GFI Software emerged as the standout force in the European MSP landscape, earning the Best Managed Service Provider Partner Program award at the MSP Innovation Awards Europe, while also distinguishing itself as the only channel partner shortlisted across four categories. This achievement underscores GFI Software’s strategic commitment to empowering a global network of thousands of distributors and resellers, delivering comprehensive support, and driving tangible growth for managed service providers operating in a rapidly evolving SMB market. The recognition reflects a holistic approach to enabling MSPs to scale their operations, optimize service delivery, and accelerate business outcomes through a robust partner ecosystem, state-of-the-art management tools, and security-enabled solutions that address today’s complex IT environments.
The MSP Innovation Awards Europe: a benchmark for channel excellence
The MSP Innovation Awards Europe represent a carefully curated barometer of innovation, excellence, and impact within Europe’s rapidly changing channel landscape. Channel Partner Insight Network, a brand of The Channel Company EMEA, administers the program to identify channel players and vendors that push the envelope in product development, partner enablement, go-to-market strategies, and customer value. The awards honor organizations that demonstrate a clear trajectory toward helping MSPs meet growing demand for unified IT management, security, and cloud-based services, while also highlighting the importance of partner-centric models that align vendor investments with partner success. In this context, GFI Software’s achievement signals a broader industry shift toward more collaborative, provider-centric ecosystems that place MSPs at the center of digital transformation for SMBs. The recognition aligns with ongoing industry trends that emphasize open platforms, scalable management tools, and security-first approaches as essential components of modern managed services.
As the only channel partner to be shortlisted in four categories, GFI Software showcased its depth and breadth across program design, marketing support, security offerings, and partner enablement. This multi-category visibility reflects a comprehensive strategy that integrates a compelling partner program, robust MDF support, and a commitment to ongoing innovation. For MSPs, these aspects translate into clearer pathways to profitability, better access to marketing and sales resources, and a stronger lineup of security and management capabilities they can deploy for their customers. The awards process itself emphasizes independent evaluation of both technology and channel engagement, ensuring that the selected winners represent practical value, measurable impact, and sustainable growth opportunities for MSPs and their customers alike. The moment also reinforces the strategic importance of channel partnerships in delivering end-to-end IT solutions to SMBs, where MSPs need reliable, scalable, and cost-effective platforms to manage diverse environments.
GFI Software’s leadership views this achievement as confirmation that the company’s investments in partner empowerment are paying dividends. The award underscores the value of a channel-first business model that prioritizes MSPs as the primary consumer of software and services, rather than treating partners as an afterthought in a vendor’s growth plan. It also signals to the market that GFI Software is differentiating itself not only through product innovation but also through a holistic, partner-centric approach that aligns incentives, provides practical enablement, and sustains long-term collaborations that help MSPs flourish. The recognition positions GFI Software as a trusted ally for MSPs seeking to deliver high-quality managed services at scale, while continuing to innovate in areas like security, IT management, and cross-vendor integration.
In this broader context, the award emphasizes the importance of a strategic, multi-year plan for partner growth, where awards serve as milestones that validate progress and guide future investments. It also highlights the critical role of marketing development funds, hands-on enablement, and a transparent, collaborative framework that translates into concrete benefits for MSPs. By achieving success across multiple categories, GFI Software demonstrates that a single organization can deliver a cohesive, end-to-end solution stack that offers MSPs significant competitive advantages in a crowded market. For channel partners, the message is clear: strong vendor partnerships paired with robust enablement programs can accelerate customer acquisition, improve service delivery, and drive predictable revenue growth.
The core of GFI’s MSP Partner Program: a 100% channel model, MDF support, and hands-on enablement
At the heart of GFI Software’s award-winning strategy is a 100% channel-focused model designed to empower partner organizations to grow without dependency on direct sales from the vendor. This all-channel approach ensures that distributors and resellers form the primary conduit for delivering GFI’s software and services to end customers, aligning incentives across the ecosystem and facilitating scalable go-to-market activities. The 100% channel model is complemented by a strong incentive program, including a creative Marketing Development Fund (MDF) designed to spur partner-led marketing campaigns, demand generation activities, and co-branded efforts that accelerate pipeline development. The MDF framework is paired with practical enablement resources and training that help partners translate these resources into measurable improvements in win rates, project scope, and average deal size across diverse markets and verticals.
