Data Protection Vendor BigID Launches First Partner Program

The BigID Momentum VAR Program is expected to help meet the need for privacy and compliance tools in more highly regulated verticals like retail, communications, banking and insurance.

Emerging data protection vendor BigID hopes to broaden and deepen its reach into large enterprise accounts with the debut of its first partner program.

The New York-based cybersecurity vendor said the BigID Momentum Value Added Reseller Program will help meet the need for privacy and compliance tools in more highly regulated verticals like retail, communications, banking and insurance, according to Louise Cooke, the company's vice president of VAR channels.

"We're 100 percent committed to enabling and working with our partners to do business and build their business as quickly as we can," Cooke told CRN exclusively.

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

[Related: Data Protection Vendor Druva Raises $130M In Push Toward IPO]

BigID had only worked with traditional consulting firms until Cooke joined the company in March from Cylance, where she had served as director of North America channel. The company brought Cooke on board to help broaden its go-to-market approach beyond consultants to better address the needs of different types of end users, according to Cooke.

Cooke anticipates that going forward BigID will work with consulting partners on roughly 80 percent of its channel deals and VAR partners on the remaining 20 percent of transactions. The company has more than 30 partners worldwide and involves a partner in every one of its deals, according to Cooke.

BigID was founded in 2016, employs 122 people, and has raised $96.1 million in five rounds of outside funding, according to LinkedIn and Crunchbase. Cooke said the company has responded to challenges around data classification, attribution and correlation to specific individuals with an automated platform that's been proven to deliver protection to large organizations.

Members of the BigID Momentum VAR Program will gain access to the partner portal, partner training, as well as sales enablement, presales training and post-sales training, Cooke said. This will make it possible for partners to provide more consulting around the product they're providing, according to Cooke.

All VAR partners will be put into a single tier at this early stage of BigID's channel evolution, Cooke said. BigID will work directly with channel partners in North America, and sell through two-tier distribution in the rest of the world, according to Cooke.

BigID doesn't currently have any eligibility requirements for its Momentum VAR program, Cooke said, but may down the road stipulate that partners need to have a certain number of salespeople, sales engineers or presales consultants trained. Becoming a BigID partner can help companies without a data privacy, data classification or compliance practice add a new revenue stream, according to Cooke.

From a metrics standpoint, Cooke said BigID plans to track the number of deals initiated by partners, the deal pipeline, and the number of deals won as compared with the number of deals lost (and why those wins/losses occurred). BigID also plans to keep an eye on how many people get trained in each of their partner organizations, according to Cooke.

Dunlap, Bennett & Ludwig has been having conversations with BigID for the better part of a year after being impressed by the company's ability to deliver privacy protection in a manner that isn't either process- or paper-oriented, according to partner David Verhey. Verhey said he was impressed by BigID's ability to use machine learning to solve data privacy problems in a more technologically advanced way.

The company wants to go beyond just offering legal services and instead blend those services with best-of-breed technology. Verhey believes BigID's functions and services complement what Dunlap, Bennett & Ludwig does well, and he hopes to see BigID reach into the federal and state government space once it has achieved success in the commercial business-to-business arena.

"The whole model is exciting to clients," Verhey told CRN. "We think this is the future."