Channel partner programs, MSP

Barracuda CEO Praises Office 365 Security Wins, MSP Momentum

Barracuda CEO BJ Jenkins
BJ Jenkins

Barracuda Networks CEO BJ Jenkins says the security and business continuity company is gaining momentum. The reason?: Cloud and MSP offerings.

"In the MSP channel, we continue to expand the products available via our Intronis MSP solutions and added new partners," Jenkins said during Barracuda's Q2 2017 earnings call this evening. "Over the past year, we have added Barracuda Essentials for Office 365, backup and next generation firewall solutions. These offerings are attracting new MSP partners and we believe are catalysts to grow sales. In the second quarter, we added 160 new partners onto the Intronis platform."

Barracuda acquired Intronis -- a cloud-based backup provider -- in late 2015. Fast forward to present day, and Intronis MSPs can increasingly extend beyond data protection services to Barracuda's security offerings. In fact, Jenkins told ChannelE2E in September 2016 that MSP platforms are now the heart of the company's partner strategy.

During that earnings call with Wall Street analysts on Tuesday, Jenkins added:

"We can see where we’re going and we feel good about where we’re going. And if you look at the last three quarters, the areas that we’re focused on where we believe the customers want to go which is SaaS, MSP and public cloud, the early signs are good. So, if you look at the email data, security data we cited, the network security data was another record quarter for us there. The early signs of this data are good and we think bode well for future."

Barracuda's total revenue for Q2 2017 was $87.9 million, up 12 percent from $78.4 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2016. Moreover, subscription revenue grew to $66.9 million, up 19% from $56.1 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2016.

Still, competition looms around every corner. A growing list of backup and business continuity providers now target MSPs. Moreover, multiple vendors are introducing combination security/business continuity services.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.