GFI Software’s MSP Partner Program emphasizes ongoing enablement that goes beyond one-off training. It integrates structured onboarding for new partners, continuous education on product roadmaps and security features, and access to practical playbooks that guide MSPs through sales motions, deployment scenarios, and customer success strategies. This enablement is not limited to product demonstrations; it extends to a comprehensive toolkit that helps partners position GFI solutions within multi-vendor environments, illustrate total cost of ownership advantages, and articulate clear differentiators relative to competing platforms. The program’s design recognizes that MSPs thrive when they can depend on reliable, scalable software plus a robust support ecosystem that helps them deliver consistent, high-quality services to clients across geographies.
A critical element of GFI’s partner-centric strategy is the deliberate emphasis on helping MSPs manage growth without becoming overwhelmed by complexity or resource constraints. By providing a wide range of enablement activities—ranging from technical workshops to sales and marketing support—GFI makes it feasible for MSPs to expand their service portfolios while maintaining operational efficiency. This approach is particularly valuable as MSPs increasingly assume end-to-end management responsibilities for SMBs, including network performance, security, compliance, and application delivery. The result is a more resilient partner ecosystem capable of delivering superior customer outcomes at scale.
In practical terms, the combination of a 100% channel model, meaningful MDF funding, and hands-on enablement translates into more predictable revenue streams for both GFI and its partners. MSPs can plan investments with greater confidence, knowing they have access to marketing funds, technical resources, and sales tools that align with a shared vision of customer success. The partner program also reinforces a collaborative culture, encouraging partners to share best practices, success stories, and operational learnings that collectively raise the bar for the entire ecosystem. By continuously investing in partner growth, GFI reinforces its position as a trusted provider of IT management, security, and collaboration solutions that MSPs can rely on to meet evolving client needs.
GFI AppManager: a unified, extensible dashboard that redefines MSP IT management
One of the standout innovations highlighted by the MSP Innovation Award Europe recognition is the launch of GFI AppManager, a groundbreaking product designed to provide MSPs with a unified dashboard for comprehensive IT management. AppManager consolidates all customer devices, networks, and applications onto a single screen, delivering a holistic view that simplifies oversight, accelerates decision-making, and enhances service levels. This single-pane-of-glass approach is transformative for MSPs, enabling them to monitor, manage, and optimize diverse environments more efficiently than before.
AppManager’s value proposition extends beyond a mere consolidation of monitoring data. The platform is designed to be fully extensible, thanks to an open API that allows MSPs to integrate non-GFI products and systems alongside GFI offerings. This openness enables a true multi-vendor management experience, which is critical in modern IT environments where customers rely on a mix of security, networking, and productivity tools from various vendors. By enabling MSPs to create tailored dashboards that reflect their unique customer portfolios, AppManager supports more effective management workflows, faster issue detection, and streamlined remediation — all of which contribute to improved customer satisfaction and higher retention rates.
From an operational standpoint, AppManager is engineered to scale with MSPs as they grow their portfolios and expand into new markets. The platform’s architecture prioritizes performance, reliability, and security, ensuring that large fleets of devices and complex networks can be overseen from a single, central interface. The integration capabilities enabled by the open API open doors for custom automation, policy enforcement, and reporting that align with each MSP’s specific business processes and regulatory requirements. For MSPs, this translates into reduced mean time to detect and resolve incidents, more efficient resource allocation, and the ability to deliver proactive, preventive maintenance that minimizes downtime for customers.
AppManager also represents a strategic step toward broader ecosystem collaboration. By offering a unified view that encompasses both GFI-managed components and third-party solutions, the platform supports a more cohesive and collaborative service model. MSPs can orchestrate workflows across multiple products and vendors, ensuring that security, performance, and compliance policies are consistently applied across all endpoints and networks. This capability is particularly valuable in hybrid environments where on-premises assets, cloud services, and edge devices converge, requiring a single, coherent management interface to maintain control and visibility.
In the context of competition, AppManager stands out as a differentiator that enables MSPs to deliver differentiated value propositions. The ability to manage diverse toolchains from a single interface reduces complexity, speeds up onboarding for new customers, and provides a compelling narrative for MSPs seeking to expand their managed services portfolios. The product’s emphasis on openness, extensibility, and scalability aligns with the practical realities of modern MSP operations, where adaptability and resilience are essential to staying ahead in a dynamic market.
