Jon Fox - Channel Director of Australia and New Zealand, Sophos
Sophos has appointed Jon Fox to the role of Channel Director of Australia and New Zealand, strengthening the security provider’s local channel play.
Fresh from vacating his role as General Manager of Advanced Solutions at Ingram Micro, Fox is tasked with directing the vendor’s channel strategy on both sides of the Tasman, working with distribution and reseller partners.
“Sophos ticks all the boxes in terms of a growing security vendor,” Fox told ARN.
“Security is a growing business across the channel and at Sophos, everything is already in place to keep moving down the right path.
“We’re a 100 percent channel-first organisation and that was an important factor in my decision, with my role now to strengthen the relationships we already have in place.”
Fox brings over 10 years of distribution experience to the, following stints at Ingram Micro in Australia and Arrow Electronics in the UK.
Having joined Ingram Micro in 2009, Fox was responsible for the distributor’s Enterprise Hardware portfolio, which includes vendors such as Cisco, EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM and APC.
“I’ve been in distribution for 10 years and thoroughly enjoyed my time at Ingram Micro,” he said.
“But I wanted to branch out and try something different and this is my first time working for a vendor and specifically the security market.”
Having run the Cisco business across Ingram Micro, alongside security specialist vendors including Fortinet and SonicWall, Fox said the switch in focus represents a natural progression during an experienced channel career.
“My background is traditionally in storage, datacentre and servers but security is a good fit for me following my time managing vendor accounts at Ingram Micro,” Fox added.
“I’m used to working closely with both vendors and resellers and I think it’s important to have worked across other parts of the channel, in this case distribution.”
Looking ahead, Fox said plans are already in place to add to his dedicated channel team across Australia and New Zealand, with a mandate in place to strengthen the vendor’s partner base.
“Everything has already been put in place and the business is going well so it’ll be a case of assessing the market and seeing where we can grow our channel,” Fox said.
In Australia, Sophos is represented by Distribution Central, Exclusive Networks and Bluechip Infotech, with Exeed and SnapperNet the distributors of choice in New Zealand.
