Hayden cites the example of a customer that bought Sophos endpoint security three years ago but refused to entertain the possibility of a UTM approach because it only bought best of breed products in separate security categories. At a meeting with the same customer two months ago, the brief had changed to one of consolidating existing vendors. “They had taken the decision to look more pragmatically at security and that’s happening right across businesses,” Hayden claims. “There’s more of an acceptance among customers that you can improve security, reduce cost and improve support by consolidating what were previously standalone solutions.”
He also reports that more customers are going for virtual and software appliances as virtual environments become more dominant within organisations. That presents an opportunity for channel partners to centrally manage those appliances and deliver security as a service.
“People just fulfilling an order are not offering good service” – Michael Conway, Renaissance
“More than half of our customers are going for virtual and software appliances over hardware versions,” Hayden says. With Sophos UTM manager, partners can manage appliances whether they are virtual or hardware. But while some have started to use it a bit more, he admits that “it’s not to extent I would have expected at this stage”.
Hayden doesn’t think partners are consciously choosing to sell customers standalone appliances, it’s more that they are “struggling to have broader conversations and it’s easier just to renew the licence. They aren’t always au fait with having that conversation. Is the individual sales guy comfortable talking about security? They aren’t always, especially when it goes beyond a single point solution. They can find themselves talking to quite technical people… and can very soon get lost. So they tend to default to a renewal of what’s already there but the customer isn’t getting the best deal, then.”
Central support
He believes sales departments are missing out on “a great opportunity”. To try and plug the gap, Sophos has training programmes and promotions put in place to push the UTM message out to customers. “We have lots of packaged promotional offerings that we roll out through our partners, but it’s up to somebody to have a sensible conversation with the customer about it. With our smaller customers, there’s also an education piece to be done alongside the conversation. They may not be getting the best security because their appliances are not talking to each other properly.”
Hayden accepts that consolidated solutions aren’t the answer for every customer “but partners need to have a conversation to rule that out as an option”.
The big benefit for partners is that a UTM approach gives them an opportunity to move beyond a single interaction with the customer around e-mail, wireless or endpoint security and “to own much more of the customer spend and able to deliver a better solution at a lower cost. They can manage and support centrally and remotely to provide better security in most cases with less investment”.
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