Cato Networks baked flexibility into its program for managed services provider partners who work with SMBs.
The secure access service edge vendor offered its MSP and telco partners a new purchasing model and a new customer dashboard. The updates give service partners pricing flexibility, wider visibility and faster self-service provisioning.
Through the new SMB FlexPool model, partners now can buy a pool of licenses with built-in portability and self-provision them for customers as needed. They also can buy a pool of bandwidth to manage on behalf of the client. Global Channel Chief Karl Soderlund said MSPs previously had to buy each license separately.
“There was so much back and forth independent of Cato between the manufacturer and the MSP trying to get that setup done,” Soderlund told Channel Dive.
Partners can manage their license pools through the new MSASE Dashboard, where they can see the full lifecycle of their customer activity. The new portal ensures Cato partners and employees have the same visibility into client information.
“A lot of what they used was email communication to say, ‘Where are we at for this?’” Soderlund said. “We did have some tools and resources for them, but it was like 1.0, and now what we just rolled out is like 4.0.”
The vendor grew 42% year over year in annualized recurring revenue to $415 million, touting a SASE platform that merges networking and security capabilities. For the early years of the company’s channel program, its partner motion ran primarily through telecom-based agents. However, diversifying partner routes to market has been a priority for the vendor over the last five years.
Soderlund’s retired predecessor, Frank Rauch, led a push in 2023 to increase business with value-added resellers and system integrators, which are embedded with large enterprises. Now Soderlund, hired in 2025, sees MSPs as key to helping customers down-market.
“There's a huge uptick in the SMB space because they don't have the IT support or the budget or the capabilities to support their environment,” Soderlund said.
Autonomy is crucial for SMB-focused partners. Soderlund said Cato’s MSP and telco partners thrive on handling “high volume, high velocity, perishable demand,” and they need to self-provision quickly.
“It's moving so quickly right now… in the time of cyber and AI that decisions are made fast. So, unless they have the right services, they're going to lose the business,” said Soderlund, who added that the company has cut down its time to deploy its platform from days to seconds.
For MSPs Soderlund spoke to on his listening tour, Cato needed a pricing overhaul. BCN Chief Product Officer Chris Alberding said the previous model — receiving a discount off the retail price — wasn’t flexible enough.
“It was almost like instead of paying an agent commission, they just moved to giving you the discount equivalent to an agent commission,” Alberding said. “Now they've really rebuilt it from the ground up and created a pricing program that is built on your volume, how much you are selling for Cato and what types of services, and giving you a bigger reward and a better piece of margin the more you sell and the more you engage.”
Cato’s MSP partner base is a mix of firms like BCN that came out of the telecom space, and IT-focused MSPs that came out of the LAN. Soderlund said born-in-telco firms are accustomed to managing bandwidth while born-in-IT firms are accustomed to managing licenses. But both sides care about flexibility, owning the endpoint and moving quickly.
Meanwhile, the customer persona is shifting, as network and security teams come together and increasingly consider a converged SASE platform.
“Five years ago you would have been talking to the network person there, and I think more recently you're talking almost always to the security person,” Alberding said.
Alberding said he is impressed with Cato’s response to MSP feedback. The vendor has shifted dramatically to put focus on improving the MSP experience, he said.
“I would say for the first couple years… it was a bit of a challenge,” said Alberding, who was VP of product management at Cato partner Windstream prior to BCN. “But they have really stepped up, and the leadership and structure have shown that they're committed to the managed services provider market.”