The introduction of AppManager also dovetails with GFI’s broader commitment to empowering MSPs with intelligent, data-driven management capabilities. By centralizing telemetry, analytics, and policy enforcement within a single dashboard, MSPs gain clearer insight into service health, usage patterns, and optimization opportunities. This insight translates into more effective capacity planning, better SLA adherence, and a stronger basis for continuous improvement across customer environments. In short, AppManager embodies the convergence of user-centric design, platform openness, and operational efficiency, making it a cornerstone of GFI’s value proposition for MSPs.
FWaaS: Firewall as a Service built on KerioControl’s security foundation
GFI Software’s portfolio expansion includes a purpose-built security offering for MSPs: Firewall as a Service (FWaaS). This security offering is grounded in the robust capabilities of GFI KerioControl’s established firewall and unified threat management features, and it introduces new dimensions of flexibility, pricing models, and centralized management that align with the evolving needs of MSPs and their SMB clients. FWaaS provides MSPs with a scalable, service-oriented approach to firewall protection, enabling them to deliver high-level security controls as a managed service and to tailor billing and packaging to meet different customer profiles.
A key advantage of FWaaS lies in its flexible pricing model. This adjustment reflects a broader industry shift toward consumption-based or subscription-based security services that allow MSPs to align cost with usage, scale protection in line with customer growth, and manage cash flow more predictably. By leveraging FWaaS, MSPs can offer a tiered security posture that aligns with client risk tolerance, regulatory requirements, and budget constraints, while maintaining a consistent service experience across all customer environments. The centralized management capabilities associated with FWaaS simplify security operations for MSPs, enabling policy changes, rule updates, and threat intelligence integration to be deployed across multiple customer networks with efficiency and accuracy.
The security landscape today presents MSPs with increasing complexity, as new attack vectors emerge and compliance requirements evolve. FWaaS is positioned to help MSPs navigate these challenges by providing a robust security framework that integrates seamlessly with the rest of the GFI product suite and partner tools. The ability to manage firewall policies, intrusion prevention, VPNs, threat detection, and monitoring from a single console streamlines incident response, reduces the risk of misconfiguration, and helps MSPs maintain consistent security postures across customers. For MSPs serving a diverse client base, FWaaS offers a scalable, reliable solution that can be deployed rapidly, with clear governance and centralized reporting that strengthens client trust and supports ongoing value delivery.
GFI Software’s ongoing focus on security innovation is not limited to FWaaS alone. The company’s broader strategy emphasizes continuous improvement and the integration of security features within its management and collaboration tools, ensuring that MSPs can deliver comprehensive, secure IT environments without sacrificing efficiency or control. By combining KerioControl’s proven firewall capabilities with a modern, MSP-oriented delivery model, FWaaS represents a meaningful evolution in how MSPs provide enterprise-grade security services to SMBs in a cost-effective, scalable format.
The nomination of GFI Software for Best Vendor Security Offering during the MSP Innovation Awards Europe further reinforces the company’s leadership in security-related innovation. This recognition reflects the industry’s acknowledgment of GFI’s commitment to delivering security-centric solutions that address real-world MSP challenges, from threat prevention to policy enforcement and centralized governance. For MSPs, the FWaaS solution offers an opportunity to enhance their security services portfolio, differentiate their offerings, and deliver stronger protection to end customers in an increasingly hostile threat environment.
Sustained commitment to partner growth: MDF, enablement, and global reach
GFI Software’s MSP Partner Program is designed not only to reward growth but to actively cultivate it. The blend of MDF-funded marketing initiatives and practical enablement resources is crafted to help MSPs expand their reach, attract new customers, and close more deals across different regions and industries. MDF programs enable partners to invest in demand generation campaigns, co-branded content, events, and targeted outreach that align with regional market needs and vertical focus areas. This approach ensures that channel partners can build pipeline effectively, maintain a competitive edge, and scale their operations in a sustainable manner.
