ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
reacting or being a “me too” technology provider, which is not a very
good place to be.
Secondly, I think the way our customers consume enterprise
applications has been changing and that’s a very long-term trend, but
a long history from on-prem to public cloud and to SaaS applications,
but in the same movement, they are becoming more willing to push
security functions outside the organisation to MSPs. And now SASE
providers, such as Fortinet.
The pace of change is increasing in cybersecurity, which is
driving the shift but as it increases, l think a lot of customers will
be challenged to make informed decisions that are good for their
business. I see a need for our partners to embrace, at an early stage,
new technologies, new trends and solutions and help their customers
decide the best path for them and their business, specifically, as
they go on their Digital Transformation. So, the key thing will be for
partners to become part of that journey, and to feed into it, rather
than just reacting to it.
We spoke about Fortinet and how it is changing the
way it works, but have your partners spoken to you
about how they’re changing and how their strategies
are changing within the next year?
Some of those comments come from conversations with partners
and some of our more forward-looking partners in the region
have specific business practices that are orientated around Digital
Transformation. So, to perform advisory roles to customers around
I want to see us
aligned to partners
that share our
long-term goals
and see us helping
each other on
that journey.
what Digital Transformation can do and not
necessarily just technology solutions. So,
when ‘public cloud is the answer’ – pushing
further into their business processes and
their business to actually start to encourage
them and move them faster along that
process. And I guess, logically, when the
customer sees the benefit of that digital
change the business partner that has helped
them understand that and realise it, if they
also have a technology specialisation and can
do the technology side of that movement, it
would make perfect sense for the customers
to use that enterprise partner. They’re
seeing that they want to be driving alongside
the customer and then complete the
technology project side of things, as opposed
to have somebody else help the customer
evolve their business, and then a technology
project falls out of that, and there’s a lot of
heavy competition for it. It makes an awful
lot of sense, and it pushes the partners up
the value stack with customers.
What do you like about working in
the channel?
Like every vendor we need our partners to
achieve scale. We’re a very large company
with an awful lot of customers but we
can’t possibly touch them all. So that layer
between the vendor and the channel partner
is extremely important. And the most
enjoyable thing I see is understanding what
each individual partner wants to achieve,
because it’s subtly different, and then helping
them achieve their goals. When we get to that
sort of stage where we’re working closely
together, it is very rewarding.
Is there anything else you’d
like to add which we haven’t
touched upon?
From a personal point of view, I’m delighted
to have recently moved into the Middle East.
It is going to be certainly easier to meet all of
our partners now lockdown is over in Dubai.
I’m very much looking forward to meeting all
of our partners in the region. •
INTELLIGENT
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS TECH CHANNELS
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