OPAQ, a provider of a cloud-based service that centrally monitors security performance and enforcement of compliance policies that earlier this year raised $22.5 million in additional financing, is pursuing multiple routes to market in the form of partnerships with distributors and insurance companies.
Both Ingram Micro and Tech Data have agreed to add the cloud services provided to OPAQ to their respective line cards.
“We’re trying to do more with less,” says Lynn Tinnry, senior vice president for channels at OPAQ. “We want to make sure we’re not over distributed.”
At the same time, however, OPAQ has formed alliances with CNA, one of the largest commercial property and casualty insurance companies in the U.S., and PSA Insurance & Financial Services to resell its cloud service.
Other routes to market being pursued by OPAQ include an alliance with hosting service providers such as Equinix.
While insurance brokers and hosting companies technically are not distributors, they do wind up significantly expanding the number of ways customers can gain access to the OPAQ security platform. At its core, OPAQ provides partners with access to a security-as-a-service platform for wide area networks (WANs) delivered via the cloud. That approach enables OPAQ to provide a consolidated view of data center, web application, and cloud application and infrastructure performance and security while saving partners the trouble and expense of having to build their own platform to deliver similar capabilities.
The challenge partners face is that as the number and types of organizations that can resell a cloud security services has dramatically expanded. Any traditional solution provider can employ the OPAQ platform to become a managed security service provider (MSSP). However, so too can any insurance company.
It will be interesting to see how an expanded channel for delivering managed security services via the cloud ultimately impacts channel partners. The one thing that is for certain is that not only are there now a lot more forms of distribution being made available to vendors, the type of organizations willing to resell those services is rapidly evolving as well.
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