Critical to this is the global reach of GFI’s partner network. The company’s ecosystem spans diverse geographies, industries, and customer segments, enabling MSPs to serve a broad spectrum of SMBs with varying requirements. A truly global partner network supports MSPs in expanding their services to new markets, discovering opportunities in emerging economies, and leveraging cross-border collaborations for knowledge sharing and best practice adoption. The 100% channel strategy, combined with strong MDF support and hands-on enablement, helps maintain consistent quality of service across the globe while allowing local adaptation to meet regulatory, cultural, and market realities.
From an MSP perspective, the combination of these elements translates into practical benefits on the ground. Partners gain access to a structured path for growth, including onboarding programs, technical enablement, sales coaching, and marketing resources that accelerate revenue generation. The resources are designed to be actionable and scalable, ensuring that even smaller partners can participate effectively in high-growth initiatives. The MDF program, in particular, creates the financial underpinnings for partner marketing efforts, enabling MSPs to invest strategically in campaigns that deliver measurable outcomes, improve-brand visibility, and generate demand in both mature and emerging markets.
The program’s enablement dimension extends beyond product education to include go-to-market playbooks, deployment methodologies, and customer success frameworks. Partners can leverage these resources to craft compelling customer proposals, demonstrate ROI, and articulate a clear value proposition that differentiates GFI solutions from competing offerings. By combining marketing support with deep technical guidance, GFI empowers MSPs to deliver comprehensive IT management, security, and collaboration services that meet evolving client expectations and compliance standards. This holistic approach to partner growth is a central driver of the company’s leadership in the MSP space and a key reason why GFI’s channel program resonates with MSPs seeking scalable, sustainable growth.
A strategic view: leadership perspectives, market implications, and future directions
Leadership perspectives within GFI Software emphasize the evolving role of MSPs as full-service providers for SMBs. The company’s leadership notes that managed service providers are expanding rapidly as SMBs shift toward end-to-end service models designed to streamline operations, reduce complexity, and free up internal resources for strategic activities. The emphasis is on delivering a broader set of software, support, and technology to empower MSPs to achieve their business goals and scale growth. This strategic stance reflects a deep understanding of the SMB market dynamics and a recognition that MSPs are central to helping businesses navigate digital transformation in a cost-effective, value-driven manner.
From a market standpoint, the MSP Innovation Awards Europe spotlight underscores a broader trend toward vendor-partner collaboration as a primary engine of MSP success. The emphasis on portfolio breadth, security innovation, and partner enablement indicates that software vendors are increasingly adopting partnership-centric models to drive adoption, expand service capabilities, and accelerate ROI for SMB clients. The awards narrative also highlights the importance of open ecosystems, cross-vendor integrations, and flexible service delivery options that allow MSPs to tailor their solutions to the unique needs of each customer.
Looking ahead, GFI Software’s roadmap appears oriented toward continuous enhancement of its MSP partner framework and product suite. The company’s investments in AppManager, FWaaS, and a security-first strategy point to a future where MSPs can deliver more integrated, value-rich services with streamlined operations. The emphasis on an open API and multi-vendor support within AppManager suggests a commitment to interoperability and customization, enabling MSPs to construct tailored management experiences that align with specific customer requirements and security policies. As SMBs adopt more cloud-based and hybrid architectures, MSPs will require management platforms that can unify visibility, control, and security across diverse environments. GFI’s approach, which combines a robust partner program with scalable, open-architecture tools, is positioned to meet this demand and sustain momentum in a competitive market.
In addition, the industry-wide momentum toward standardizing MSP practices around service level commitments, security maturity, and governance frameworks is likely to reinforce the relevance of programs like GFI’s. By aligning partner incentives with customer outcomes and offering scalable, repeatable approaches to deployment and management, vendors can help MSPs achieve higher win rates, better margins, and improved client retention. GFI’s ongoing focus on continuous improvement, innovation, and partner enablement resonates with this trajectory, reinforcing the company’s role as a strategic ally for MSPs pursuing long-term, enterprise-grade managed services for SMB clients.
Practical implications for MSPs and end customers
For MSPs evaluating participation in a channel-centric ecosystem, GFI Software’s approach provides a clear model for sustainable growth. The combination of a strong MDF program, comprehensive enablement, and a 100% channel model creates an environment in which MSPs can invest confidently in marketing, sales, and service delivery without the friction of competing with a vendor’s direct sales force. This structure helps ensure fair competition, transparent cost structures, and predictable revenue streams, enabling MSPs to plan more effectively for the future. The emphasis on open APIs and multi-vendor compatibility further enhances MSPs’ ability to design flexible service offerings that meet diverse customer needs and budget constraints.
