PARTNERS ’ PERSPECTIVE
The deals brought to Sophos by partners are protected by the deal registration process and annual renewals by incumbency protection with additional discounts . Incumbency protection is good for Sophos channel partners , because then the partners can make one sale , and have got a good chance of making the next sale as well .
Sophos MDR also has connectors into cybersecurity products from alternative vendors that may be operating at an end customer ’ s installation .
Partner Care programme
Partner Care is a new offering , which is a part of the Sophos Global Partner Programme that features a dedicated , 24 × 7 team of Sophos experts who handle non-sales related questions and operational support . The offering is designed to speed up response times for Sophos channel partners and Managed Service Providers needing assistance with administrative and operational tasks .
“ We created a team some months ago , who are dedicated to helping partners with administration type of tasks ,” says Ellis . For example , I need some help with quotations , or my license activation does not work , can you help us ?
Go to market
There are two primary go to market initiatives for Sophos and its channel partners . Ellis says Sophos is very Firewall dominated and has been asking channel partners to sell across the platform rather than just one solution .
“ We are doing a Firewall refresh . There are a lot of customers out there with our XG firewall , and we are asking our partners to upgrade them to XGS .”
For enterprise customers , MDR is an immediate requirement , with the shortage of security skills , especially in Middle East and Africa , being a driver . And therefore for Sophos a strong partner message is to push MDR as that is an immediate customer need .
Sophos has 22,500 enterprises using its MDR platform .
“ We have lots of Endpoint customers that can just add MDR . We are seeing MDR take off , because it could be deployed in an afternoon . It is up and running and customers are protected ,” says Ellis .
MSP programme
Sophos has been supporting its MSP business for nine years and is not new to the MSP market . It is encouraging channel partners to start looking at the MSP business since that is how customers want to be managed . It has onboarded 3,500 MSP partners across Europe , Middle East and Africa , out of which 10 % are based in Middle East and Africa .
Sophos MSP partners can manage their enterprise customers through a single dashboard , that is through the Sophos MSP platform . This includes their Endpoint , Firewall , and MDR license usage and consumptions .
Sophos Central is also available as an MSP offering . The MSP partner gets a window on Sophos Central to manage each of the enterprise customer ’ s environment . They can view each enterprise customer ’ s environment and can deploy the required service action or required solution into their environment .
Elis does not consider that Sophos has competition in the MSP market space that it operates in . “ The reason why I say that is because I do not think there is anyone that has Firewall and Endpoint on the same platform . There are MSP vendors that have Endpoint and there is definitely MSP firewall , but very few have both .” •
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