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Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
INDISPENSABLE CHANNEL ANALYSIS
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Choosing a channel career
There are many opportunities in the channel – so what exactly does
it have to offer young people?
MicroScopeHome
OCTOBER 2021
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 2
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
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EDITORIAL
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The great, the good and the channel
There have recently been inspirational stories emerging about how people ended up working in the channel from other careers, along with some advice for those who are thinking of starting a life in this industry.
What strikes you from reading both the Nick Booth piece and the Anton Allegranza Quicke feature in this issue is that the channel is an industry with a lot of opportunity and excitement. The diverse voices commenting in both pieces have one thing in common: their clear love for the channel world.
It is encouraging to read comments that inspire the next generation to work within vendors, distributors and managed service providers (MSPs) and resellers in the channel. It is also promising to see people from other backgrounds come into this industry and not regret it.
I have spent many years covering the channel and have always held respect for those who are out in the field fixing customer prob-lems, those back at base keeping the business working, and those involved with providing the training and support to make it all hap-pen. The channel is made up of so many different roles that it is possible to find a happy home in it somewhere – and that is a reas-suring message to those looking at their options.
Anton, who is 16 and starting A-levels, is my son. He undertook one of the features in this issue during his work experience, and his final product stirred a mixture of emotions. I was clearly proud of what he had produced and had sat in on a few interviews he con-ducted, where I was impressed with his attitude and ability.
But I also have a great sense of pride in the channel – a world I have dedicated more than two decades to covering. This is a place that is maturing into a diverse, energetic and inspiring place to be, and I hope that many more people come to understand that. n
Simon Quicke, editor
EDITOR’S COMMENTHome
MMicicrrooSSccopopee
The channel is made up of so many differenT roles ThaT iT is
possible To find a happy home in This world somewhere – and ThaT is a reassuring message To Those
looking aT Their opTions
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 3
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needsIn a move to protect channel profitability by reducing complexity that could get in the way of doing business, Cisco aims to put partners in better position to react to evolving customer models. Simon Quicke reports
C isco has embarked on a mission to simplify and improve the partner experience to ensure that the channel is in a optimal position to react to ever-changing customer
consumption models.The pandemic has accelerated the shift to hybrid working and
the adoption of digital, and has made it more important for partners to be able to react to user demand and to reach out across cloud marketplaces, whether by managed services or through the web.
Oliver Tuszik, senior vice-president of global partner sales at Cisco, said that the world is changing and that Cisco had to react to make sure the experiences it offers partners are optimised.
“What we’re seeing here is that customers have different buying motions, and they’re radically changing for us. When we look at the details, it’s not the motion, it’s also the routes to market,” he said.
He shared figures that showed that reselling would remain an important route to market, but cloud marketplaces had seen
64% growth in the past year, along with a 17% climb in man-aged services. Therefore, he added, Cisco needed to make sure partners could take advantage of those routes to market.
“In the past, [a partner might] have to manage one go-to mar-ket. We now need to manage four or five different rules, which means life is getting much more complex – and complexity is the one thing that is destroying their profitability,” he said.
Tuszik said that partner profitability was Cisco’s number one priority, and it was determined to reduce some of the complex-ity and improve the situation by investing in its partner experi-ence platform (PXP) that will arm its channel with the best data, insights and actions to drive their business.
Jose van Dijk, vice-president of partner performance at Cisco, has been put in charge of delivering a solid PXP experience. He reports that he has already identified some of the challenges that need dealing with.
“One of the first things that I asked the team is, ‘What are the tools that our partners are using?’, and I got about 180 of them,
ANALYSIS
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 4
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
and that’s a little bit too much if you want to drive productivity. So we’re on this mission to retire at least 50%,” she said.
Van Dijk said that the firm was looking at making sure it kept tools in PXP that were useful for partners, and it’s on a mission to get to that 50% as fast as possible. “The innovation is here in this platform and we’re doing this by focusing on three major areas: simplification, digitisation and personalising the experi-ence so that the data, as well as the information, will find the right person within the partner organisation,” she said.
Tuszik also commented on the current state of the channel, noting that the indirect business was performing strongly and the shift by its partners towards recurring revenue-led business was also increasing, up by 63% year on year (YoY).
“The ones who are leading this shift to software and recur-ring are the partners. They are growing their recurring revenue, and that’s very important because it’s a hot topic for them,” he said. “It starts with activation and adoption. We see that part-ners are selling more and more adoption service, with a growth of 33%, because this is where the partner can make the money and where they can differentiate.”
Tuszik added that partners were also increasing renewal rates, up 40% YoY. He also highlighted the contribution of distribu-tion, pointing out that it had contributed more than 50% to Cisco growth since fiscal year (FY) 2014.
“Distribution is our biggest and best growth engine. We were looking back to FY14, and when we take all the growth that we delivered since that time, more than 50% is coming from the distribution,” he said. n PR
OST
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Cisco aims to support its channel in the face of ever-changing demands from customers
ANALYSIS
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 5
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
Taking a strange route to the channelNext time you sit in front of a channel executive, remember that they might have started in a very different industry, writes Nick Booth, who spoke to three executives with interesting tales to tell
Channel executives do not come fully formed off a produc-tion line, but often get into the industry through various routes. The great thing about the channel is the diversity
of backgrounds that people have come from. In support of this theory, here are some exemplary cases of inspiration.
Juniper Networks CIO Sharon Mandell began her career train-ing to be a professional ballet dancer. She even tried to graduate from high school early to dedicate a year to auditioning and get-ting a job – very entrepreneurial. But her father disapproved and made her to go to college and start the apprentice programme at Pennsylvania Ballet and the first year at Temple University.
Competent ballerinaMandell was a liberal arts student and a competent ballerina, but at the end of the year, a professor asked her what she liked and didn’t like – and then suggested computer science.
“I thought he was crazy!” said Mandell. “He described to me how it was a growing field and that if the ballet dancing thing didn’t work out, maybe IT would be a good place to be. And so my technology career was born.”
Were ballet skills useful in IT? “Creativity is at the core of tech innovation and strong IT teams,” she said. “As companies digitally transform, they are looking to technology for speed and agility.”
Claims for speed and agility in IT corporations are a bit allongé. Mandell’s point is that practice and repetition, hard work, dili-gence and endless rehearsals are common to both professions.
SynChroniSed patternSTo pull off those beautiful, synchronised patterns that you see in the great ballets, you have to be aware of where you are in relation to others and constantly make adjustments to create that beauty, she said: “That’s analogous to working on a team to execute a highly complex project.”
A career in ballet is a tough life – is that a good preparation for IT? “Yes, dancers have thick skins. You’re constantly receiving feedback on how to improve, often have tough and demanding teachers, spend hours in front of a mirror, rarely believing that you are performing at the level you should be,” said Mandell, who now never finds herself en battu by the constant pirouettes of shape-shifting clouds.
