Security vendor, Sophos, has reiterated its support of its channel partners stating that its not interested in developing a direct sales capability.
Visiting CEO, Kris Hagerman, joined the vendor about 14 months ago said it remains 100 per cent committed to its channel strategy.
“We don’t a have a desire and nor do we think it’s in the company’s strategic interest to develop our own direct sales capability,” Hagerman said. “We have a channel first strategy, where everything goes through the channel, which is very different to ever competitor in our space where they have a mix of direct and indirect sales. The product strategy that we’ve chosen and our company strategy overall is very consistent with that mission.”
Sophos recently embarked on taking its entire product portfolio into the cloud.
Hagerman said the Cloud strategy opens up opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs) to expand their security portfolio and also gives non-MSPs a chance to get involved in the market.
“There’s a lot of questions around cloud computing, which is both a massive opportunity for the channel and it’s also a meddlesome confusing challenge as to how they continue to add value in the cloud-delivered service,” he said. “This is a reality they have to embrace and figure out how they deliver value. There will continue to be a need for on-premise support, implementation and troubleshooting, but they can also create a much more meaningful relationship with customers.”
Hagerman said its market sweet spot was mid-market and enterprise up to 5000 seats.
“There’s a massive opportunity to deliver value to mid-market companies and the enterprise. Our sense is that most of the leading security vendors are trying to deliver solutions from consumer to the largest companies,” he said. “As a result the vast majority of their revenue is biased towards the high-end to very low-end, and that means a vast number of SMBs and pragmatic enterprises are left with solutions that just don’t fit well for them. They don’t want the same solutions that a consumer has, but they don’t want a super complicated enterprise solution either and this is where Sophos’ vision comes into play.”
