Monday Morning Impact – September 11

Okta and Palo Alto Networks Announce Partnership to Automate End-User Security

Okta, Inc., a San Francisco-based identity management company, has announced enhanced integration with the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform, providing security across cloud, on-premises and hybrid applications and data centers. Using the Okta Identity Cloud with the Palo Alto Networks platform, organizations can incorporate identity and automatically respond to threat actors to help prevent cyber-attacks.

“The security stack must evolve to account for the changing threat landscape, particularly as the proliferation of people, applications and devices only continues to widen and grow,” said Frederic Kerrest, Okta COO and co-founder. “With Okta and Palo Alto Networks technologies working closely together, our joint customers will be able to better manage and secure the vast volume of resources now a part of the extended enterprise, and benefit from monitoring, detecting and alerting to prevent breaches caused by compromised credentials.”

Previous integration efforts between Okta and Palo Alto Networks enable Okta administrators and security leaders to automate responses that protect user access to information in the Okta Identity Cloud. Using a combination of data collected by Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls and actions triggered from the MineMeld application, Okta users can automate workflows such as terminating a user’s session, prompting for step-up authentication or even suspending the user with the Okta Identity Cloud.

“Credential harvesting is one of the most common tactics for today’s threat actors,” said Terry Ramos, vice president of business development at Palo Alto Networks. “Together with Okta, we’re able to provide a unified view of the user and their networks and take action against potential threats.”

Channel Impact^®
By automating security remediation, customers and channel partners will likely be better prepared to prevent cyber-attacks. Customer organizations already using the Okta Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication and Palo Alto Networks integration will also be able to better establish compliance with industry regulations.

StorageCraft Introduces $100K Recovery Guarantee

StorageCraft, a Utah-based company specializing in backup, disaster recovery, system migration and data protection, announced a new initiative to guarantee the recovery of virtual or physical machines, either on-premises or in the cloud.

Effective immediately, the StorageCraft $100K Recovery Guarantee is an automatic benefit for all qualified partners. To be eligible, a partner needs to be Platinum-level and have on staff one StorageCraft Certified Engineer and one StorageCraft Certified Master Engineer.

Qualified partners’ machines that are protected at the Cloud Premium service level are covered by this guarantee. If a qualified partner’s machines cannot be virtualized during a true failover event, StorageCraft will compensate the partner up to $100,000.

StorageCraft offers guidelines that, when followed, will guarantee partners a timely disaster recovery, either on-premises or in the StorageCraft Cloud. After following the guidelines, if a qualified partner experiences a true disaster and cannot successfully virtualize an affected machine, that partner is eligible for compensation if 1) the partner reports the issue to StorageCraft Support within 24 hours of the disaster and 2) Support is unable to quickly resolve the issue—typically within 24 hours. StorageCraft will pay the partner $10,000 USD in cash or credit per machine, for up to ten machines, for a total of up to $100,000 USD in cash or credit.

“For far too long, disaster recovery has been handled as a best-effort initiative,” said StorageCraft’s senior director of product management, Hugo Parra. “We’re so sure that our partners who follow best practices can recover a system using our solution that we decided to offer this guarantee. Partners can be confident in our solutions and confident that we will take an all-hands-on-deck approach when the situation requires. We’re deeply invested in the success of our partners, and we have their backs.”

Specific terms and conditions apply.

Channel Impact^®
The move tends to suggest a strong level of confidence in the company’s offerings, but partners are always advised to closely scrutinize the terms and conditions associated with any offer.

Pivot3 Expands Global Partner Program to Support HCI Partners

Pivot3, an Austin, Texas-based hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) company, has announced enhancements to its channel program, adding new tiers, certifications, resources and suite of new services.

The updated program is expanding into two partner tiers, Premier and Associate, with the ability to enhance profits through a service delivery designation that can be earned with specialized training. The company is also formalizing its Partner Advisory Board, enabling partners to provide feedback and participate in pilot programs around new product launches.

The roll-out also includes three new sales and technical enablement certifications, including the Pivot3 Certified Sales Professional, Pivot3 Certified Pre-Sales Technical Professional and Pivot3 Certified Service Delivery Professional.

The program has terms for deal registration, service/support, proposal-based market development funds, new co-marketing benefits, and campaign planning resources.

Earlier this year, the company launches its HCI platform. Pivot3 Acuity is a priority-aware solution based on NVMe PCIe flash with a dynamic quality of service (QoS) engine to guarantee the performance of mission-critical applications and effectively consolidate multiple workloads onto a common infrastructure.

Channel Impact^®
According to the company, the updated program is designed to help partners of all sizes to compete on a level playing field and support a broader set of use cases.