ANALYSIS
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 6
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
If you think you had a tough introduction to IT, you should expe-rience life on a helpdesk, said John Pickford, CTO of Synapse360. That’s where he started – in a 5,000-user national retail operation.
“Not everyone needs to have a go on the helpdesk,” said Pickford, “but engineers, developers and managers should get a grounding in tech support.”
That way, you get a great idea of the dependencies of the appli-cations, departments and individuals, and a reflection on the brand values of the company, he added.
Pickford said he escaped through determination, a plan and the ability to turn negatives into positives. But it’s no laughing matter.
Software engineering and ComedyUnlike software engineering, which is a lot like running a com-edy club, said Peter Ludlum, who has experience in both. Ludlum is now booking acts and introducing new talents at Synopsys Software Integrity Group.
“Managing the expectations, demands and outbursts of cus-tomers is one of the most difficult and frequent challenges,” he said. Mind you, comedy clubs aren’t much easier.
People come without a set idea of what a show should be like and most base their expectations on what they have seen on the screen of their TV (in comedy’s case) or computers (in software’s case). Two people can have wildly different ideas of the experi-ence that is being provided.
Then there are comedians. Their market has commoditised, so they are many similar acts making cheap digs. The better ones are the “vendors” of their own new comedy observations, while
the majority that get on TV are sanitised, single-joke comics, dis-tributors of off-the-shelf political observations. As with software, the few who try to be creative and independent put themselves in danger of isolation. So comedy is like a training course in the politics of the channel.
If you were recruiting talent for an IT business – such as sales staff – forget the comics and concentrate on the enablers – the waiting staff, chefs and security – said Ludlum. They undertake thankless tasks, which instils in them the disciplines of planning, flexibility and vigilance. They catch problems before they escalate.
“When a big name performs, all the local aspiring comics come out of the woodwork and try to get involved with the show,” he said. “The best waitstaff are dispassionate about comedy and not easily starstruck.”
All these tough professions breed a maturity that enables peo-ple to tackle anything that the channel can throw at them. n
ANALYSIS
“noT everyone needs To have a go on The helpdesk, buT engineers, developers
and managers should geT a grounding in Tech supporT”
John Pickford, SynaPSe360
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 7
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
In a study by managed security service provider Talion, 78% of consumers and 79% of IT professionals responded that they believe paying the ransom to get your business back should be
illegal. That’s easy for them to say – they might not be so pedantic if they had to get their business back before it dies.
Meanwhile, 43% of the young people in the same study group called for a physical or nuclear attack on the perpetrators. Who knew there were so many keyboard warriors out there?
The study was commissioned to support a new cyber security movement called #RansomAware, led by Talion and backed by the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS).
Before we launch into nuclear war, the channel has a peace-keeping role by adopting the preventative programmes offered by the likes of Vade, Sumo Logic, Beyond Identity and Fortnet, which are all looking for UK partners.
There is still room for military metaphors in your presentations. Many of the best people in security were trained in the armed services – where brevity, simplicity and clarity are vital attributes. Making yourself easily understood is a vital component of work-ing in a team. Using jargon to cover your deficiencies is just selfish.
Britain’s businesses would be a lot more secure if the IT industry stopped confusing everyone. Phishers and other cyber con artists have capitalised on the opportunities causes by IT. Their target’s defences are often wound down by the IT department with its indecipherable instructions. Criminals then drive a metaphorical coach and horses through the security gateways and deliver the
OPINION
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomwareThere is a lot of anger around ransomware, but there is also a lot of opportunity for those with the ability to help users keep criminals at bay, as Nick Booth finds out
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 8
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
coup de grace – a massive punch into the database, removing the company’s brain with ease.
Iain Chidgey, Sumo Logic’s vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, doesn’t blame the end-users for being confused. “Many of the old ways of doing things and all the comfortable metaphors that described security are out of date,” he says.
Security used to be a problem that you could solve with a group of people in a room looking at monitors. But the situation has gone from hundreds of attacks a day to hundreds of thousands. You have to automate while making the process easier around matters such as consolidation and automation. You need the right people giving you the right advice at the right time.
phiShing attaCkSPhishing emails slip by because people are busy at the wrong time. Many companies mistakenly use technology to cre-ate extra work for everyone. Phishing attackers seem to know human nature better than the layer of middle management that exists in many companies, and this creates an opening for attacks based on social engineering techniques.
The biggest problem today is how complex everything is, says Chidgey. Companies have cloud, on-premise software and third-party tools in place, and all those connect together. The clarity of a unified view has gone. Instead of a “single pane of glass”, many managers are plagued by multiple pains in the aaS (as a service).
“Data is like a sumo wrestler,” says Chidgey. “It’s hard to move around if you take the wrong approach. But get the right approach around data in place, and you can be just as strong as a sumo.”
Meanwhile, Vade has added a user awareness tool, called Threat Coach, to its existing product. Threat Coach is a much more fun way of getting the user’s attention. Instead of asking people to read a load of turgid prose about enterprises, it asks the punters to play a game that investigates how many employees will fall for a con trick. A much more powerful sales technique – quick, pow-erful, entertaining and straight to the point. Everyone from the boardroom to the postroom understands it.
Vade then uses algorithms to deal all these deadly blows against the invaders who breach the defences of the company.
Having signed up to secure Microsoft 365, it has launched a channel in the UK to sell its anti-phishing services. “We sell purely through the channel,” says chief revenue officer Maya Gershon, adding that the sales strategy is completely through channel partners, and the portfolio of engagement runs from high-touch through to low-touch and no-touch.
Vade is training partners to conduct small deals, without any human contact, through “no-touch” engagements, then it starts training them to climb up the value ladder.
“daTa is like a sumo wresTler. iT’s hard To move around if you
Take The wrong approach”iain chidgey, Sumo Logic
OPINION
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 9
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
Meanwhile, confidence tricksters are moving up the value chain even more quickly. Gershon says one estate agent was befriended and then followed for six months before a big sting was carried out. Imagine having that much skill and patience – how many IT salespeople can match that sort of dedication? Is this why the criminals are winning?
identity managementBeyond Identity is from California and was founded by Silicon Valley veterans Jim Clark and Tom Jermoluk. Their strategy is to issue a cease-and-desist order on passwords, which they intend to replace with “a solution based on asymmetric cryptography and X.509 certificates”. That doesn’t sound too clear, but the channel structure is simple.
The EMEA sales push is 100% channel-centric, with Beyond Identity looking to identify and partner distributors, managed security service providers, value-added resellers and advisory firms. The simplest explanation of its technology is that it stops cyber attacks, protects critical data and satisfies compliance.
