Monday Morning Impact – January 4

Sage Offers New Flexible Path to the Cloud for Medium Businesses

Sage, an Atlanta-based cloud management solutions company, has rolled out its Sage Partner Cloud Program for the U.S. and Canada. The program is intended to help partners deploy and customize their customers’ Sage 100 and Sage 300 products online, which supports them on their journey to the cloud.

Through the program, partners can provide integrations with other applications and customizations to create bespoke business management solutions that support their exact needs. The solution automates the deployment of Sage 100 and Sage 300 in the cloud, creating less disruption and saving time. Customers can continue to use Sage 100 and Sage 300 products, reducing training and project costs.

“Today more than ever, the ability to work anytime, anywhere, and access business-critical information is imperative,’ says Nancy Harris, executive vice president and managing director at Sage North America. “The Sage Partner Cloud program lets customers migrate to the cloud on their terms, at their pace, on the Sage Business Management Solution they know and trust.”

The Sage Partner Cloud is powered by the Sage Provisioning Portal, a web portal that provides a one-stop shop for the administration of a partner’s hosted customer base. The offer will be made available in other markets in the coming months.

Channel Impact^®
The initiative is intended to optimize Sage customers’ ability to work remotely while controlling costs, on both a short- and long-term basis. It is especially useful as a digital solution for businesses that are re-evaluating the ways in which they manage in the COVID-19 economy.

Opengear Launches Channel Certification Program

Opengear, a Digi International company and a New Jersey-based provider of secure network access and automation solutions, has launched its new Opengear Channel Certification Program, the company’s first technical certification program for its Network Resilience platform.

The company claims that the platform is used by more than 75% of Fortune 100 companies to manage and secure mission-critical network infrastructure.

The program includes a suite of tools, education, resources, and training intended to help channel partners drive new revenue, and addresses the challenges faced in selling and deploying network management solutions without visiting customer sites.

“Emerging tech and broad adoption of cloud, IoT, and edge computing are making network management increasingly complicated,” said Bryan Keepers, Opengear’s Director of Channel Sales – Americas. “But this also presents a challenge for sales engineers, who are expected to be experts and trusted advisors to their customers. Selling virtually – which we expect to continue even after the pandemic – further complicates the challenge. That’s why technical sales teams require new tools and training to better understand the unique challenges and requirements of each individual customer and deployment.”

Certified channel participants receive a thorough review of critical network-management challenges facing organizations today and the solutions to address evolving needs. The end-to-end training courses cover topics ranging from command line interface access to firewall settings and configuring USB ports to managing a separate management plane, securing and conducting failover to cellular, and implementing advanced NetOps automation. The program also includes a series of instructional videos and on-demand lessons. Participants must pass a series of quizzes and comprehensive tests to complete the program and earn a diploma showcasing their qualifications.

Participants also learn to effectively deliver remote product demos customer service. The program can also reduce sales cycles since no travel or on-site visits are required.

Channel Impact^®
The certification program is designed to elevate the knowledge and value sales engineers can provide to customers.

Offensive Security Launches Bounty Program

Offensive Security, a New York-based provider of cybersecurity training and certification, has announced a new bounty program for user generated content. Members of the information security community can now receive cash bounties for submitting vulnerable virtual machines to Offensive Security (OffSec) that are eligible to be incorporated into the Proving Grounds training labs.

Offensive Security is a provider of online penetration testing training and certification for information security professionals. The company’s hands-on training and certification programs, virtual labs and open-source projects provide practitioners with skills intended to help participants advance their careers and better protect their organizations.

“No matter how much training material you have consumed, the best way to demonstrate that you’ve acquired knowledge is to apply it,” said Ning Wang, CEO of Offensive Security. “By establishing this bounty program, OffSec is not only strengthening its training programs by incorporating the latest and greatest content from the community, we are offering people the chance to apply their knowledge by creating vulnerable machines and to get paid while doing it.”

With the new bounty program, members of the community can submit their exploitable applications through the company portal and receive various cash bounties depending on the quality of the vulnerable system. If the machine meets OffSec’s criteria, it is incorporated into the OffSec Proving Grounds labs programs, where they remain available for free through PG Play.

Similar to bug bounty programs, the OffSec User Generated Machines program operates on payment tiers whereby different rewards are offered depending on which criteria the machine meets.

Channel Impact^®
The program provides an opportunity to make a contribution to the knowledge base for a potential fee, while further developing one’s skill level.