Channel pros with multiple business models can join more than one partner program track. “The partner can sort of pick and choose and participate in multiple areas of the program based on what’s right for them and what’s right for their customer,” Acker notes.
Numerous vendors, including Barracuda Networks, Kaseya’s ID Agent unit, and OpenText's Webroot business, offer security awareness solutions alongside other security products. NINJIO, like KnowBe4 and Breach Secure Now! among others, specializes solely in training.
“We’re very complementary to the other vendors the typical solution provider has in their portfolio,” Acker says, adding that the company has integration partnerships with Sophos, InfoArmor, and IRONSCALES, among others.
NINJIO’s solution, unlike many competing products, emphasizes animated short-form educational videos rather than imitation phishing emails. The system encourages users to consume that content all year long.
“A number of studies have told us that 90% of what you learn you forget about in 30 days,” Acker says. “You take compliance training in January and it rolls around to September, you’re going to forget a lot of what you learned.”
Acker, without specifying an exact number, says NINJIO currently has “hundreds” of partners. Raising that number to thousands is not among the company’s goals.
“We’re not going to measure the success of the program based on the breadth in terms of number of partners,” he says. “We’re really looking for depth.”
Though NINJIO sells direct, sales through the channel account for a “substantial portion of our revenue,” Acker says. “Part of the need for the program is a real commitment from the board and the ownership and our private equity firm to say, ‘we believe that this is going be a partner-led model going forward.’”
That equity investor is Gauge Capital, which bought a stake in NINJIO a year ago and has been helping it expand rapidly since.
“We doubled the size of the company in the last six months alone,” Acker says. Partners can expect to see more growth in both employees and solutions, potentially through acquisitions, over the months ahead, he adds.
“I think you’ll see us continuing to add technology both organically and inorganically and people organically and inorganically,” Acker says.