Identity management is like karate – few have the time or the inclination to learn it, and grandmasters rarely get the chance to use it. US-based JumpCloud creates a sort of Krav Maga of IT self-defence – its moves are designed to be quick and easy to adopt.
Only enterprises can afford specialists, so small and medium-sized enterprises need a trusted adviser on identity management who can convey what it means and explain how they can get this job done, according to Chase Doelling, director of strategic and technical alliances at JumpCloud.
Since the pandemic made everyone work from home, the virtual private network is not enough. It’s like a digital door frame that’s too small to let everyone in, says Doelling. JumpCloud provides the door service and checks everyone’s credentials – that’s the simple explanation. “Con artists use cues and context to guide their approach; we use them to defend ourselves,” he says. “So when people lose an established pattern of defence, like not phys-ically seeing each other, you need to rely on different cues.”
Helping customers to understand how to use context more effectively can quickly increase trust and help people make com-petent decisions. For example, if your staff are not based in China, then why accept an IP connection from there?
right praCtiCeS“The biggest challenge is how to make something as crucial as identity simple for any business to understand,” says Doelling. “Then give people inside that company the right practices to put in place.” Meanwhile, the criminals are racing ahead.
“The battle against ransomware isn’t against teen malware,” says Gunter Ollmann, chief security officer at Devo Technology. “We are now facing a global ecosystem of tens of thousands of suppliers, distributors, enforcers and money-launderers run by organised crime cartels and nation states.”
Talion’s RansomAware coalition has persuaded 16 founding members – ranging in size from BAE Systems, through KnowBe4, to consultant IT Security Guru – to start communicating. Criminals collaborate successfully, so should the security industry, says Talion CEO Mike Brown. n
OPINION
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 10
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
Owning things is so 2005. These days, the cool kids prefer to pay as they go. There are many benefits to paying for services rather than buying products, and this model is
transforming everything – including business technology.Thanks to the likes of Netflix and Spotify, you’re now just as
likely to pay for your movies and music by the month as you are to build up a collection of DVDs and vinyl. Some urban dwellers even pay for vehicles that way too, using smartphones to rent them by the minute for short trips without the headaches of own-ership (or parking fees).
So is it any wonder that business technology users are getting in on the act? The cloud has made technology ownership in 2021 a little like writing and posting letters: it’s quaint, and people cer-tainly still do it, but it’s going out of fashion.
Instead, subscriptions have gradually taken over the world of business technology. It began with the shift from perpetual soft-ware licences to subscription ones, which the likes of Microsoft sold you to ensure you were always patched and up to date. Then came the cloud, which changed everything.
Suddenly, the move away from ownership to subscription was about more than how you paid for onsite software. Businesses were able to rent software without installing it locally at all. Software that was on your laptop could connect to online storage, boosting your capacity with nary a networked hard drive in sight.
The cloud evolved to offer a panoply of computing resources, from computing power to storage. Today, businesses can con-sume their entire computing infrastructure from the cloud without owning any of it. That not only includes the servers, storage and
EXPERT VIEW
Bye ‘buy’ baby: Subscription services are the futureGraham Jones, regional director UK and Ireland at Exclusive UK, takes a look at the changing face of IT consumption
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 11
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
network functions, but also security capabilities such as firewalls, and infrastructure components such as databases, directory sys-tems and artificial intelligence (AI) services that enable com-panies to build their own technology platforms. An IT team can even subscribe to virtual online desktops for business employees rather than buying high-spec endpoint hardware, if it wishes.
This subscription model brings several benefits to customers, not least of which is capital savings. Not paying for hardware reduces upfront expenditure. It also saves ongoing maintenance and support costs.
Beyond that, subscription also brings flexibility. Products are usually configurable, but rarely as modular as cloud services. Instead of buying capacity or functionality in advance, companies can pay only for the power and features they need, when they want them. That enables them to run a tighter operation while ensuring that their subscribed service grows with them.
Flexibility connects to another benefit: scalability. Subscription tech services can scale with a company’s needs, providing more resources in periods of peak demand. That’s great for the retailer that wants more order processing capability around Black Friday, or the professional services firm that needs 100 extra desktops for temporary contractors working on a project.
The ability to manually flex a service makes a subscription model more responsive to a company’s changing needs, but it also serves new needs that customers might not know they had. Service providers thrive on their ability to innovate, layering pow-erful new features into their subscription software and infrastruc-ture services all the time, and often by default. Customers are
willingly caught in a slipstream of innovation, benefiting from the provider’s research and development.
Finally, subscription-based tech models make companies more agile. While shifting cloud technology platforms isn’t something companies should do frequently, it is easier to switch services or even service providers in cloud environments than it is to forklift owned products that represent a sunk investment.
There are some nuances to subscription models. Companies must navigate issues such as data sovereignty, ensuring that they are allowed by regulators or customers to store data with a pro-vider in another country as part of a subscription service. They must plan migration to these services carefully, preserving archi-tectural requirements and adapting their applications for optimal operation in the cloud.
Nevertheless, for many business customers that want to stay nimble while always enjoying the latest technology, the best way to purchase an asset is not to own it at all. n
“The abiliTy To manually flex a service makes a subscripTion
model more responsive To a company’s changing needs”
graham JoneS, excLuSive uk
EXPERT VIEW
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 12
L et me start by introducing myself. I am 16 years old and I have completed my GCSEs, and I am now studying my A-levels, which includes studying computer science. My future is ahead of me and I want to know why the chan-
nel should be somewhere I should consider as my destination.To get an idea of why it might be good to work in the channel,
I asked for the opinions of people across the industry who have already built careers in the channel. Their responses gave me plenty of food for thought.
One of the things you want to hear about any prospective career is that it will not be boring – that people won’t be coming into the office and spending their time opening emails and checking their watches to see when it’s lunch or time to go home. So, my first concern is: would the channel be an interesting place to work?
A sense of every day being different in the channel is one that has kept Ali Hastings, regional channel leader at Avaya, con-vinced that she made the right decision in building a career in the industry.
“When I was just 21 years old, I chose technology over insur-ance and have never looked back,” she says. “Technology is never the same, it’s always changing, giving you the opportunity to adapt, grow and shine on a daily basis. It never stays still, it’s always full of variety with no two days the same.”
Those feelings are echoed by Laura Atkinson, chief partner officer at SAP UK&I, who views the channel as an exciting place to work. “For more than 27 years, I’ve been in and among the channel, working with partners in both managerial and sales roles, and I’ve loved every minute,” she says.
As a teenager embarking on A-levels, Anton Allegranza Quicke is considering what to do with his life – and wonders whether
or not this industry is something to get excited about
CAREER ADVICE
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ST3R
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Why should you choose a channel career?
