Just a few short months ago, Cloudflare announced the launch of the Cloudflare One Partner Program.  Many customers want to start their journeys to Zero Trust but are not sure where or how to start. It became clear there was a significant opportunity to partner with the channel – to combine Cloudflare’s complete Zero Trust portfolio with a broad set of Cloudflare-enabled, channel-delivered professional services to help customers navigate meaningful ways to adopt a Zero Trust architecture. Underscoring this need to partner was the fact that over the last six months we saw a 50% increase in new Cloudflare Zero Trust customers being won with the channel.

Clearly customers are ready to cut through the market hype of Zero Trust and start implementing - with the right platform of products and services - and the right value contribution of their channel partners.

Since the launch of the Cloudflare One Partner Program, we’ve engaged with hundreds of partners through our recruiting campaigns and in our Zero Trust Roadshow. This has provided a tremendous amount of feedback on what is working and why we believe we have the right program at the right time. This feedback has consistently centered around a few key themes:

A broad Zero Trust platform - our channel partners see the value in having a broad zero trust platform that acknowledges the Zero Trust journey for their customers is not a “one size fits all.”  It takes the right set of cloud-native technologies to fulfill the varied requirements from smaller, mid-market customers to the largest enterprises. One customer may start the transition to Zero Trust Network Architecture (ZTNA) by phasing out VPNs for 3rd parties while another may start by replacing VPNs for their remote workers.

For others, the journey may start with the need to streamline their SaaS security or a compliance-driven need to protect web traffic from modern threats. We even see customers starting their Zero Trust journey by applying advanced, cloud-native protection to their email.

Each of these real customer use cases represents an “on-ramp” to Zero Trust architecture, rooted in a specific business need and desired outcome for the customer. Our partners tell us that having a broad Zero Trust platform comprising each of the services needed to fulfill these use cases means they are enabled to assess exactly what their customers need and compose the best starting point for their entry to Zero Trust.

Bundles make configuration and design easy - The Cloudflare One Partner Program provides exclusive access to a set of Zero Trust solution bundles optimized for the real use cases that partners encounter when helping their customers map out a Zero Trust strategy.

Cloudflare Zero Trust Essentials, Advanced and Premier bundles combine the required services to deliver a well orchestrated solution and are available direct from Cloudflare or through Distributors. The feedback from our partners SE community is that the bundles can save a significant amount of time in solution design and configuration.

Partner-delivered professional services - Customers of all sizes need channel partners to help them find the value in a Zero Trust architecture – to identify that first use case that will allow them to start their transformation. The Cloudflare One Partner Program acknowledges this critical role the channel plays in assessing customer requirements, designing and implementing the solution, and providing ongoing support.

For partners with existing services practices, our new enablement, certification, service blueprints and tools helps them light up their Zero Trust services offerings. For partners who don’t yet possess these capabilities, Cloudflare back-stops them with packaged service offerings delivered by authorized service partners. This creates a selling environment that ensures we all can find the best possible solution for every customer, design and deliver that solution in a highly efficient way and provide consistent ongoing support.

At our partner recruiting events, two representative tools that get super positive feedback  – A Roadmap to Zero Trust Architecture and our 90 Minute Zero Trust Assessment – both of which are proving highly valuable in helping partners jump start a meaningful Zero Trust dialog with their customers.

Reward for Value - In addition to delivering the broad Zero Trust platform, bundles and services enablement, the Cloudflare One Partner Program acknowledges the critical role and full contribution of our partners to bringing Zero Trust to life for their customers. Reward for Value is our partner financial incentive structure that rewards for developing Zero Trust opportunities (deal registration), designing a bundled solution and delivering professional services. This is an important acknowledgement that we can drive Zero Trust architectures to the market faster with the channel than we could do on our own. Our partners love the Reward for Value model, and we believe it’s an important foundation to building a mutually rewarding relationship with the channel.

If the Cloudflare One Partner Program resonates with you, and you’re serious about helping your customers find value in a Zero Trust architecture, let’s talk. We’d love to share more about all the Program elements outlined in this blog and how you can put them to work for your business. We’re building our Zero Trust channel one great partner at a time - are you next?

For more details visit our Cloudflare One Partner Program website.

Today marks the launch of the Cloudflare One Partner Program, a program built around our Zero Trust, Network as a Service and Cloud Email Security offerings. The program helps channel partners deliver on the promise of Zero Trust while monetizing this important architecture in tangible ways – with a comprehensive set of solutions, enablement and incentives. We are delighted to have such broad support for the program from IT Service companies, Distributors, Value Added Resellers, Managed Service Providers and other solution providers.

