technologyreseller.co.uk 15 partnership with Stormshield is to radically grow the UK&I market for them. TR: How are you planning to work together to maximise the opportunity? DR: In the early stages of this partnership, because Stormshield is owned by Airbus, there was lots of paperwork and compliance to go through, but we got through that. It was a great experience. I and Brandon Madeley, our Head of Tech, who’s been pivotal in getting this relationship off the ground, have both been over to France to the head office. We’ve met with a lot of the team; we’ve done strategy meetings; we’ve put all of that into a business plan; and we’re now engaging with partners. We’ve launched our proof of value concept to the channel, which is all about giving our partners the opportunity to touch and feel the device. They test it for 30 days. We help to onboard them. We support them as well. Once they understand the technology and are comfortable with it, we have a commercial conversation and get them to a position where they can have more meaningful and better conversations with customers. We’re not talking about firewall refreshes. We’re not talking about vulnerabilities. We’re talking about this being a unique sovereign approach for the UK&I market with an established distributor that’s been doing this for a very, very long time and with the backing of Stormshield who have also been doing this for a very, very long time and are experts in the field. TR: How might the partnership develop in the future? DR: The leadership team at Stormshield has real ambition to expand into the UK&I market. They see it as a big growth opportunity, and we’re excited to be part of that. I’m confident that this relationship will grow in strength as we move forward. Stormshield has lots of exciting technology that’s available today, with more on the horizon. JP: The conversation today is about firewalls. But, in the future, I see partners growing with the other solutions I mentioned – data security, mobility. That’s how I see this relationship developing. in America can access your data without your knowledge. That’s why our services supporting the firewall and other products are only hosted in Europe. The second way in which we ensure sovereignty is by investing in certifications and qualifications provided by independent third parties. We are certified and qualified by the French Cybersecurity Agency, the ANSSI, and by other countries like Spain. We are also approved by the EU and NATO. We are the only firewall vendor to have this level of certification and qualification. Our code is the only file code reviewed by a third party, the ANSSI, and that is a strong marker of trust. We speak a lot about zero trust – trust nothing and then gain proof of trust. I believe that proof of trust from a national agency is important, especially when it’s from multiple agencies. Lastly, we know that our customers don’t just use a firewall; they use different cyber security solutions and IT products that have nothing to do with cyber security. To help raise the level of sovereignty for customers, we try to develop partnerships with other European vendors so that the customer can achieve a true sovereign architecture. TR: This must enable resellers to have different conversations with clients. JP: Choosing Stormshield allows resellers and MSPs to have a very different message, with a strong value proposition around trust and sovereignty. If they are a European company, they can provide the customer with a fully sovereign and trusted offer featuring our products with their own services on top. For resellers and MSPs, sovereignty is an opportunity to make the strategic choice to be less dependent on foreign organisations and to keep control over the tools you use and the data you have. You could say that’s a vague fear but just look at what happened when Anthropic announced its advanced AI models Mythos 5 and Fable 5. Within a few hours, the US government decided that non-American people and nonAmerican organisations shouldn’t be allowed access to them. Maybe in the future they will decide that some security solutions or updates shouldn’t be made available to certain companies. By choosing Stormshield, partners are investing in a long-term solution that doesn’t carry the risk of being disabled or made less efficient due to uncontrolled foreign decisions. TR: Dominic, are your resellers talking to you about sovereignty? Dominic Ryles (DR): It’s a big focus for us. Some of the regulations and supply chain obligations that are coming into force, both in the UK and Europe, are forcing a very different conversation from a customer perspective, which is working its way through to the channel and to distribution and the vendors themselves. In the firewall market, over the last 18 months there have been many issues with other firewall brands, vulnerabilities that have been detected, data breaches, attacks. A firewall is the backbone of any organisation. Irrespective of whether people are working in a hybrid or a fully remote location, you still need a firewall, and to have that level of vulnerability is a serious problem for a lot of organisations. There are also challenges around refresh cycles, which are becoming even shorter. Customers are having to keep pace with more frequent refresh cycles, and everything that’s happening from a geopolitical perspective, such as supply constraints and rising costs, are detrimental to that. There’s a huge USP for us in terms of that refresh cycle, which is often shortened due to the reliability of firewall devices and the technology underpinning them. What Julien’s said about ANSSI certification and Stormshield’s underlying technology has helped partners unearth opportunities with customers. It’s almost creating an additional revenue stream and giving them a different way to position a conversation with customers. Stormshield’s broad reach across different markets and verticals, from B2B organisations to defence and aerospace and everything in between, is giving our partners more opportunity to enter different markets as well. TR: How does Stormshield’s portfolio fit into your wider product offering? DR: We’ve got 26 or 27 years’ experience distributing next generation firewalls. It’s our pedigree. It’s what we’ve always done. So we have highly skilled sales and commercial people that know exactly how to position that broader Stormshield offering. Then, from a pre-sales and post-sales tech support perspective, we’ve got people that understand this technology implicitly, so we’re able to support partners in either creating a second revenue stream or, in some instances, replacing their current firewall vendor. Our mission moving forward in this joint CYBER SECURITY This is an edited version of an interview recorded in the summer. You can watch the video in full on the Technology Reseller website at www.technologyreseller.uk
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