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 13
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
“In our fantastic ecosystem, no two days are the same because no two partners are the same. Each partner brings a different perspective, challenge or objective to the table and it’s up to us to find the right solutions, problem-solve and work as a team to align innovation with their goals,” says Atkinson.
“The channel is fast-paced and always delivers a learning curve. It craves diversity of thought and experience, and a zest for relationship building, because that’s what allows us to over-come difficult briefs, establish relationships and provide mar-ket-leading solutions. If you are passionate, creative and enjoy working in a team, the channel is for you.”
The idea that the channel is continuing to evolve is one shared by Antony Byford, managing director at Westcon UK&I, who also wanted to work in an industry that was constantly changing.
“I remember spending the better part of six months trying to work out what I wanted to do,” he says. “I wanted to learn a new skill, be part of a team and to have fun. I was so lucky in the 1990s to find a company in the channel that ticked all those boxes – in this case, it was in IT distribution.
“Even then, the relevance of technology to the market was significant, and today the opportunities are even bigger. The move to cloud technologies is accelerating at pace and there is a serious shortage of skilled people across multiple disciplines, including sales, project management, professional services and technical support.”
Byford’s decision to leave a job in the hospitality industry and go for one in distribution is something he does not regret and he is keen to promote the opportunities that working for a com-pany such as Westcon can offer.
“In distribution, you can learn fast and on the job, earn good money and really build a long-term, fulfilling career,” he says. “Twenty-six years ago, I started as a rookie, and today I lead a multihundred-million-dollar business.”
cHannel is evolvingAs well as the tech landscape constantly undergoing changes and improvements, the channel is also a market that is chang-ing. I have heard acronyms such as MSP (managed service
providers), MSSP (managed secu-rity service provider), SI (systems integrator) and expressions such as value-added reseller (VAR), and that seems to make the channel different from other industries. Is that really the case?
“I’ve been in the channel since I was 22, so a little older than 16, but I’ve been in it for over 30 years. I love the channel, and I’ll tell you why,” says John Atchison, head of global partner mar-keting and programmes at Versa Networks.
“If you like to work with people and you like to help them to be successful [then the channel is for you]. I have the privilege to be able to work with many different types of partners. When we talk about the channel, we’re talking about different types of
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“The channel is fasT-paced and delivers a learning curve”
Laura atkinSon, SaP
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Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
roles. MSPs, ISVs [independent software vendors], OEMs [orig-inal equipment manufacturers], resellers – the needs of each of these partner types is different, so you get to learn what drives each of those different partner types, and so for me that was the exciting part. It wasn’t just one type of audience that I was working with.”
As well as all the different partner types, there are different activities, such as talking through marketing plans with partners and attending events and quarterly business review meetings, says Atchison.
“The diversity of activities that I’m engaged in with a partner is what keeps me, even to this date, super motivated,” he adds. “That’s the reason I continue to do it. It’s a great area to be in, and I’ve never felt like there was ever a shortage of demand for the type of roles that I do. So being in a channel sector, to me, is a really great area.”
There seem to be plenty of different roles that someone entering the channel can choose, and that is also an attrac-tive feature of the industry for Camilla Currin, channel account manager at Trend Micro.
“The opportunities in the channel are boundless – technical, end-user sales, partner management, marketing, operations, research and development, HR and more,” she says. “The key is to choose an industry that excites you, one that has growth opportunities in the market and is constantly evolving. Then look for a role that suits your abilities. Don’t be put off by any-thing too quickly. You just need to have the passion and drive to learn and progress – the opportunities are there for the taking.”
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A typical day in the channel
Although it’s been hard to have a typical day during the pan-demic, Rob Billington, channel manager for EMEA at Netwrix, outlines what his day looks like in normal circumstances.
“In terms of why I would recommend the channel as a career opportunity, I would have to say variety,” he says. “A typical day for me often starts early with conversations with my Australian colleagues. I then follow the clock through Japan and Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East, spend my after-noons with Europeans and Africans, and end the day with my colleagues on the west coast of America – an entire globe’s worth of travel crammed into a single day.
“What do I do in these meetings? I discuss topics covering sales, of course, and opportunities. I give and receive educa-tion on new products and partner programmes, I discuss legal contracts, lead negotiations and, of course, drink lots of coffee. Outside of Covid, I have travelled the world and met some great people, as well as worked with inspirational lead-ers and have built professional relationships over the past 25 years that are still in place today.
“At Netwrix, I chose to follow someone I worked with 15 years ago to become part of brilliant new project and enjoy the enthusiasm and energy of working with a number of old colleagues and friends.”
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Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
The positive from being involved with an evolving market is that the chances of finding skills learnt at the start of a career not being updated are quite low.
Alison Hodivala, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) partner director at IPsoft company Amelia, says: “Changing business models – such as SaaS [software-as-a-service] sub-scription models and marketplaces – are disrupting traditional partner models, creating new part-ner types, opportunities and part-ner ecosystems. The challenge for organisations is having people who can recognise the opportunities to co-innovate and create additional value for clients.
“As an area which is increasingly dynamic and of strategic impor-tance, the opportunity to build knowledge and skills to future-proof your career are immense. Managing the partner lifecycle relies on a broad range of skills, both technical and soft, and pro-vides the opportunity to gain experience across sales, market-ing, enablement and operations.”
Building relationsHipsWhat it seems to come down to is people and an ability to get on with others and form relationships.
Angela Whitty, managing director of Cisco’s UK&I partner organisation, says once you strip back the different types of part-ners and roles available across the industry, relationships are the
core. “Ultimately, it’s all about relationships, and while the tech-nology is obviously important, successful channel businesses are also fundamentally about people,” she says.
“The opportunity to build contacts and grow professionally and personally is immense, and there are many ways in. You can join as a school leaver, right the way up to a C-suite level. It is impor-tant to know that you don’t necessarily have to be a tech expert
to get involved in the IT channel – sales, marketing, customer support and relations are all in demand. Businesses find solutions to their problems thanks to the channel, and it can be very rewarding being able to have this kind of impact.”
Amanda Adams, senior director, European alliances at CrowdStrike,
says that if someone has the right personal skills, they can go far in the channel: “Channel management is heavily based on strong communication and relationship-building skills, and would be a great fit for those who like to focus on building and executing on a mutually successful plan with their aligned channel partners. There is nothing more rewarding than establishing a new part-ner, gaining commitment on establishing and executing a clear plan, and seeing joint success driven with the partner.”
good ideasSome industries seem to let the bosses do the talking and new entrants have to follow instructions and are given little chance
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“you don’T necessarily have To be a Tech experT To geT
involved in The iT channel”angeLa Whitty, ciSco
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Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
to make a contribution to the business. What, I wondered, is the channel’s position on that?
