Exclusive Networks’ fresh status as the UK&I’s first €1bn cybersecurity VAD is an “important” development for resellers, its regional boss has claimed.
UK MD Rob Tomlin was last week handed a beefed-up role at the Paris-headquartered cybersecurity VAD, which was taken private in December.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Tomlin revealed that the Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, Rubrik and Netskope distributor’s UK&I revenue runrate recently breached the €1bn mark.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a cyber distributor in the UK and Ireland that’s gone over the €1bn trajectory – and we’re growing at pace,” he said.
“I think that’s important to resellers because that’s where the market is at.
“Partners used to spend a lot of their time figuring out how they would refresh customers’ datacentres or transition them to cloud.
“They’re still doing that, but actually the more important task customers are asking about now is, ‘how are you going to protect my data and ensure I’m not the next headline?’.
“Our job is to help enable, train and skill partners every day, and the numbers we’re achieving are only possible because of the great work our partners and vendors are doing.”
“More mainstream than ever”
Exclusive is “having a good time of things” as cyber continues to move up the boardroom agenda, Tomlin claimed.
“The world of cyber has gone more mainstream in the last year or two than it’s ever been before,” he explained.
“It’s the number-one priority for the channel, and for CIOs and CISOs. None of them wants to be the next person to have their business stop – if you walk into Marks & Spencer today, literally there’s still not as much food or clothes on the shelves as there was three or four ago.”
Before its ownership change in December, Exclusive had said it was on course to grow 2024 gross sales by 10-12% on the €5.15bn it generated in 2023.
Its UK&I business is currently growing “at double digits – and not just early teens”, Tomlin revealed, however.
“I don’t think people know how big Exclusive are,” Tomlin said.
“We’ve got a large support and services business, which is very unique in the world of distribution.
“Exclusive is doing cybersecurity with specialism, at scale.
“There are definitely unique cyber distributors who are smaller, but no one does it at the scale we’re doing it.
“You could add up our three or four nearest competitors – your Arrows, Westcons, Distologies and e92s – and they’d be the same size as us in cyber.
“And we’re just getting started – we have a multi-year strategy to add more services and automation to help our partners achieve the opportunity that’s in the market today.”
Dutch courage
Although still running the UK&I, Tomlin was last month handed a wider Northern European brief that also encompasses Benelux, Nordics and Baltics.
“I spent most of my youth in Holland and Belgium and did Dutch Dutch GCSEs,” Tomlin revealed.
“We are market leaders in most of those countries, but what I’m excited about is bringing the Exclusive experience and standard we’ve been building out for a number of years across EMEA at scale to some of those countries.”
Fresh from perusing the stands at last week’s Infosec, Tomlin said Exclusive sees three emerging cyber hotspots in the form of AI, OT security and platformisation.
“Platformatisation is a word that Palo created, but now everyone seems to be doing it,” Tomlin said of the latter.
“We’re seeing CIOs wanting to have fewer vendors and consolidate their platforms onto one – but that still drives ecosystem.”
OT security growth is being turbo charged by growing recognition among organisations that they are only as strong as the weakest part of their supply chain, Tomlin added, meanwhile.
“We’re seeing a number of new entrants into that market and are signing a lot of them,” he said.
Hyperscaler marketplace hopes
Echoing recent noises from Westcon, Tomlin said hyperscaler marketplaces are becoming an “important” strand of Exclusive’s business (it is on both AWS’ DSOAR and Azure MPO pilot programme).
“The opportunity we found on AWS is to help our resellers understand how we start the journey as an AWS opportunity, versus being there at the end of the journey when a customer decides they want to retire some of their commitments,” Tomlin said.
CrowdStrike recently became the first vendor to publicly announced it had sold $1bn via AWS Marketplace in a single year, with the likes of Palo Alto Networks, Splunk and Snowflake not far behind.
“A number of our larger vendors are hosted on AWS and are seeing very large deals go through that marketplace,” Tomlin said.
“Over time you’ll see us being more vocal about the business we are writing in AWS, but it’s exciting.
“Part of the reason we’re seeing that double-digit growth is we’re seeing SMB and midmarket adopt more technology because they know they have to – but we’re also seeing big customers write very big deals. The amount of seven- and eight-figure deals being written year on year is growing at pace.”
Tomlin said he knew cyber “was the place to be” when he quit Dell to join Exclusive last March.
“I think my decision to join Exclusive has been vindicated,” he concluded.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
