Tech Mahindra recently announced a strategic partnership with SSH.COM in order to serve enterprise customers with the SSH.COM portfolio offering. The partnership focuses on our Universal SSH Key Manager and PrivX access management solutions. SSH.COM CEO, Kaisa Olkkonen, looks at the evolution of our approach to partnerships and the exciting prospects for our relationship with Tech Mahindra.
Growth partnerships with customer value
SSH.COM has worked with many partners over the years. We have been looking at how to create value for both parties and how to build successful long-lasting partnerships. About a year ago we started to emphasize the importance of our partnership approach in our go-to-market planning. This was based on our renewed understanding of how our customers prefer to operate. Tech Mahindra is a perfect example of the direction we want to go in with our partnering efforts: a value-added relationship with a trusted partner for enterprise customers.
Focus on solving PAM and cloud challenges
When we first started discussions with Tech Mahindra, there was a specific use case we jointly wanted to solve for Tech Mahindra’s customers. We were very excited about the case, as it was something we had been expecting enterprises to realize for a while – and because Tech Mahindra shared our enthusiasm. SSH keys have been at the core of everyday IT security for many customers and the challenge of managing vast numbers of keys has been a major issue. IT audits, the constant addition of software layers and increasing security challenges have combined to create an unacceptable situation. And we all know that when you keep on adding and adding it will most probably break at some point.
Don’t replace it – fix it before going to the cloud
As the Tech Mahindra press release stated, there is a fascinating use case with a semiconductor chip maker where our Universal SSH Key Manager is a perfect fit for the customer’s journey to the cloud. This use case is the result of adding more to a system, while not fixing the original problem.
Traditional PAM solutions can slow down GTM and cause friction with the employee experience. These problems lead employees to bypass security solutions in order to consistently deliver at the fast pace their organizations demand from IT and development teams. PAM bypass is a threat to any size of organization (read about how employees bypass PAM here).
It’s not only about on-prem when it comes to SSH keys. Large enterprises are ramping up their investment in cloudification. With PrivX we have the optimal solution for managing access and protecting investment as enterprises become increasingly reliant on cloud services from AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. PrivX hides SSH keys from users, eliminates passwords and vaulting, and provides SSO to cloud assets. It’s a friction-free experience for employees that mitigates the threat from PAM bypass and helps enterprises harness the business potential of the cloud.
Great things on the horizon
We have been focusing on partnerships for the past 12 months and it’s clear that many enterprise customers rely on their MSPs (Managed Service Providers) or CSPs (Cloud Service Providers). Buying products from a vendor is an easy step but implementation and integration into future plans requires a powerful and innovative business partner, like Tech Mahindra. This is where I believe the key to our partnership lies: sharing the knowledge we have gathered in the past 25 years about SSH technologies, governance and access management, and utilizing that knowledge to benefit both SSH and Tech Mahindra, and above all, our joint customers!
Thank you to the Tech Mahindra team for trusting in us!
Regards,
Kaisa
kaisa.olkkonen (a) ssh.com
For more information and press contacts, get in touch with simo.karkkulainen (a) ssh.com