Stuart Taylor, channel director for Western Europe at Palo Alto Networks, believes that anyone with a good idea in the channel can flourish. “We spend most of our waking life ‘working’,” he says. “If you can find something that you enjoy, that you want to do, that motivates you to be energised, it feels a lot less like work. The IT channel presents a lot of opportunities for individuals to achieve job satisfaction, fulfil their work ambitions and deliver a quality lifestyle. It offers a wide range of employment opportu-nities across different skillsets, so an individual can choose the path that best suits them and the areas they are interested in.
“Ideas are the life blood of the IT channel. The development of ideas and new thinking is encouraged, which is often refreshing to those that have joined the IT channel from another indus-try. Supporting a collaborative environment of thought, the three main core values of the channel are: inclusivity, diversity and sustainability.
“The channel honours the school of thought that not just one type of person has the right ideas, but that a mix of people that have diversity of thought and background delivers greater results. Working in the channel, you will get the opportunity to meet many people from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and learn from them.”
travel opportunitiesSo, if I’ve got great people skills, good ideas and am working well with partners across an ecosystem, will I get the chance to see a
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Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
bit of the world and go to events and meet customers? That also seems to be something the channel is well known for.
Many of the comments from those working in the industry did mention travel as an opportunity to go around the world and meet other people at events, customer and vendors visits and with fellow colleagues in different countries.
“The technology channel has given me the wonderful career I have today, enabling me to grow my career, travel the globe and meet an amazing network of people, some of whom are now close friends,” says Avaya’s Hastings. “If you want to wake up fresh to a new challenge and new opportunity, join the channel and be inspired.”
Palo Alto’s Taylor believes the chance to travel and go beyond the office is a positive reason to join the channel. “You may also get the opportunity to visit places and experience cultures that you may not have been given the opportunity to,” he says. “The IT channel is also focused on creat-ing a world that is safe and well for future generations.”
Andy Martin, vice-president of global partner sales at Pure Storage, discusses the opportunity to learn about people and places.
“What the channel gives you are the opportunities to work with a variety of different companies, different partners and different cultures, particularly if you happen to be in a global role,” he says.
“The channel really gives you a broad spectrum or a view into an industry that is pretty exciting and also gives you the skills to go into many different areas.”
What is becoming clear is that a life in the channel should be exciting, full of opportunities for career development and should give me the chance to see a bit of the world. But if you were stuck with me in a lift and had just a few moments to promote the channel, then what are the impressions you would try to leave with me?
WHy tHe cHannel?I know that no job is for life, but will I be replaced with a robot in a few years’ time? Will technology and services be sold by
other people? Is there any guaran-tee that I will have a long career within this industry?
“At a time when choosing a career can seem like a serious gamble, I’m confident in the channel,” says Westcon’s Byford. “So many busi-nesses in our market offer appren-tice and graduate schemes, so don’t ever be afraid of jumping in at the deep end. The channel is a
community and there are so many people willing to help you to succeed and accelerate your career.”
SAP’s Atkinson talks about the impact the channel has on other businesses and the ability to help shape the futures of
“if you wanT To wake up fresh To a new challenge and new opporTuniTy, join
The channel and be inspired”aLi haStingS, avaya
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Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
customers and others in the ecosystem. There are numerous jobs in the industry, offering the opportunity to find a role that is rewarding, and providing chances to be promoted and develop different skills.
“Choosing a career in the channel will give you an opportu-nity to make a real difference,” says Atkinson. “You’ll work with companies on both ends of the growth scale – well-established global institutions or new startups with a great purpose and proposition. Either way, it’s incredibly rewarding seeing how your ideas, management and close relationships can have a real impact on business performance and bring success.”
CrowdStrike’s Adams is also acutely aware that the channel has the chance to make a real difference. “Channel manage-ment also offers individuals the opportunity to make a tangible
difference by aligning and supporting sales and marketing efforts to provide successful outcomes for our customers,” she says.
But the final word has to go to Rob Billington, channel man-ager, EMEA at Netwrix, who paints an attractive picture of what a life in the channel could look like.
“Working in the channel starts as a job, becomes a career and ends as a network of people that you trust and enjoy working with,” he says. “I consider myself lucky to have tried a few things before coming into the channel – cricket, acting, I’m a qualified chef, dabbled with the idea of being a lawyer, worked as part of and lead direct sales teams – but it’s channel where I feel most at home. Every day is a challenge and every day is different. My go bag and laptop bag are always ready by the door, with my passport in the front pocket.” n
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No matter the role, the channel presents the chance to make a difference
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If you took a representative from each of Microsoft’s more than 400,000 global partners and brought them together in one place, you’d have a population bigger than Cardiff, Bel-fast, Nottingham or Bradford. And if the vendor meets the
prediction made by channel chief Rodney Clark of half a million partners by the end of 2021, a city populated by a single repre-sentative from each Microsoft partner would have bypassed the population of Edinburgh, Leeds and Leicester – and be closing in on Manchester and Sheffield.
In terms of partner numbers, Microsoft is something of an out-lier. There are few, if any, vendors that have, or need, such a large number of channel partners. But how do vendors know when they have the right number for them? And just as importantly, how can they keep a wide variety of partners happy while getting the best from them and for them?
Claudio Soland, senior vice-president of global alliances, partner programme and business operations at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, acknowledges there is a “huge scope to take into account when it comes to partner happiness” because the partner landscape is becoming so much more diverse. There are partners addressing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), value-added distributors (VADs), worldwide alliances partners, service providers and systems integrators, as well as those specialising in verticals such as healthcare, transporta-tion, education, government and hospitality.
In common with all the other vendors, Soland claims Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s partner scheme provides the benefits, finan-cial incentives, training programmes and marketing campaigns to
Is many partners alWays better?
Microsoft has a sizeable global channel which raises the question of
whether that is the model that all vendors should
be aspiring to follow. Billy MacInnes reports
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Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
help partners be profitable, take advantage of the newest technol-ogy and achieve their strategic goals.
“Beyond that, what really makes the difference is a personal touch, the human interface,” he adds. “We have a strong presence in the local markets through our local sales teams, which ensure a strong relationship with our business part-ners to closely support them in their ongoing business and constantly develop new opportunities.”
The sheer variety of partners is highlighted by Alex Walsh, UK and Ireland manager of channels and alliances at Veeam. “Some are more technically minded, others are bet-ter at negotiating competitive commercial packages, and others excel at providing good after-sales service,” he says.
To ensure consistency for custom-ers, Walsh says vendors need “to focus on our role as a supporter and a mediator – connecting different partners together and identi fying ways they can collaborate to meet customer needs”.
WHat makes partners Happy?Along with the large numbers and wide range of potential partners, it is also a rapidly changing landscape, notes Rob Billington, channel manager for Europe, the Middle East and
Africa (EMEA) at Netwrix. “Most vendors find themselves in a cycle of filtering partners to identify and motivate the ones that can make a difference to the business – this makes for a very fluid partner landscape,” he says.
