DISTRIBUTION technologyreseller.co.uk 25 customers, which you really have to provide for early-stage technologies and vendors.” Education and support Another big part of Ignition’s added value involves helping resellers keep up with developments in technology. “I think nearly every partner would say there are too many solutions out there and part of our value lies in filtering that out so people can see the wood for the trees. Partners will often have a list of their top 10 vendors and many put Ignition on that list. They may have Palo Alto, Fortinet, Cisco, Juniper, F5 and then number eight might be Ignition. And if they get asked by a customer for something they don’t particularly know about, they will come to us for that technology or that conversation.” Remnant adds that for technology vendors specifically, Ignition’s added value covers everything from education and training to channel enablement and partner acquisition. “We provide an extension of the vendor in every area that they need it; we offer pre-sales support, we offer post-sales support, we offer consultancy, we offer marketing, we offer lead generation. We truly are, or can be, an extension to that vendor in every area, especially for younger organisations that may not have all the resource they need. “These organisations may be getting a little more conservative in terms of headcount, but because they’re still expected to grow at the same rate, they need to leverage other resources. This plays to our strengths with our solution selling, that one plus one equals three approach, being able to work with one vendor and bring another one into the conversation to widen the audience.” Challenges and opportunities Remnant considers himself lucky to work in the technology industry, which continues to be remarkably resilient to the challenges facing the wider UK business community. “I’ve been in this industry for 32 years – I have to look at LinkedIn to remember what my job history was – and over the years technology and cyber have always been fairly resilient. We’ve seen peaks and troughs, but with those peaks and troughs, we’ve seen opportunity. Today, organisations can’t afford to have a technology deficit in cybersecurity. They can’t afford not to invest year-on-year because if they just sit back they will become a victim.” Recruitment is one requirement that Ignition, like every other organisation, does find challenging, but ever the cautious optimist Remnant thinks even the skills shortage could be easing. “Depending on what you read, there’s a deficit of three or three and a half million people with cyber skills. I think everyone’s finding it a challenge to find the right people. In the next year or two, we might see a slight change in that. We’ve seen redundancies in a lot of the big tech companies that are retrenching a little, which I think might alleviate things. That’s my personal opinion. But, yes, right now, it is difficult getting the right people and keeping the right people.” When pressed for other challenges, Remnant thinks hard before suggesting vendors that don’t want to commit completely to the channel but would rather use every available route to market. “The channel typically only works if there’s trust and transparency,” he says. “Other than that, I think we’re in a pretty good spot.” www.ignition-technology.com team, how they’re funded, what their burn rates are, that whole diligence piece. I think that is going to be even more important in the next couple of years, when we might see some consolidation of younger vendors or a slightly different business model of investing after revenue instead of before.” Added value Remnant says that Ignition’s success doesn’t just come from its ability to keep picking the right vendors, but also from its ability to keep providing and demonstrating value. “Distribution and the channel have changed quite considerably over the last two or three years and there are now many more routes to market: we’ve got MSPs, we’ve got agents, we’ve got software companies providing marketplaces, we’ve got the hyperscalers. Distribution has become an orchestrator in the middle of all those different routes to market, all of which must demonstrate value.” Demonstrating value is a fairly amorphous concept, so what does it mean in the context of distribution? “It means we work hand in hand with partners in terms of end user lead generation; we will happily shoulder-toshoulder sell with our partners; we will go into end users with our partners to help evangelise and educate them on what’s available, which is of value to our partners, end users and vendors; we will tie solutions together to make one plus one equal three. Instead of going in and talking purely about BeyondTrust, we’ll talk about BeyondTrust, Sailpoint and Okta, and how they connect as a solution. “It’s a bit cheesy, but added value is about providing hyper-care for our vendors and hyper-care for our partners and Today, organisations can’t afford to have a technology deficit in cybersecurity. They can’t afford not to invest year-on-year because if they just sit back they will become a victim continued...
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