Growing on the marketplace through Azure sponsorship and multiparty private offers
In this installment, I had the opportunity to chat with Ben Goodman about Silverfort’s journey and their partner success story. About Ben: Ben Goodman - Head of Alliances and Corporate Development, has over 25 years of sales, design, and implementation of advanced information technology. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ [JR]: Tell us about Silverfort. What inspired the founding? What products and services do you offer? [BG]: Silverfort, established in 2016 by cybersecurity experts Hed Kovetz, Yaron Kassner, and Matan Fattal—alumni of the Israeli Defense Forces' elite Unit 8200—addresses a vital gap in identity security. Drawing from their extensive experience, they recognized that traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools are insufficient in protecting against identity-based threats across diverse environments. This realization led to the development of Silverfort’s Unified Identity Protection platform, which ensures secure authentication for all users, resources, and protocols across both on-premises and multi-cloud environments. The platform extends modern identity security controls, like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), to previously unprotected assets such as legacy applications, file shares, non-human identities, and industrial/medical systems. Its innovative technology layers identity protection over existing authentication protocols without modifying or installing anything on these systems. Silverfort consolidates identity security across siloed cloud and on-premises solutions, delivering consistent protection and preventing attacks leveraging compromised credentials—responsible for 82% of data breaches. Additionally, it helps organizations meet regulatory and cyber insurance requirements, making it an essential solution for businesses worldwide. [JR]: Can you tell us a bit about the application(s) you have available on the marketplace? How does it work? [BG]: The Silverfort Unified Identity Protection Platform enables enterprises to gain real-time protection against identity-based attacks that utilize compromised credentials to access enterprise on-prem or cloud resources without requiring any agents or proxies. It is integrated with Defender, Copilot for Security, Entra ID, Sentinel and Teams and natively integrates with all existing IAM solutions, to extend secure access controls such as Risk-Based Authentication and MFA across all on-prem and cloud environments. This includes assets that could never have been protected in this manner before, such as homegrown/legacy applications, IT infrastructure, file systems, command-line tools, machine-to-machine access, and more. Silverfort continuously monitors all access attempts by users and service accounts, and analyses risks in real-time using an AI-based engine to enforce adaptive access policies. [JR]: How has Microsoft supported you along your journey? [BG]: Silverfort has been involved with several Microsoft programs like ISV Success, Marketplace Rewards, Microsoft for Start-Ups Pegasus Program, and MISA, which have all played a part in our journey thus far. As an active partner in the Microsoft co-sell Program, Microsoft's partnership has been immensely helpful and continues to play a key role in our company's success. From working together to producing enterprise joint customers, to providing constructive feedback on our product, we are thrilled with the ongoing support we have received in the co-Sell program. Silverfort is also part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Alliance (MISA), which has allowed the company to gain visibility with customers as well as within Microsoft. By being part of MISA, Silverfort is participating in events and ‘go-to-market' activities together with Microsoft. [JR]: How does your organization align its business to enable positive impact for your customers and communities? [BG]: Silverfort is a horizontal solution that applies to many industries and verticals. Our focused industries are Manufacturing, Telecom, Healthcare, Financial Services, Local Government, Oil & Gas. Silverfort is dedicated to promoting effective identity security across diverse verticals, ensuring that organizations of all sizes can protect their environments from identity-based attacks. Our platform provides comprehensive security solutions that address the unique needs of each industry, helping customers to strengthen their overall security posture. By securing sensitive systems and identities, Silverfort enables businesses to operate securely and confidently in today's complex identity threat landscape, allowing them to build trust and resilience across their ecosystems. [JR]: What are you most proud of in your journey building/leading your organization? What’s next for you? [BG]: We take immense pride in several key achievements throughout our journey. We are particularly proud of developing an innovative platform that unifies identity protection, addressing critical security gaps across diverse systems and environments to combat identity-based threats. Another