Vendors need to recognise what partners want in terms of being able to offer professional services, post-sales support and managed services. The key ingredient for happy partners “is very simple”, he says: “Offer them a proposi-tion where they can not only make money, but make profit and feel comfortable in assigning resource to make the relationship worth-while from both sides.”
George Hope, HPE worldwide head of partner sales, says ven-dors can level the playing field for partners with varying skill levels,
specialisations and expertise by offering “robust learning and enablement programmes”.
Vendor sales teams already have the benefits of solutions, resources and programmes to build skills across sales, technol-ogy and marketing. Partners benefit the most when vendors offer them the same opportunities to enhance their skillsets and drive business growth, argues Hope. “Enablement programmes, especially in high-growth areas like as-a-service, target partners
PARTNER MANAGEMENT
“[we vendors] need To focus on our role as a
supporTer and a mediaTor – connecTing differenT parTners
TogeTher and idenTifying ways They can collaboraTe To
meeT cusTomer needs”aLex WaLSh, veeam
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Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
seeking to build out expertise in that area and provide an addi-tional level of advisory to customers,” he says. “For high-volume partners, vendors should focus on demos which keep partners knowledgeable of the latest technologies.”
Illumio’s EMEA senior director of channel sales, Scott Walker, is also a big proponent of enablement. “A well-enabled ecosystem is hands-down the most important factor in keeping partners happy and getting the best from them,” he states. “Aside from that, the responsibility falls on the vendor to be responsible, available and present in all engagements with the partner.”
If a partner has a question or needs additional support, he says, “you have to be available to answer them immediately, otherwise
you run the risk of them switching off – much like we as consum-ers do if we’ve asked a question to a brand or company and get no response”.
He makes the point that it is important for vendors to “be at the forefront of the partner’s mind when they are communicating with their customer base, so you stay ahead of other vendors out there competing for the same slice of the market”.
Walker stresses that you need to keep it simple and be sure the partner knows that nothing is too much hassle when it comes to supporting them. “It’s what we hear regularly from our partners as being of the greatest value and why they enjoy working with us – after all, we are all part of the same team,” he says.
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Vendors need be front of partners’ minds when they communicate with their customer base to stay ahead of others competing for the same business
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Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
John Mitchell, EMEA distribution sales director at cyber secu-rity and systems management company Tanium, agrees that enablement is “critical to keeping a wide range of partners happy and to ensure that they’re taking the vendor’s technology to customers at the right time”.
Tanium runs monthly enablement sessions for all channel partners. Deal registration is also crucial. “The partner needs to know, either strategically or ad-hoc, that the ven-dor will live by and work closely to deliver on the opportunities that a partner brings,” he says.
Graham Jones, UK and Ireland regional director for Exclusive Networks, warns that deal registra-tion needs to be properly thought through and implemented. “Why should a channel partner start to train up already stretched resources, do the demo and invest in kit, only to have the deal switched on price at the last minute?” he asks. “This is where we can help with providing the services early on for those committed partners.”
points for partner managementFiona Doak, EMEA director of channel sales at Appgate, makes the point that while vendors frequently use a tiering system to differentiate between partners, it often fails to work “because it
drives an unnecessary wedge in the business as you may dis-count smaller businesses that are more agile and therefore more suitable to your company”.
She believes a successful partner programme means “handpick-ing the partners based on the neces-sary skillset and expertise” that can be delivered around the strategy rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. “This will ensure they support the company as it grows and have the geographical presence required so they become the exten-sion of the company,” says Doak.
She praises Microsoft’s ability to manage 400,000 partners. “It can be tricky managing 20 partners, let alone 400,000, because you have to ensure quality and satisfaction at all times,” she acknowledges. “This industry is close-knit, so when a
partnership isn’t working, the industry knows about it.” Doak suggests a micro-segmentation approach “is an ideal
way to manage partners, firstly by region and then qualification – whether you’re an organisation with a massive partner list, or a small one, there needs to be a process and method in place to ensure satisfaction”.
It’s important to get it right, she says, because “a reputation lives and dies on the partner programme. A succinct, supportive,
PARTNER MANAGEMENT
“a repuTaTion lives and dies on The parTner programme. a
succincT, supporTive, profiTable and inclusive parTner programme will ensure parTner loyalTy and
engagemenT and you’ll Therefore be far more likely To succeed”
fiona doak, aPPgate
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 23
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Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
profitable and inclusive partner programme will ensure part-ner loyalty and engagement and you’ll therefore be far more likely to succeed”.
No pressure then. When it comes to defining partners, Andy Horn, CEO of IntraLAN, thinks there is a danger of focusing too much on revenue, which he describes as “an overstated metric” when gauging the value of partners.
“A new company with a great culture and massive potential, for instance, may struggle to get support from vendors because they haven’t yet accrued enough revenue to be a platinum partner,” he says. “Revenue is obviously an important factor, but it shouldn’t be the only one.”
WHat’s tHe magic numBer?How many partners to take on board is another matter entirely.
“Partner numbers should always be a consideration – in a tiered programme not everyone can be an elite partner and the size of the community should be decided by the level of business, and the potential to grow that business,” says Netwrix’s Billington.
He claims the vendor does its best to give partners the confi-dence that it will not oversubscribe the market in any territory. “Resellers are very much our business partners,” says Billington. “Our growth plans are dependent upon having an engaged, trained and motivated partner community, as they are at the heart of everything that we do.”
HPE’s Hope stresses that it’s not about having lots of partners. “The partner ecosystem isn’t strongest or healthiest at its most populous, but when partners are unified across the ecosystem,”
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Getting partner numbers right is not easy – the more you have, the harder it is to keep them all happy
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Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
he remarks. “Vendors need to be considering the persona of each partner and how they can create robust co-selling oppor-tunities and specialisation pipelines across the ecosystem.”
Francis O’Haire, group technical director at DataSolutions, suggests it’s much harder to get the numbers right than people might think. “I have certainly never seen a vendor keep all of their partners happy when it comes to channel programmes – but some are better than others,” he says, adding that more channel-friendly vendors “respect their partners’ relationship with their customers and run a ‘clean’ chan-nel where there is good collabora-tion and a mutual trust between the parties”.
Nevertheless, the response varies depending on the size of the partner. “Larger resellers that focus on product and licence fulfilment will typically take on as many established vendors as they can – regardless of the channel size,” he says. “More focused, services-oriented partners will carefully curate their vendor portfolio as they need to invest heavily in maintaining skillsets across these technologies. If there is already a large channel for a vendor, then the decision to invest in that vendor is certainly a more difficult one.”
