After the announcements of its new channel strategy and promise to stay 100 per cent channel committed, Sophos, an Oxford, U.K.-based global IT security and control solution provider, is expanding its North American market presence with the recent implementation of its revised channel model.
Chris Doggett, director of channel sales at Sophos, says the company currently has about 900 Canadian partners. The partners, he explains, are categorized under one of three tiers in its partner program which include platinum, gold and silver levels.
“We put a lot of emphasis on our top two tiers,” Doggett says. “We maximize on this and this is what we call the bi-directional market model. The silver tier is our group of authorized resellers and with them, we tend to be more reactive than proactive.”
Being in the platinum or gold levels allows partners to receive higher margins and more protection for their business, Doggett says.
Michael Rogers, vice-president of North America, alliance, channel and OEM sales at Sophos, explains the company was founded in the U.K. and only recently came to the U.S. market about 10 years ago. Today, Sophos has headquarters in both Oxford, U.K. as well as in Boston, Mass. The company offers a range of antivirus, anti-spyware and other security-related products that are designed for the small to large-sized enterprise markets.
“Globally, we’re in the range of about 4,000 to 7,000 partners,” Rogers said. “The U.K. has more history so there’s more concentration [of partners] there. Sophos has been very strong in the education, government, financial and corporate sectors. We also have a focus on the enterprise market space.”
Doggett says Sophos guarantees margins for partners through its opportunity registration program. Under this program, margins typically range from 12 to 18 per cent and if a deal were to be lost to another partner, Sophos will still guarantee a seven per cent margin.
“We want our partners to be protected with their margins,” Doggett explains. “We want partners to know that regardless of the deal, they’ll be paid.”
In addition to Sophos’s opportunity registration program, the company also has a set of standard margins and order fulfillment margins for partners. Doggett says depending on which tier the partner is in, margins can range anywhere between 20 to 30 per cent.
“Anyone involved late in the deployment process is placed under the order fulfillment margin,” Doggett said. “These margins range from 12 per cent all the way down to three per cent. But no matter what tier you’re in, it doesn’t really matter. The margins are still accessible to partners who still may not be that committed yet.”
Softchoice Corp., a Toronto-based large account reseller, is just one of Sophos’s many Canadian partners. Tema Mueller, director of security, storage and software solutions at Softchoice, says it was Sophos’s channel commitment that led to the company partnering up with them.
“We feel that Sophos has a really good technology and their commitment to the channel is what interested us the most,” Mueller said.
Mueller says Softchoice has seen more leads come through since Sophos made the decision to revamp its channel model and strategy a little over six months ago.
“Sophos is still an emerging security vendor for us,” Mueller says. “We still have a strong relationship with the other vendors we work with like Symantec. But for us, it’s about driving more security solutions in the field. Our focus is on the customer and solving their solution needs, whether it’s through Sophos, Symantec or McAfee products.”
David Senf, director of research, security and infrastructure software at IDC Canada, says Sophos is gaining more traction in the North American market.
“As a European vendor, Sophos is ramping up its activity in North America. This region accounts for approximately one-third of its total worldwide revenue,” Senf said.
Another security specialist, Francis Ho, an executive committee member with the Toronto-based Federation of Security Professionals, says that while the big players in the antivirus space are Symantec and McAfee, Sophos ranks in the top five in Canada.
Aside from ample margin earning potential, Doggett says there are many reasons why partners would want to work with Sophos.
“There’s a lot of training available both online through our partner portal, but we also have online resources and training modules as well as on-site and on-the-field training. We also generate marketing programs and thousands of leads every month. These leads go directly to our partners.”
From a product standpoint, Rogers says the technology is superb.
“We’re able to provide telephone support and we don’t outsource any of that,” Rogers said. “To not outsource any of this support, you have to have a really bullet-proof product. Our products work as advertised and if there’s an issue, customers can talk to us. Our wait times are the quickest in the industry and customers are getting folks on the phone in less than a minute’s time,” he said.