Monday Morning Impact – December 24

Study: More than Half of Organizations Suffered Multiple Cyber Events

Sixty percent of organizations globally have suffered two or more business-disrupting cyber events, such as attacks causing data breaches or significant disruption to business operations in the last 24 months. More than 90 percent of the survey’s respondents suffered at least one such event during the same time period.

This information comes from the “Measuring and Managing the Cyber Risks to Business Operations Report” conducted by Ponemon Institute and Tenable, a Maryland-based cybersecurity vendor.

The study also found that the majority of organizations (54 percent) are not measuring, and therefore don’t understand, the business costs of cyber risk, thereby impacting their abilities to make risk-based business decisions backed by accurate and quantifiable metrics.

Of those organizations that measure the business costs of cyber risk, 62 percent are not confident their metrics are actually accurate. Thus, decisions about the allocation of resources, investments in technologies and the prioritization of threats are being made without critical information — such as the costs of IP theft, loss of revenue or loss of productivity.

“It’s shocking to learn that organizations are suffering business-impacting cyber events yet are struggling to accurately measure the resulting financial cost,” said Bob Huber, CSO of Tenable. “This study powerfully highlights that most organizations have not implemented security metrics that reflect cybersecurity’s role as a core business function. CISOs need reliable metrics to help them make educated decisions on the allocation of resources, investments in technology and the prioritization of threats.”

The survey was completed by 2,410 IT and security professionals in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Mexico, and Japan. All respondents have a role in the evaluation and/or management of investments in cybersecurity solutions within their organization.

Channel Impact^®
The data suggest that channel professionals with reliable means of accurate measurement have a competitive advantage in gaining customer confidence and subsequent sales contracts.

Nutanix Adds New Incentives and Sales Processes to Partner Program

San Jose-based cloud vendor Nutanix has updated its partner program in an effort to better meet the needs of value-added distributors and other partners. Coming on the heels of a recently announced partnership with Intel to allow GSIs and VADs to deliver their own branded hyper-converged infrastructure solutions, Nutanix has rolled out new incentives aimed at increasing its traction within the VAD channel.

New benefits for VADs include a new Influence Incentive Program, which rewards partners who significantly contribute to a customer purchase, EDI integration to give distributors a faster time to revenue with quote-to-cash automation, new incentives to reward VADs for focus, enablement and partner management, and a new value-added distributor price book.

Partners will now have discounting and pricing on approved opportunities which are enhanced as they move up the tiers of the program. Starting in February, Nutanix will also provide partners with a broad range of software licenses for Scaler and Master tier partners.

“As we look to help customers modernize their datacenters and embrace multi-cloud solutions, it is essential that every partner has the tools they need to help us carry out this goal,” said Rodney Foreman, VP of Global Channel Sales at Nutanix.

Channel Impact^®
The updated program provides access to incentives to help VADs and other partners more easily capitalize on the multicloud, multi-platform and multi-workload opportunities in the market. Distributors can now leverage multiple resources throughout the sales lifecycle to more readily grow the Nutanix portion of their business.

Avaya Introduces Device as a Service

Avaya has rolled out a new Device as a Service (DaaS) offering that will enable businesses to access Avaya’s desktop devices on a monthly subscription basis.

The new program delivers a variety of the company’s smart devices, including the Vantage portfolio, the J100 series portfolio of IP Phones, and the Avaya B109, B179, and B189 conferencing devices. These devices can be deployed on Avaya or Non-Avaya UC platforms. Subscription terms range from one year to five years or more. Customers can upgrade at any time to more advanced devices without any penalty.

“Our customers and partners have been asking for this and we are very excited to announce this new offer,” said Greg Pelton, Vice President, Collaboration and Devices at Avaya. “It brings a new level of simplicity to UC as a Service where customers can now enjoy the best cloud service and latest cloud devices, all on one monthly bill.”

In addition to the new subscription model, Avaya continues to offer its product line via traditional sales with optional financing.

Channel Impact^®
The DaaS model has been gaining traction in the UCaaS market, due to the available CAPEX reductions combined with the ability to offload installation and management, and the ability to adopt newer technologies more quickly.