IntraLAN’s Horn believes partner numbers “are undoubtedly important when considering what vendors to work with, as it’s an indicator of how intimate the relationship could be and the competition”. “At a certain point, a vendor can get too big, which means it becomes challenging for channel partners to maximise their own investment,” he says. “The larger the vendor, the bet-
ter an account manager has to be to oversee everything.”
Horn adds that a partner base can also indicate the quality of the ven-dor’s services. “It’s important for managed service providers to rec-ognise that their partner relation-ships can impact their own individual brands. If Microsoft’s services are facing difficulties or the service is lacking, and you sell in those services but lack support from the vendor, it’ll look bad on your business,” he says.
Is there an optimal level for a partner base? Not really, according to Tanium’s Mitchell. “More often
than not, there’s not a set ‘optimal level’ for a vendor’s partner base,” he argues. “Partner landscapes are constantly changing based on customer adoption, acquisitions and geographic or portfolio expansions.”
That doesn’t mean you can’t have too many partners. “A telling sign of having too many partners is when a vendor experiences
PARTNER MANAGEMENT
“resellers are very much our business parTners. our growTh
plans are dependenT upon having an engaged, Trained and
moTivaTed parTner communiTy, as They are aT The hearT of
everyThing ThaT we do”rob biLLington, netWrix
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Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
over-saturation in a market and a product sees margin reduction because of too many partners and not enough demand,” adds Mitchell. Consequently, demand should be managed carefully. “If most, say 80%, of a vendor’s channel revenue is achieved through a manageable level of partners focused on their brand, that’s likely to be close to being optimal.”
Nick Offin, head of sales, marketing and operations at Dynabook Northern Europe, says most vendors won’t limit the number of partners they work with, relying on the tiered system to dictate the level of service they will provide to part-ners and “ensure an optimal level of service is provided to all channel partners to cater to specific needs”.
Besides, there are benefits to hav-ing a wider pool of channel partners, such as raising brand awareness and strengthening the customer base.
Sam Giggle, head of sales at TelcoSwitch, makes an interesting point when he notes that the optimum level could “come down to the number of people the vendor employs across the business to support partners”.
Vendors must forecast growth carefully and make sure they can cope operationally with increases in business brought about by the growth of channel partners. “Finding highly skilled, capa-ble employees can be a challenge, and so being ahead of the curve operationally mitigates the risk of bottlenecks and poor partner experiences,” says Giggle.
Wayne Gratton, director of business development and market-ing at Nuvias Group, argues that for most vendors, an optimal partner base is not a numbers game.
“Rather than focusing on the quantity of partners, they should be focusing on the quality of their base,” he says. “To keep pace with fast-changing demands from vendors, part-ners need to be able to adapt, scale and facilitate vendor needs without compromising on customer experience or the
bottom line.”Gratton adds that successful
vendor and partner relationships “must focus on the breadth and depth of a partner offering, rather than simply looking at its face value for a business’s immediate needs”.
Garry Veale, UK and Ireland regional director at Vectra AI, believes that sometimes less is more in terms of partner numbers.
“It gives you the ability to build deeper, longer-lasting relation-ships with partners that have the confidence to invest, as there is lower population density of partners compared with your com-petitors,” he says.
Vendors may need multiple partners of each type and they should keep a weather eye on recruitment, he says, because “the next rockstar partner is definitely out there – but you don’t need to sign the world to be successful”.
Unless you’re Microsoft. n
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“raTher Than focusing on The quanTiTy of parTners, vendors should be focusing
on The qualiTy of Their base”Wayne gratton, nuviaS grouP
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 26
morning, fiona, tell us WHat you do for a livingMy name is Fiona Doak and I am the director of channel sales Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Appgate. I manage, develop and enhance partner strategy across EMEA, and I pro-actively support the Appgate channel-first strategy.
WHy are you tHe rigHt person for tHis joB?I have been in the industry for over 25 years now and have always had a healthy (or perhaps unhealthy) interest in secu-rity. People often comment on the passion I show for the work I do, and I can genuinely say I enjoy my job. I take great pride in my ability to work with the channel and different partners, and I enjoy the fact that I can proactively support organisations in achieving their business goals.
I have seen a great change throughout the years in the secu-rity industry and even remember when VPNs were invented! But, throughout the advancements and innovations we have seen within the industry, I have still managed to maintain an interest and a passion for my job.
WHo Helped you get to WHere you are today?There are so many people who have helped me get to where I am today that I can’t possibly mention them all. However, I owe my career to those who recognised I had a talent and gave me a chance. I didn’t start my career in IT – it was something I fell into. I actually started my career as a secretary, but I was lucky enough to work for people who saw I had a talent and helped nurture that talent.
FIona doak
appgateMicroScope puts its
questions to Fiona Doak, director of channel sales
EMEA at Appgate
FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW
Home
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 27
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
WHat gets you up in tHe morning?I am still surprised by my motivation to do this job through all the change I have seen. I enjoy being able to find new and inno-vative ways of managing and developing a channel and there is a lot of personal reward and pride seeing something grow when you know you had a part to play.
is it possiBle to get tHrougH an industry conversation WitHout mentioning ‘digital transformation’?Yes, absolutely! There are far more interesting conversations to have in IT where you don’t mention those words.
WHat is tHe Best or Worst Business advice you Have received and from WHom?The best advice I have received is “it’s easier to seek forgive-ness than permission”.
The worst advice I received is “you can do it alone”. Early in my career, I took this advice and believed I could work with a partner by myself. Needless to say, it didn’t go well, but I was lucky that I had an understanding boss, who was grateful that I confessed my error.
I learnt an important lesson, though – there is a reason why you are part of a team at work. There is no point in insisting on doing it alone, so instead, involve the people you need to
involve to achieve the desired result. It’s all about owning our mistakes and growing from them.
WHat advice Would you give to someone starting out today in it?The advice I would give to those starting out in IT today is to listen and absorb all the information you can. If possible, look for a mentor within your organisation or another organisation who you respect, can use as soundboard and can learn from.
I have mentored people while at pre-vious companies and continue to do so at Appgate. Having a mentor to learn from and confide in is an invaluable experience.
WHat does tHe next five years Hold for tHe cHannel?The opportunity for the security market within the channel will be radi-
cally different to what we have previously known. There is now an opportunity for the channel to embrace the changes and the challenges we are seeing within the security industry and become the trusted adviser to customers.
The channel used to offer quite generic security solutions and we were servicing a perimeter that no longer exists. As we move into a perimeter-less world, organisations are facing challenges where they have to provide a security solution that adapts to users.
FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW
“There is a reason why you are parT of a Team aT work. There is
no poinT in doing iT alone”fiona doak, aPPgate
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 28
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
The opportunity for the channel is therefore huge because it can become the source for organisations looking for trusted advisers who offer solutions that they actually want and need in this ever-changing world.