End customers benefit from this ecosystem through improved service quality, faster response times, and more cost-effective security and management solutions. MSPs leveraging AppManager can offer customers a unified, proactive approach to IT management, reducing downtime and improving visibility across on-premises and cloud-based resources. The FWaaS offering adds a security-centric layer that MSPs can package as a managed service, delivering enterprise-grade protection without the complexity of deploying and maintaining multiple standalone security solutions. The net effect is a higher level of service maturity, more predictable costs, and a partner-driven journey toward digital modernization that SMBs can navigate with confidence.
The industry impact extends beyond individual partnerships. The MSP Innovation Awards Europe recognize and reinforce best practices that elevate the entire channel ecosystem. MSPs can look to GFI’s model as a blueprint for building strong vendor relationships, securing robust enablement resources, and delivering scalable, secure IT management solutions to a broad client base. Vendors, in turn, gain validation for investing in partner-centric strategies that drive growth, resilience, and long-term customer success, reinforcing a market environment in which collaboration, innovation, and value-driven delivery are the primary differentiators.
The broader narrative: how this recognition shapes the MSP landscape
The Best MSP Partner Program award, along with the four-category shortlist, signals a broader shift in the MSP market toward greater specialization, integrated solutions, and partner-led growth. It highlights the growing importance of management platforms that unify disparate tools, security controls, and service offerings under a single governance model. In practice, MSPs require tools like AppManager to reduce operational complexity, improve incident response, and demonstrate measurable improvements in service levels to customers and executives. The FWaaS capability addresses a critical MSP need for scalable security services that can be delivered as a managed offering, aligning with customer expectations for robust protection without the overhead of in-house security expertise.
The recognition also underscores the attractiveness of MDF-backed marketing and structured enablement as essential levers for partner success. In a competitive environment where margin pressure and commoditization challenge MSPs, access to marketing resources and practical sales guidance can be a decisive differentiator. This is especially true for MSPs operating in multiple regions or verticals, where localized marketing and targeted campaigns are necessary to win new business and expand existing accounts. The awards framework validates that when a vendor aligns tightly with partner success through incentives, education, and open collaboration, it creates a powerful engine for growth across the channel.
By signaling leadership in security, management, and partner enablement, GFI Software positions itself as a strategic ally for MSPs navigating a shifting landscape. The company’s investments in AppManager and FWaaS demonstrate a clear commitment to addressing core MSP pain points: sprawling management sprawl, fragmented security controls, and the complexity of multi-vendor environments. As MSPs seek to deliver higher value with fewer resources, platforms that offer unified control, extensibility, and scalable security become increasingly indispensable. The award thus acts as a catalyst for greater adoption of integrated IT management and security solutions among MSPs and their SMB clients, contributing to a virtuous cycle of innovation and customer outcomes.
Conclusion
GFI Software’s recognition as the Best MSP Partner Program winner at the MSP Innovation Awards Europe, along with its four-category shortlist, marks a milestone in the company’s ongoing commitment to empowering a global MSP community. The award validates its 100% channel model, the strength of its MDF-enabled marketing and enablement architecture, and the strategic emphasis on partner growth and success. Through innovations like GFI AppManager, which provides a unified, extensible dashboard for comprehensive IT management, and FWaaS, a security offering built on the proven KerioControl framework with new flexibility and central management, GFI consistently demonstrates its capability to deliver value across the MSP ecosystem.
For MSPs, the implications are clear: embrace partner-centric programs that provide meaningful enablement and marketing support, leverage open platforms that enable multi-vendor integration, and adopt security-rich, scalable solutions that can be delivered as managed services. The MSP landscape is moving toward more collaborative, open, and service-oriented models, where vendors and MSPs work in concert to help SMBs navigate digital transformation with confidence, efficiency, and measurable outcomes. GFI Software’s leadership in this space reflects a broader industry trend toward partnerships that deliver tangible business value, accelerate growth, and elevate the standard of managed IT services across Europe and beyond. The company’s ongoing innovations indicate a sustained commitment to helping MSPs manage complexity, scale operations, and deliver superior experiences for their customers in a fast-changing technology environment.
