Proofpoint Launches Program To Assist Federal Government Resellers
The government-specific program comes just a month after the company enhanced its mainstream Proofpoint Advantage Partner Program with new training and certification programs and higher margins for resellers.
Proofpoint offers three product suites: Enterprise Protect for inbound and outbound e-mail security, Enterprise Privacy that prevents users from disclosing sensitive information, and Enterprise Archive for e-mail archiving purposes.
One hundred percent of Proofpoint's federal government sales, including to civilian agencies, the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, are through the channel. One major civilian agency already uses the company's e-mail security product for some 130,000 employees, said Jeff Lake, Proofpoint vice president of federal operations, in an interview.
Proofpoint is creating the new U.S. Federal Partner Program because partners in the government arena face unique requirements such as complying with competitive bidding rules and dealing with government procurement cycles, Lake said.
The goals of the program include ensuring that VARs are adding value to Proofpoint's products and protecting their margins in competitive bidding processes that tend to be more rigid than in the private sector.
"We want to protect the partners who are truly adding value," Lake said, noting that government procurement processes can be skewed toward low bidders rather than solution providers with expertise and value-added products and services.
The new government partner program has two tiers: Associate and Premier, with the latter achieving higher levels of technical certification, expertise and services delivery. The program offers online and classroom partner training courses and a range of government-specific sales and marketing support.
Proofpoint has more than 200 registered partners, including more than 100 in the U.S. Lake said Proofpoint already has 10 VARs in the government program, including Blackwood Associates of Annapolis, Md., and the goal is to have between 20 and 25.
Proofpoint has set up a two-tier distribution program for federal government sales with Promark Technology, a value-added distributor with expertise in government sales, working with Proofpoint resellers.