Somerville wins Sophos Partner of the Year (A/NZ) Award
Somerville Group and Bluechip Infotech have been recognised as leading Sophos award winners, with the Australian pair taking home partner and distributor honours across Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ).
Revealed during the 2017 APJ Sophos Discover Partner Conference in Bangkok, Somerville excelled in the Partner of the Year (A/NZ) category, while Bluechip shone as Distributor of the Year (A/NZ).
“Congratulations to Somerville, our fastest growing partner in FY17,” Sophos channel director A/NZ, Jon Fox, told ARN.
“We sat down at the beginning of the year and developed a strategic roadmap for both parties and Somerville has excelled, acquiring new customers logos for Sophos.”
Spanning education, government and commercial sectors, the Somerville / ISNet Security Practice provides a suite of specialised security solutions that include a broad spectrum of technologies.
Specifically, the Sydney-based technology provider excels in Security-as-a-Service, firewall design, deployment and management, alongside data protection and internal network security.
“Sophos being channel-first and channel-only is attractive to our business and there is a lot of trust between both parties,” Somerville Group director Adrian Toole told ARN.
“The engagement at an executive level is strong, the engagement at a technical level is strong and the engagement at a sales level is strong and we work very well together.
“Sophos is a vendor that we have doubled down on and we expect a lot from them, and likewise, they expect a lot from us.”
According to Toole, the Somerville’s security practice has “grown considerably” during the past 2-3 years, with the company honing in on select category A vendors such as Sophos.
“It’s validation of our efforts and it’s great for everyone in our organisation to win this award,” Toole added. “We’re a national business and this provides an uplift to the team to know we’re the leading partner across Australia and New Zealand.”
Meanwhile, Bluechip was recognised as the vendor’s leading distributor across the local market, following a strong 12 months servicing small to medium businesses (SMBs) in Australia.
“Bluechip were our Cyberoam distributor and we’ve brought them across and provided them access to the Sophos portfolio,” Fox explained.
“They did a fantastic job working with some of our smaller SMB partners and again, they have brought new business through the door which has been fantastic.”
As a specialist player within the market, Bluechip distributes storage, back-up and disaster recovery data centre and networking technologies, in addition to end devices and infrastructure management, all underpinned by security.
“We have really enjoyed partnering with Sophos over the last year, enabling our channel partners to succeed and sharing in those amazing successes along the way,” Bluechip Infotech managing director Johnson Hsiung told ARN.
“And a big thanks to the local Sophos team, the management team, the sales teams and the engineers, for their support.”
Since acquiring Track It Online & MPA Systems, Hsiung said the distributor has developed new solutions across the wider business, focusing on SMB, MSP and mid-market plays specifically.
“This award is fantastic recognition for the whole team at Bluechip, and the hard work that the Sophos product team has put in this year,” he added. “It’s delivered exceptional growth to the business, and we look forward to continuing to grow our Sophos business.”
James Henderson travelled to 2017 APJ Sophos Discover Partner Conference as a guest of Sophos.
