Xona Expands Channel Program Globally To Help Partners Secure Access To Critical Infrastructure

As Xona strives to advance remote access to operational technology without exposing critical infrastructure to more threats, the frictionless user access platform company has expanded its channel program.

It’s a double-edged sword: advancing remote access to operational technology without exposing critical infrastructure to more threats or vulnerabilities.

As a software vendor, Xona strives to help partners find a balance. To that end, the company, which has a frictionless user access platform built for critical infrastructure, has expanded its channel program globally.

“There’s been this need to kind of expand OT and enable remote operators. The pandemic has had a lot to do with that. There’s an aging workforce, the need to do more with less. So, there’s a lot that’s been driving this recently to expand remote access capabilities,” said Bill Moore, founder and CEO of Xona.

The Annapolis, Md.-based company currently reaches about 25 countries through its relationships with companies like GE and Baker Hughes. The company has now added international channel partners to better empower its partners, expand relationships and meet growing demand.

Those international channel partners include PAGO Networks in South Korea and Dicofra in Mexico.

“In our journey for expansion and innovation, we are thinking about these new threats. And for us, the Security Operations Center has to evolve to these. So that’s why we tried to find and understand which technologies were top of the market. And that’s how we arrived with Xona.” said Rodrigo Penafiel, CEO of Dicofra.

Xona also brought on Roneeta Lal as head of channel sales and global channel chief to help lead the company in its channel program expansion.

Before joining the team, she was the partner development director at Tanium and held channel sales positions at other companies.

“We really look at where we’re going in terms of protecting and providing this frictionless user access platform for operational technology and critical infrastructure. It’s become really kind of the new enterprise, the OT enterprise versus the IT enterprise. We wanted to find somebody that had that kind of background enterprise from the enterprise side. With Roneeta, being at Splunk, and Okta and Tanium, she had that background,” Moore said.

As Lal helps lead the charge, Xona also added new features to its partner program to enable partners to accelerate sales and drive revenue.

Those enhancements include streamlined deal registration, on-demand training for channel partners, enhanced channel marketing programs and a cloud-based demo platform that makes it easier for partners to showcase Xona’s technology to potential customers.

“We really want to enable our partners and we’re providing very strong margins in terms of them to make a lot of money on selling our product. … What really sets us aside is really bringing a lot of capability that you typically see in multiple vendor products and enterprise IT and really collapsing that into a very simple platform,” Moore said.