Palo Alto Networks unveils NextWave 3.0 to help partners

Palo Alto Networks unveiled NextWave 3.0, a significant set of enhancements, incentives and training to its award-winning NextWave Partner Program. Designed to help partners leverage all of Palo Alto Networks technologies, NextWave 3.0 will help partners differentiate their services, build new security expertise and grow profitable businesses as they meet customers’ needs in a dynamic security market.

Enterprises everywhere are expanding connectivity, growing their cloud capabilities and turning to automated solutions to protect themselves against sophisticated cyberattacks. Palo Alto Networks continues to expand its integrated platform of cloud, network and AI-driven threat protection capabilities to meet these market and customer dynamics. Its partner ecosystem has been instrumental in providing complementary solutions to help customers implement the best security architectures.

As digital transformation fuels the demand for specialized security expertise and creates a new economy of services, Palo Alto Networks is committed to delivering the products, programs and resources to enable its NextWave partners. Developed in consultation with the company’s partners, NextWave 3.0 will:

• Enable differentiation with new specializations. Partners can build their security expertise through three new Prisma SASE (Prisma Access and Prisma SD-WAN, formerly CloudGenix), Prisma Cloud and Cortex XDR/XSOAR specializations. These new specializations include corresponding partner training and certifications.
• Enhance partner profitability with three new specialization incentives for Prisma SASE, Prisma Cloud and Cortex XDR/XSOAR deals, along with other new incentives, deal boost and new rebates for its NextWave Diamond Innovator partners. 
• Expand partner opportunities by boosting existing deal referral incentives on all Palo Alto Networks products, extending partner-delivered support across more of Palo Alto Networks’ technologies and offering new education credits. Further, NextWave partners can now resell Prisma Cloud via a two-tier go-to-market strategy.
• Empower partner success. NextWave 3.0 includes a host of new enablement resources and ways for partners to earn or maintain NextWave status, expanding Certified Professional Services certification to include the new specializations, Technology Education credits and technology adoption discounts.

“The future of our business and that of our partners are fundamentally linked,” said Karl Soderlund, senior vice president of Worldwide Channels. “The NextWave partner of tomorrow will enable digital transformation for our customers by embracing new technology, offering product-specific expertise, and leading with services. NextWave 3.0 helps our partners do just that. It is the most sweeping set of enhancements we have done to help our partners become security experts across our entire technology portfolio.”