Hosted Services Spark Partnerships

November 12, 2007

Courtesy of MicroScope

The increasing popularity of offering the applications and data transfer via hosted services is attracting security specialists to support the managed services market.

With hosted services, information can be accessed remotely and from numerous locations and there is pressure to prove that the transfer of data can be carried out securely.

The result of the burden of protection has led some managed service providers (MSPs) to incorporate security into their offerings – leading partnerships between security and software players.

Ram Krishnan, senior vice president at GuardianEdge, which specializes in end-point security, said he was on the brink of announcing a partnership with an MSP because his company had recognized the the need for protection had expanded. “It is one of the reasons data is being moved outside the [traditional] boundaries and we are seeing MSPs needing to provide data protection services,” he said. Krishnan said that there was an opportunity for the channel and the cost of the companies losing data , or having a leak, would be larger than the price of improving their secure access controls – making it easier for resellers to promote data protection solutions.

Cber-Ark has redefined its channel partner program, introducing a specialism for MSPs in recognition that secure access is a major issue for those channel players.

“The reason we recognized MSPs as potential partners and are working very closely with them is because of the exchange of very sensitive documents between parties,” said Mark fulbrook, UK channel director at Cyber-Ark.