation on the level of investment and ability to source dedicated IT security and networking resources. Partners are key to helping to impart both their knowledge, expertise and experience to help these organizations have the most effective security practices and solutions. Allowing the current distractions and disruptions in business caused by very prevalent threats such as ransomware and other forms of cyber-attack vectors, to be prevented in real-time.

We enlisted some of our key SonicWall executives to brief our partners on what we have been working on to deliver on our vision; including the focus and investment in enabling, educating and incentivizing our partners through the SecureFirst Partner Program. Our SVP of Global Sales and Chief Revenue Officer, Steve Pataky detailed some of the results we’ve seen to date since the launch of SecureFirst, including the number of newly signed partners, the uptake and utilization of SonicWall University’s role-based courses, and increase in adoption of Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Services to provide a stronger level of protection to customers.

Dmitriy Ayrapetov, Executive Director of Global Product Management detailed our product and solutions road-map for the next two quarters – giving the partners a sneak preview into what is going to be launched into the market over the coming quarters to strengthen our existing portfolio. Gary Staff, Director of Global Services brought fresh insight into partner service opportunities that will be available to our partners to deliver even more value to their customers. And Keith Trottier, Vice President of Global Client Services and Support exemplified the steps SonicWall has taken to improve our customer and technical support, and how we are working to further refine and extend our capabilities.

To me, one of the best parts of the APJ Partner Summit was the Partner Advisory Break-Out sessions run to garner feedback on several key topics to ensure we are listening to the partners and what they are experiencing on the front line. This keeps us in sync with their needs, brings fresh ideas to the table and makes us accountable to ensure that working with SonicWall is helping them solve their customer problems and be impactful to their own success.

Our APJ Partner Summit concluded with an awards evening to recognize those partners who exemplify commitment to the SonicWall SecureFirst program and achieved substantial sales growth over the last year leveraging our full solutions portfolio. The awards highlighted partner excellence for Distribution, Channel Partners, and Emerging Partners.

I’d like to extend congratulations to the following winners:

Country/Region Awards Winners:

• 2017 SonicWall A/NZ Partner of the Year – Hitech Support Pty Ltd
• 2017 SonicWall China Partner of the Year – Shenzhen Secuunion Information Technology Co Ltd
• 2017 SonicWall Hong Kong and Taiwan Partner of the Year – Toppan Forms Computer Systems ltd
• 2017 SonicWall India Partner of the Year – Ecaps Computers India Pvt Ltd
• 2017 SonicWall Japan Partner of the Year – Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation
• 2017 SonicWall Korea Partner of the Year – CorelT Co ltd
• 2017 SonicWall South East Asia Partner of the Year – Joint Winners, Future D Sdn. Bhd. & Fujitsu Philippines

APJ Award Winners:

• 2017 SonicWall APJ Emerging Rising Star – MayMust Co Ltd
• 2017 SonicWall APJ Reseller Partner of the Year – NEC Fielding Ltd
• 2017 SonicWall APJ Distribution Partner of the Year – Data World Computer and Communication Ltd

Events such as these are always a great reminder of the mutual success we share with our security partners, and the together we are working to protect our mutual customers from known and unknown adversaries.

The feedback we received from our partners reaffirmed that there is a clear need to allow IT to move away from being an obstacle to the business to becoming an enabler, with technologies that protect from threats, but still provide easy access for all workers, especially those who are mobile or remote.

A huge thank you to all our partners who participated – we have listened, and we will strive to continue building stronger partnerships.