This represents both a new go-to-market channel for Cloudflare, and a new way for companies of all sizes to adopt Zero Trust solutions that have previously been difficult to procure, implement and support.

• New, fully cloud-native Cloudflare One product suites that help partners streamline and accelerate the design of holistic Zero Trust solutions that are easier to implement. The product suites include our Zero Trust products and Cloud Email Security products from our recent acquisition of Area 1 Security.

• All program elements are fully operationalized through Cloudflare's Distributors to make it easier to evaluate, quote and deliver Cloudflare One solutions in a consistent and predictable way.

• The launch of new Partner Accreditations to enable partners to assess, implement and support Zero Trust solutions for their customers. This includes a robust set of training to help partners deliver the margin-rich services their customers need to realize the full value of their Zero Trust investments.

• One of the most robust partner incentive structures in the industry, rewarding partners for the value they add throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

For more details visit our website here Cloudflare One Partner Program. For partners, we’ve added a dedicated Cloudflare One page in the Partner Portal.

"TD Synnex has been working hand-in-hand with Cloudflare on the launch of their new Cloudflare One Partner Program for Zero Trust. This program takes Zero Trust from a term that's broadly and loosely used and cuts through the hype with the solution bundles, enablement resources, and incentives that help the channel deliver true business value", said Tracy Holtz, Vice President, Security and Networking at TD Synnex. "TD Synnex being the world's leading IT distributor and solutions aggregator is thrilled to be furthering our partnership with Cloudflare to build and enable this Program of partners as it is encompassing the solution that all organizations need today."

The Cloudflare One Partner Program is launching to address the explosive demand to implement Zero Trust architectures that help organizations of all sizes safely and securely accelerate their digital transformations. In the face of ever-increasing cyber threats, Zero Trust moves from a concept to an imperative. Cloudflare is in a unique position to make this happen to one of the richest Zero Trust product suites in the industry including a Secure Web Gateway, ZTNA Access Management, CASB, Browser Isolation, DLP and Cloud Email Security. These products are tightly integrated and easy-to-use enabling a holistic, implementable solution.

Additionally, our Zero Trust suite has a comprehensive tech partner ecosystem that makes it easy for our customers to integrate our solutions in their existing tech stack. We integrate and closely partner with industry leaders across all major categories — identity, endpoint detection and response, mobile device management, and email service providers — to make Cloudflare One flexible and robust for our diverse customer base. Our strategic partners include Microsoft, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Mandiant, and others.

“Enterprises have come to terms with the notion of a disintegrating traditional perimeter. The distributed and dynamic perimeter of today requires a fundamentally new approach to security. In partnership with Cloudflare, our AI-powered cybersecurity platform offers modern organizations a robust Zero Trust security solution that spans devices, network, and mission-critical applications.” said Chuck Fontana, Senior Vice President, Business Development, SentinelOne

But it takes more than just the products to realize the promise of Zero Trust. It requires the skills and expertise of the channel, as trusted advisors to their customers, to optimize the solutions to drive the specific required business outcomes, or time-to-value for the customer's investment.

“We’ve been humbled by how our existing partners have contributed to the explosive growth of our Zero Trust business, but increased customer demand is creating an opportunity for our partners to play a bigger role in how we go to market. More than ever before we are relying on our partners to help customers evaluate, implement and support Zero Trust solutions”, said Matthew Price, CEO of Cloudflare.

"By furthering our partnership with Cloudflare in the new Cloudflare One Partner Program, Rackspace Technology is able to deliver Cloudflare's leading Zero Trust solutions paired with Rackspace Elastic Engineering and professional services at their massive scale and with continued implementation support," said Gary Alterson, Vice President, Security Solutions at Rackspace Technology. "Since partnering with Cloudflare to develop Zero Trust solutions, we've already seen strong engagement with clients and prospects such as the likes of one of the world's largest creative companies."

"With the launch of this new Cloudflare One Partner Program including integrated zero trust focused solution bundles and partner enablement, we look forward to further expanding our go-to-market with Cloudflare and helping customers smoothly and quickly transform their network security by adopting a zero trust strategy for protecting their infrastructure, teams and applications," stated Deborah Jones, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Alliances, IBM Security Services.

"Assurance Data's charter is to deliver integrated security solutions for next-generation cyber defense. We're thrilled to work with Cloudflare, adding their innovative, 100% cloud-native Zero Trust solutions to our technology portfolio and appreciate the significant investment they are making in the partner channel, with deep partner enablement and service delivery support along with rich incentives.  The new Cloudflare One Partner Program is truly a triple win: a win for us, for our Cloudflare partnership and for our customers," stated Randy Stephens, COO, Assurance Data.