WHat goal do you Have to acHieve Before you die, and WHy?I’d like to travel to places I’ve been to on business trips but have never got the chance to properly explore. Places like Krakow and Vienna would be brilliant.
My partner and I would also like to cycle the Pacific Coast Way, which is ambitious but something we’ve always wanted to do as we love cycling.
tell us sometHing most people do not knoW aBout youI once accidentally tumble-dried my cat! It did, thankfully, survive. It was a number of years ago now and I was sharing a flat with a friend. One night, we decided to go for dinner and before I left, I picked up some clothes and towels from the washing basket and put them into the tumble dryer to dry, and off I went for dinner.
When I came back, I emptied the dryer and out tumbled my now incredibly fluffy cat. A number of
vet bills (and tears) later, he was absolutely fine and lived for another 10 years! Although he never went near the tumble dryer again…
WHat is tHe Best Book you’ve ever read?I really enjoy reading Macbeth. It is an incredibly weird play, but I have read it so many times because I enjoy it so much.
and tHe Worst film you’ve ever seen?The Smurfs Movie – I accidentally fell asleep when I took my daughter to watch it!
WHat Would Be your desert island mp3s?There are several: Hotel California by the Eagles, Yesterday Once More by The Carpenters, Blue by Joni Mitchell.I also enjoy any song by Ed Sheeran, anything by Don Henley, and I love Spandau Ballet and Keith Urban.
WHat Was your first car and HoW does it compare WitH WHat you drive noW?My first car was a Morris Marina. It simply doesn’t compare to the car I drive now, which is an Audi A3 con-vertible – they’re like night and day.
FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW
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“i once accidenTally Tumble-dried my caT!”
fiona doak, aPPgate
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 29
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
if you Were facing aWesome peril and impossiBle odds, WHicH real or fictional person Would you most Want on your side and WHy?I would want a wizard like Dumbledore to magic me out of the situation! He’s the best wizard there is, and he has Fawkes the phoenix, who can also help me out of the awesome peril I have found myself in.
if you could Be any animal for a day, WHat Would you Be and WHy? I’d be a cat because they’re independent and fickle – they come and go as they please and generally look like they lead a very lovely life!
WHat temptation can you not resist?Wine!
WHo Would you least like to Be stuck in a lift WitH? WHy, WHat did tHey do?Donald Trump – for obvious reasons.
and finally, a grizzly Bear and a silverBack gorilla are getting ready for a no-Holds-Barred rumBle. WHo is your money on and WHy?My money would be on the silverback gorilla because they are more agile and they have speed on their side! Bears are too clumsy and not supple enough, even though they can also run fast. n
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Picture caption white here with no full point
FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW
“i can’T resisT wine!”
fiona doak, aPPgate
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 30
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
Why we need more female role models in the channelDonna Bain, senior vice-president of HR, Westcon EMEAWe need to do more to attract women to the IT channel – and I’m calling for change. Despite the efforts by some businesses to diversify their workforces, representation is still shockingly low, particularly at senior level. IDC found that in 2020, women only made up 8% of leadership positions within European channel businesses. We can and must do better than this, not only in the interests of equality, but to move forward.
Having a diverse workforce with a balance of opinions and per-spectives is incredibly important. For one, a greater multitude of experiences brings with it different thinking and creates a busi-ness environment more conducive to innovation and progress.
However, we have to admit the channel suffers from an image problem. Years of cultural bias and stereotypes have plagued the IT industry in general, discouraging many women from pursuing a career in the industry.
This perception of the industry has done nothing but discourage girls from becoming interested in tech in the first place. And the channel always seems to be just one step behind.
That said, we acknowledge that increasing number of women in the IT industry has been, and remains, a challenge.
One way to address the perception problem is for channel firms to do more to highlight female role models in their workforces. By
CHANNEL COMMENT
IMAGE: VLADGRIN/ADOBE
❯Send your letters and comments to [email protected].
“despiTe efforTs by some businesses To diversify Their workforces, represenTaTion
is sTill shockingly low”donna bain, WeStcon emea
microscope.co.uk OctOber 2021 31
Home
Editor’s comment
Cisco cuts complexity with partner experience efforts for changing needs
Taking a strange route to the channel
Channel firms can be peacekeepers in war on ransomware
Bye ‘buy’ baby: How subscription services are the future
Why should you choose a channel career?
Is many partners always better?
Five-minute interview: Appgate’s Fiona Doak discusses teamwork, travelling and cats
Channel comment: Why we need more female role models in the channel
removing the stigma around female representation in more senior levels of business, we not only inspire and get girls excited about being in the industry in the first place, but make it clear to both girls and boys that this is an industry anyone can thrive in.
Related to this is a need for more education. We need to get into schools and universities and do more to encourage young women into the business. Once again, there is a perception problem, where people believe they aren’t qualified to work in tech because the narrative is based so much around science, technology, engi-neering and maths (STEM) subjects. We need to get the message out that there are a wealth of roles in the channel for women.
At Westcon, we are undertaking several initiatives to ensure we are a company that is culturally and gender diverse. This includes company-wide unconscious bias training to address the culturing and conditioning that many of us have grown up with. We are also looking at apprenticeship schemes that are linked to technology – in cyber security, for example, where there is a real skills gap.
Elsewhere, as part of the ONEWestcon programme, we have hosted events focused on women’s health, including menopause. It’s crucial that we remove the stigma attached to these issues, normalising conversation, to encourage a more level playing field.
However, we will put our hands up and tell you that we’re not perfect. We’re trying hard to ensure we employ more women, and close the gender pay gap, but we still have a way to go. However, this is a key priority for the company, and we are putting all our efforts into ensuring we make this happen.
We can see that traditionally senior roles in the channel sim-ply aren’t built for women. Also, the work ethic in distribution is
phenomenal. This sometimes means long working hours, which may not necessarily be a good fit for somebody who has a role as primary carer – for children or elderly relatives. But this is also why we need to provide greater flexibility for employees moving forward. If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that flexible hours and hybrid working is not only possible, but preferable to many people. At Westcon, we are excited by the possibilities this shift can bring. It is therefore crucial that we offer flexible and remote working options to ensure we are recruiting and maintain-ing the widest selection of high-quality candidates.
When your profession is predominantly drawn from just one sector of society, you operate with a narrow frame of reference. Women bring a perspective to the channel which can prove inval-uable in a business that is built on relationships. And building a successful business is difficult when you’re not bringing the full strength of cognitive diversity to the table.
I’m excited for the future, excited for change, and invite my peers and partners to ensure that inclusion is at the top of the agenda. n
CHANNEL COMMENT
“wesTcon [is] underTaking several iniTiaTives To [be]
culTurally and gender diverse”donna bain, WeStcon emea
IMAGE: JULIEN EICHINGER/ADOBE
❯Send your letters and comments to [email protected].
