Distology’s CEO says she’s “more ambitious than ever” after overhauling its technology and sales strategy.
The Stockport-based cyber VAD – which ranked 25th in Oxygen’s 50 Must-Know Distributors 2024 – will celebrate 10 years in business at its company-wide kick off tomorrow.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen ahead of the event, CEO Hayley Roberts revealed that Distology is poised to unveil a new technology strategy and begin tiering its vendors, and has also overhauled its sales model.
Despite it recently “smashing” the £60m revenue barrier, Roberts acknowledged that Distology was forced to “go back to the drawing board” following two years of tough market conditions.
“I’ve popped the bonnet on every single department and had a look at what’s going on,” she said.
“We had a great ship in some very calm seas, but the last couple of years have been challenging.”
“You’ve got to have some degree of focus”
Distology’s new technology strategy will see it pare down its focus areas within a cybersecurity sector Roberts characterised as vast.
A new taxonomy based around workplace security, cyber security operations, operational technology and product security will help Distology “navigate where we’re going and the story we tell our resellers”, Roberts said.
“Most distributors when they start just put any vendor on their website to get traction – as I did,” she said.
“But the cyberspace is huge, and I think you’ve got to have some degree of focus.
“We are doing a lot more proactive work now in terms of getting the right technologies in to fit this taxonomy.”
The vendor hitting “amazing pipeline growth”
Vendors will also now be split into three tiers which command different levels of resource across all departments.
Okta, Yubico, Verkada, Exabeam and OPSWAT will occupy a top ‘scale’ tier.
Featuring the likes of LastPass, Radiflow, GYTPOL, Halcyon, Cyolo and Drata, the ‘Accelerate’ tier is where Distology is witnessing the highest levels of growth, Roberts said. A ‘Develop’ tier will sit below that.
“Ransomware is still a massive factor, so Halcyon are hitting some really amazing pipeline growth, and we’re seeing growth in Drata on the GRC [governance, risk and compliance] piece – because there’s still a lot of regulation and compliance that’s needed,” Roberts said.
“Privileged access management has been ticking along for a while but I think will see a resurgence, and email security for me is another big one and there are a couple of interesting players coming to market.”
“We’re still massively in growth mode”
Finally, Distology has restructured its sales team to focus on three audiences in the form of vendors, partners and end-users.
The latter segment features an outsourced SDR (sales development representative) team that can generate end-user leads for vendors, Roberts stressed.
“It’s proving incredibly successful to the point that it’s a very significant revenue stream for us now,” she said.
“We dipped backwards like a lot of companies, but not enough for it to be a problem. It was more of a chance to rethink and change the internal dynamics,” Roberts added.
“We’re still massively in growth mode. I’m more ambitious than ever and have an awful lot of plans around our UK expansion, geo expansion and making sure our revenue streams are multifaceted, like with the SDR team.”
Beating rival disties to vendors “90% of the time”
Backed by PE house NorthEdge since 2021 and with overseas arms in Benelux and Germany, Distology competes in a security VAD space that also features the likes of Kite Distribution, Ignition and e92plus, as well as large multi-nationals such as Arrow, Westcon-Comstor and Exclusive Networks.
How often is Distology now beating its rivals to the punch on the market’s most sought-after cybersecurity start-ups?
“I would say 90% of the time we will win those contracts if we’re up against another distributor,” Roberts responded.
“The only times we don’t is if they need a wider presence than we are at the moment across Europe.”
Although IT distribution is being disrupted by the rise of marketplaces, the channel’s middle tier is “going nowhere”, Roberts insisted.
“What we’re seeing that’s quite interesting is a lot of vendors are now going to boards and suggesting they want two-tier before they actually go out and find the distributor. They’re actually selling that idea,” she said.
“I gave my comments on the whole Pax8 thing, and they were probably more comprehensive than they should have been, but – you know what – marketing stunt or not, distribution isn’t going anywhere.
“[People] talk about distribution going away or becoming less important – and AWS [Marketplace] – but I think we can all co-exist in a world that needs scale.”
Distology – which introduced an apprenticeship scheme last summer – is now “doing a lot better” when it comes to internal promotion, Roberts added.
“Everyone now buys into what that looks like, which makes the scale possible. I don’t want it to be just about me – I never did – and I’m becoming less and less involved in some of these key relationships – which is brilliant.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