"Zero Trust is no-brainer, but many people still believe it's too complex," stated Scott McCrady, CEO, SolCyber. "Cloudflare has made it easy with the new Cloudflare One Partner Program. We love it because it helps our customers get integrated Zero Trust solutions in place fast, with all the enablement and incentives you would expect from a first-rate partner program."

This new program builds on top of the benefits of the existing partner program. So all the current benefits provided to partners are available, but there are a few valuable additions for Cloudflare One partners: Product suites are listed with Distribution partners and available for VARs and other partners to quote and fulfill; We’ve added Accreditations and new training packages, so that partners have rich resources and training on which to build and enhance their own service practices; Incentives for partners are enhanced with well-structured discounts off the list prices available to partners at our Distribution partners including extra incentives that follow a “reward for value” model.

"As a member of AVANT's Security Council, Cloudflare has been a close innovation partner of AVANT's as we enable our network of Trusted Advisors to help their customers adopt the very latest in cloud technologies," stated Shane McNamara, EVP, Engineering and Operations, AVANT Communications. "With this new Cloudflare One Partner Program for Zero Trust, Cloudflare has launched a first-of-kind set of integrated product suites and partner services packages that will give our Trusted Advisors a compelling set of solutions to take to market."

“Cloudflare’s product suite has an important role to play in advanced threat detection and in Wipro’s Zero Trust offers to clients,” said Tony Buffomante, SVP, Global CRS Leader of Wipro. “The Cloudflare One Partner Program has provided a quick ramp to build our practice. We're already seeing significant market use cases from our partnership, with Wipro CyberSecurists providing application security, implementation services and ongoing managed services from Wipro’s 16 global cyber defense centers.”

"Cloudflare has made Zero Trust adoption easy, with these integrated product bundles and partner services speeding customers' journeys to comprehensive, Zero Trust-based security for teams, infrastructure and applications. We're excited to be one of Cloudflare's initial launch partners for these innovative solutions," stated Dave Trader, Field CISO, Presidio.

"We are a services provider delivering cybersecurity and IT transformation solutions to private equity and mid-market organizations. The Cloudflare One Partner Program fits with our integrated services and support model, and we're already seeing strong customer interest in the Cloudflare One product suites. We're excited to be one of Cloudflare's initial partners for this strategic new channel program," stated Chris Hueneke, Chief Information Security Officer, RKON.

"We're thrilled to announce that we officially provide managed services to support Cloudflare One solutions to help customers mitigate cyber security threats with a holistic Zero Trust approach to security," according to Joey Campione, Managing Director, Opticca Security.

"Cloudflare is making it easy for us to design and deliver a Zero Trust solution, especially for our mid-market customers where the bundles ensure a complete, integrated solution," said Katie Hanahan, vCISO and Vice President, Cybersecurity Strategy at ITsavvy, a leading IT solution provider. "And we love the investment in tools and training to help us build out our own professional services offerings to help drive the best possible outcomes for our clients."

Cloudflare One offers comprehensive Zero Trust solutions that raise visibility, eliminate complexity, and reduce risks as remote and office users connect to applications and the Internet. In a single-pass architecture, traffic is verified, filtered, inspected, and isolated from threats. There is no performance trade-off: users connect through data centers nearby in 270+ cities in over 100 countries.

Cloudflare Access augments or replaces corporate VPN clients by securing SaaS and internal applications. Access works with your identity providers and endpoint protection platforms to enforce default-deny, Zero Trust rules limiting access to corporate applications, private IP spaces, and hostnames.

Cloudflare Gateway is our threat and data protection solution. It keeps data safe from malware, ransomware, phishing, command and control, Shadow IT, and other Internet risks over all ports and protocols.

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security crawls the Internet to stop phishing, Business Email Compromise (BEC), and email supply chain attacks at the earliest stage of the attack cycle, and enhances built-in security from cloud email providers.

Cloudflare Browser Isolation makes web browsing safer and faster, running in the cloud away from your network and endpoints, insulating devices from attacks.

Cloudflare CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) gives customers comprehensive visibility and control over SaaS apps to easily prevent data leaks, block insider threats, and avoid compliance violations.

Cloudflare Data Loss Prevention enables customers to detect and prevent data exfiltration or data destruction. Analyze network traffic and internal "endpoint" devices to identify leakage or loss of confidential information, and stay compliant with industry and data privacy regulations.

For more information on the program and Zero Trust product suites go here.

Today’s launch of the Cloudflare One Partner Program represents just one step in a multi-step journey to invest in our partners and help customers implement and support Zero Trust solutions. Over the coming months we will be expanding the program internationally and continuing to add training resources around Cloudflare Zero Trust accreditations. We are also hosting a series of partner webinars on this new program. Please check the Partner Portal for details and future partner events.