BeyondTrust names Perfekt Australian partner of the year

BeyondTrust has named Perfekt its Australian Partner of the Year. It also recognised 3Columns, Modern 42 and two channel executives in its annual Australian partner awards.

Melbourne-based Perfekt received the top award for what BeyondTrust described as close collaboration and for combining its understanding of customer priorities with the vendor's technology and expertise.

Sydney-based 3Columns was named ANZ Customer Success Partner of the Year, while Canberra-based Modern 42 won Technical Partner of the Year. Individual awards went to Damith Jayasinghe, Business Manager at Westcon-Comstor Australia, as Most Valuable Partner, and Ingram Spencer, Business Development Manager at Perfekt, as Account Executive of the Year.

The awards highlight the role of channel partners in selling, implementing and supporting identity security products in Australia, where vendors increasingly rely on specialist resellers, distributors and services firms to reach enterprise and public sector customers.

Modern 42 was recognised for its technical work within BeyondTrust's partner community. BeyondTrust said it had continued to invest in implementation expertise and worked with its Phantom Labs research team by providing product feedback.

According to BeyondTrust's award criteria, 3Columns was acknowledged for its customer relationships, long-term focus on client outcomes and customer satisfaction.

Jayasinghe's award reflected support for the broader partner ecosystem, while Spencer was recognised for account development and for maintaining clear communication and defined roles in joint opportunities.

Partner focus

The announcement comes as security suppliers place greater emphasis on partner networks to expand market coverage and deliver consulting and integration services around identity, access and privileged account management tools.

BeyondTrust's global ecosystem includes sales partners, service partners, cloud marketplaces and more than 100 technology alliance partners. Through its PartnerTrust programme, it provides training, certification, co-selling support, technical resources and services enablement.

In Australia, the model is intended to help partners build practices around privilege-focused identity security as customers manage growing numbers of human, machine and software-driven identities across corporate systems.

BeyondTrust's broader strategy is to make it easier for partners to engage with the vendor and expand their work across the customer lifecycle. This includes simplifying engagement models and strengthening technical and go-to-market support for the channel.

Identity security has become a larger area of spending for many organisations as companies and government agencies deal with more complex environments, connected systems and a wider range of privileged access risks. That has increased demand for partners that can advise on architecture, deployment and ongoing operational management.

For vendors such as BeyondTrust, awards programmes serve both to recognise top-performing partners and to signal the areas they want their channels to prioritise, including technical skills, customer retention and collaboration across joint accounts.

The Australian awards were announced during BeyondTrust's PartnerTrust gathering in Sydney, which focused on partner training around its identity security approach as well as technical and commercial enablement. While the awards were tied to the company's wider partner strategy, the individual honours were based on performance within the local ecosystem.

Brendon Thwaites, Director, Partner Ecosystems, APAC, BeyondTrust, said: "Congratulations to this year's BeyondTrust award recipients. Great partnerships are the primary difference between security 'tools' and security 'outcomes'. The partners that we are recognising today consistently go beyond selling a single product by helping their customers reduce overall privilege risk, close gaps across silos, and move toward a unified approach to identity security."