Specialism: Cybersecurity
Key vendors: Heimdal, CyberSmart, KnowBe4, Hornetsecurity, Sendmarc, Octiga, Keeper, Rootshell, Redstor, Conceal
Revenue: £18m* (runrate) (+20%)
Headcount: 42
Having more than doubled headcount since 2019, this North Yorkshire-based cybersecurity VAD now has its sights set on breaching £25m turnover the 100 staff mark.
It has seen a surge in DMARC [domain-based message authentication, reporting & conformance] adoption this year, Sales Director Angus Shaw tells us (see below).
“The rise of DMARC has been like nothing we have seen before”
Quickfire Q&A with Sales Director Angus Shaw
What is Brigantia’s sweet spot?
We work extremely well with small and mid-market MSPs who are generally owner run. We have a growing business within the PE-backed MSP community, due to the expertise and outsource services that we can provide to them, as well as a growing business in the larger, more traditional VAR space.
Which product, service or vendor has stood out for you in 2024?
The rise of DMARC [Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance] has been like nothing we have seen before – Sendmarc have made waves in the UK channel and, in partnership, we have reached where we’d expect to be after two years, within eight months, with the great team at Sendmarc.
If you could change one thing about your business at the stroke of a wand, what would it be?
Bandwidth! We have so many ideas, so much talent to implement these ideas… but time is the limiting factor to us all. We are committed to continue to invest to reach our lofty ambitions and support the growth of our entire partner community.
When will the UK distribution market return to growth?
I think the traditional distribution market has an evolution to work through before it returns to consistent growth. The rise of marketplaces is really interesting and something we are staying close to – there are pros and cons to everything. Those distributors who can evolve and find a place, providing tangible and continuous value to partners (both customer partners and vendor partners) will be the ones that grow.
Name one area of your business where you are expecting to add staff in 2025
We are regularly adding sales and marketing heads but we will be doubling down further in our partner marketing department in 2025. We launched a new initiative with our vendors which we aptly named “Partner Toolkits” which we will be developing further throughout 2025. These are aimed squarely at helping channel partners sell more to end clients, speaking a language that non-technical, business owners can understand!
At its Channel Forums EMEA in October, Canalys characterised AWS Marketplace as one of the world’s largest distributors, owing to its growing third-party software business. On balance, do you agree?
Yes. To me, although many don’t like it, a marketplace is a distributor – just part of the new world that we find ourselves in. Does a distributor, in time, have to be a marketplace? That is the question… that all comes down to perceived value.
If you could be a fly on the wall for a day at another distributor, which would you choose?
I have always been interested in what our cousins on the telecoms side are doing to speed up the inevitable merging of our two channels, so to learn more about how they really see things I would choose Gamma, Giacom, or a similar firm.
See who made the wider Oxygen 50 Must-Know IT Distributors 2024 here.