source of pride is the collaborative and positive company culture that we have built across our company. Inspired by our CEO's experiences living on a kibbutz, Silverfort's DNA emphasizes teamwork, transparency, and mutual support among employees. Additionally, we take great satisfaction in establishing Silverfort as a leader in the identity security market, providing seamless and effective protection for businesses across various industries. Looking to the future, we plan to focus on enhancing our existing products and expanding the platform’s capabilities to provide comprehensive and end-to-end identity security. [JR]: What Microsoft programs or benefits have you leveraged to help grow sales of your application(s) on the marketplace? [BG]: The Azure Sponsorship credits available through Marketplace Rewards has enabled us to secure large deals by helping customers make purchases through the Azure Marketplace and apply the credits as a rebate toward their Silverfort purchase. [JR]: Channel Partners (e.g VAR’s) are an important part of the ecosystem - how have you used Microsoft programs or benefits to unlock opportunities with Channel Partners and grow Marketplace sales at the same time? [BG]: The combination of Azure sponsorship and MPO (multiparty private offers) has allowed us to collaborate with channel partners and agree to move transactions for their deals to transact via the marketplace. We can use Azure sponsorship offers to minimize margin erosion when coming to the pointy end of negotiations with the end-customers procurement teams. Where MPO isn’t available in countries, especially across APAC, Silverfort has come up with an interim mechanism to recompense Channel Partners for their margin for deals that are done directly in the marketplace. We look forward to Microsoft accelerating the rollout of the MPO program more broadly so that it becomes easier to work with channel partners to unlock new opportunities and land bigger sales via the marketplace. [JR]: What has contributed to your marketplace success? [BG]: Microsoft’s monthly P2B (propensity to buy) rating has allowed us to leverage customer’s MACC agreements to position the purchase of Silverfort. The individual guest tech blog has allowed us to showcase Silverfort and where we fit into the industry and how we help customers to have a more secure environment. The Azure Marketplace feature & Solution spotlight has increased the awareness of Silverfort as a whole. [JR]: Azure sponsorship credits can be earned via participation in ISV Success and/or Marketplace Rewards. These credits can be used in a variety of ways such as being used as a deal sweetener to help close more deals with customers. How have you used these credits? [BG]: We have a strategic initiative using Azure credits to close large deals through the marketplace. They have helped us close some of our biggest deals of the year. We have our sellers tell the end-customer (or the channel partner as the case may be), that we are offering the end-customer 10% of the ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) as a rebate for them to buy through the Azure Marketplace, instead of buying direct or through a VAR alone. We encourage using multiparty private offers or just a straight Azure Marketplace purchase - then once the deal gets closed, we issue the 10% Azure credits to the customer (up to $100K). [JR]: Cloud marketplaces are increasingly relying on resellers - with this in mind how do Azure sponsorship credits play a part in your Channel Partner ecosystem? [BG]: We collaborate with channel partners (e.g. VAR’s) on the opportunities they bring us to position transacting via the Marketplace under MPO. Where MPO isn’t available, we also discuss an interim mechanism we have to recompense the channel partner for their margin if the deal is transacted via Marketplace. This interim approach, until MPO becomes available in that country, is especially important to use in countries that are strong channel partner-centric environments While both the above points empower Silverfort, Microsoft, and channel partners to continue sell collaboratively, and so that channel partners are not cut out the loop - the Azure sponsorship credits are a useful a mechanism to help incentivize a channel partner to look at the transacting the deal via the marketplace (with or without MPO). It allows us to jointly agree on positioning and using the Azure credits as a bargaining chip in deal-making negotiations with end-customers procurement, to minimize margin erosion – thereby helping Silverfort, Microsoft, and channel partners to unlock new opportunities and land bigger sales, and for them to be done via the marketplace. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Join the marketplace community today! Just click "join" on the upper right corner of our marketplace community page. You can also subscribe to the community to stay updated on the latest stories of how these inspiring leaders carved their career paths, what lessons they learned along the way, and more. Resources: Join ISV Success Join the marketplace community Learn more about Marketplace Rewards
