Print.IT Reseller - issue 83

01732 759725 32 BUSINESS BRIEFING Exclusive Networks UK has been helping Thales achieve year-on-year growth in sales of its identity and access management and data protection solutions since 2009. As the distributor rolls out a new brand awareness and partner recruitment drive, Thales solutions have arguably never been more relevant than they are today. Introducing Thales since 2009, had had a distribution agreement with Exclusive Networks UK. This relationship was maintained and extended under the stewardship of Gemalto and then Thales Group, which, from four distribution partners in the UK, ultimately selected Exclusive Networks UK as its primary distributor. “Looking back all those years ago, it was a big move for Thales to consolidate that many distribution partners, but we very quickly proved to them that they had made the right decision. Through an increased focus, dedicated support from our teams and the successful execution of a channel expansion plan, we expanded their modest partner base quickly and started delivering significant channel-led incremental business,” says Exclusive Networks UK vendor manager Simon Bickers. Today, Thales trades with over 200 partners through Exclusive Networks UK, compared to just a handful when its relationship with the distributor started, and is now looking to further boost its name recognition in the UK and recruit net new partners to satisfy growing demand for its products. Thales line-up Exclusive Networks UK looks after two of the three product lines overseen by Thales’ Digital Identity and Security division – data protection and identity and access management (IAM). n Data protection. Thales Data Protection solutions provide enterprises with all the tools they need to discover, protect, control and monitor access to all their critical data and encryption keys wherever they reside. Thales’ data protection solutions include advanced data discovery and classification, encryption of data in motion or at rest, key management, network encryption, hardware security modules and cloud- based data protection on demand services. n Identity and access management (IAM). Thales IAM solutions give SMEs and enterprises the tools they need to control, monitor and manage access to corporate networks, as well as cloud and web-based applications. Commenting on both line-ups, Simon Bickers says: “Essentially, what we are offering partners is a solution that will help their customers mitigate the risk of experiencing potentially damaging data breaches. At a high-level, it does this by identifying and classifying sensitive data, protecting that data through encryption, securing and managing the encryption keys and monitoring user access to data, systems and applications. “We also help end customers reduce the cost of non-compliance. Through the solutions that Thales offers we make it easier for end users to address an evolving list of compliance requirements to ensure they don’t get hit with heavy fines, but also to reduce the complexity and costs around data security and continuous compliance. And, through both IAM and data protection, we help end users achieve cost-effective business transformation, such as migration to the cloud.” Why Thales Thales solutions have a number of strengths compared to those offered by competitors. On the IAM side, these include a rapid time to value due to the straightforward deployment and ease of use of the solution; support for a broad range of authentication methods (such as hardware tokens, soft tokens, pattern- based authentication, biometrics etc.); a much lower TCO, as free authentication tokens are included in the price of the user licence; integrations with customers’ existing authentication schemes; and a transparent, user-based licensing scheme that is easy for partners and customers to understand. On the data protection side, Thales can address the broadest range of data security uses cases whether in the cloud, on-premise or both. This is through a portfolio of products and a centralised platform that helps customers discover and classify data, protects that data through encryption of data at rest or in Thales Group is a French multi- national, with 80,000 employees in 68 countries and annual sales of 17 billion euros across five main areas – space, aerospace, ground transportation, defence and digital identity & security. The Group gained its expertise and leadership in the fifth – and most recent – of these areas in February 2019 through the € 4.8 billion acquisition of Gemalto, a name that will be familiar to many in the IT world for its payment security and authentication products and to the wider public for its 11.5-year contract to produce the new UK passport. Four years earlier, Gemalto itself had acquired another digital security company, a leader in data and software protection called SafeNet, which, Simon Bickers