01732 759725 32 DISTRIBUTION ...continued navigating the young, diverse, fast growing cybersecurity market. So, could distributors like Infinigate be doing more to educate the channel and their end user customers? Antoine questions whether end user education is the role of a distributor, pointing out that Infinigate is helping reduce complexity and confusion for end users in other ways. “As a distributor, we have a very important role in educating the channel and helping resellers to better understand the technology, but we don’t address the end user. That said, this topic is important because in this industry there is a very significant shortage of talent. And when you combine increasing complexity and shortage of talent, it becomes challenging for the end user. How we are addressing this is to look at building ecosystems across technologies, which is something that vendors are also doing.” With a clear commitment to simplify cyber security challenges for end users and to enable partners to make the transition from reseller to MSP, and the motivation of ambitious growth targets, Infinigate is clearly a company to watch in the months to come. https://infinigate.co.uk Vendor strategy He added that Infinigate has a selective vendor strategy and is more interested in developing partnerships to address changing requirements than simply signing up new names. “What we are focusing on is building partnerships, because the industry is evolving and there are areas where we have real expertise, for example in how to grow subscriptions and how to grow business with SMB resellers/MSPs. Our focus is to build partnerships to help our vendor ecosystem and resellers to grow faster. Expanding the portfolio is part of that, definitely, but in a very selective way with complementary offers. “At the moment, we are putting the infrastructure in place to look at vendors with a strong technical eye, to assess their technologies. Many distributors focus on a business’s potential but tend to overlook their technical expertise and capabilities. We try to cover those angles as well, looking at things from a technology perspective and from a business perspective.” The fact that Infinigate is investing additional resources in this area gives some indication of the challenges that resellers/MSPs and their customer face in accelerate business transformation. M&A activity is likely to play a big part in strengthening Infinigate operations in the UK as well, which Antoine describes as a priority. “The UK is a market where we don’t have the scale that we would expect to have. So that’s where we are going to invest in the coming months and the coming years,” he said. Infinigate entered the UK 10 years ago with the acquisition of a majority stake in value-add distributor Vigil Software and currently has a team of 25 to 30 people focusing on the SMB reseller and MSP community. Its vendor partners include A10 Networks, Barracuda, CyberArk, Entrust, Exinda, GFI, HID Global, Hornetsecurity, iboss, Ivanti, Netwrix, Nuix, Progress, Safend, Securenvoy, SonicWall, Tripwire, Trustwave and Yubico. It is too early in his tenure for Antoine to disclose detailed plans for the UK, but he did hint at some interesting developments, saying: “In our ecosystem, the UK is a more mature market compared to the others, because vendors come from the US and land in the UK first. So that is where we are going to try to do something a bit different.” New year, new acquisitions Midwich Group acquires DVS Midwich is addressing growing convergence between the security and AV sectors by acquiring a majority stake in Cooper Projects Limited, the parent company of DVS Limited (DVS), a UK-based distributor of video security products. Based in Cardiff, DVS was founded in 2003 as a specialist distributor of CCTV and associated video recording technologies, working primarily with global brand HikVision. In recent years, it has started to diversify its portfolio to include complementary technologies such as access control, intercom and intruder detection. In addition to its product offering, DVS provides trade customers across the UK with value-add services including project design, technical support, training and a proprietary installer programme, which connects end-users with DVS customers in their geographic and technology area. Stephen Fenby, Midwich Group Managing Director, said: “The acquisition of DVS gives Midwich access to a significant segment of the security market in which we currently have little presence and which is expected to grow at around 8% per annum for the next five years. The knowledge and support of the experienced DVS team should help realise new opportunities for our customers in an increasingly converging technology market. Similarly, we believe that much of DVS’s extensive customer base uses or could use our core AV products in their projects.” www.midwichgroupplc.com. Nuvias UC extends DACH footprint Fast growing pan-European distributor Nuvias UC is expanding its footprint in DACH with the acquisition of Alliance Technologies, a UC specialised, value added distributor of voice, video, customer care and cloud services headquartered in Germany. Nuvias UC CEO Jeremy Keefe said: “We have seen increasing demand for end-to-end UC solutions in continental Europe and wanted to have a greater local presence in DACH where partners are looking for distributors with a strong portfolio to meet the varying needs of end user businesses transitioning to a hybrid work environment.” www.nuvias-uc.com Pax 8 crosses the Baltic Pax8, the cloud marketplace for IT professionals, is expanding into Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia with the acquisition of cloud services and software distributor TVG. John Street, Chief Executive Officer at Pax8, said: “Now more than ever, it is critical that companies migrate their technology to the cloud to maintain pace with the evolving market demands. This acquisition will enable Pax8 to expand into the Baltic States to offer partners access to its award-winning marketplace, education and localised support.” Headquartered in Riga, Latvia, TVG serves more than 1,000 partners in the Baltic region. It is an authorised Microsoft CSP Indirect Provider and has an extensive portfolio of solutions from Adobe, Corel, Altaro, TeamViewer and ManageEngine, amongst others. www.pax8.com
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=