Dave Ellis, VP at distributor Tech Data covering mobility and security solutions, interviewed by IT Europa editor John Garratt at the Channel-Sec event last month:
“There's a lot of questions about how can people enter the market. How can they enter in a way that reduces barriers and at as low cost a point of entry as possible with the reduced risk levels?”
“There's no doubt that there's a big opportunity within the SMB market. I think that traditionally a lot of the security channel has always focused on the on the enterprise, and I think there's a growing appetite and a growing need to focus on the SMB market, to do new things.”
“Companies or hackers are attacking companies there are they're just looking for weaknesses. Whether a two-man company or a two-thousand-man company if you have a weakness you're potentially at risk.”
“I think the there's opportunities for both existing services providers [within resellers] or as a separate practice. Some provider could be offering some managed unified comms in which they want to add some security or someone that focuses on security selling manage security to overlay an existing infrastructure. I think the key thing is really that in that environment a customer is buying a service and the business outcome rather than technology.”
IT Europa: “What's holding things back? I'm hearing from a lot of people they're finding it very hard to recruit any expertise in this.”
“I think the cyber skills gap is well publicized. You know we we know it's an issue. We know it's an issue globally. And I think from a channels perspective obviously we can try and fill that gap. You know there's also a sort of a vacuum in skills then and then the channel as well that needs addressing. So I think Tech Data can do a number of things. I think we can help educate the channel. I think we can offer services to augment what our partners are doing to fill that that gap.”
“Education is a key thing here. And maybe the channel can align themselves with establishments such as universities to work more closely to run programs in terms of graduate recruitment, apprenticeships and so on. There's a number of things that we as a collective channel can do to help that skills gap.”
IT Europa: “And what's the value of getting people together of this sort of event?”
“For me I think it's all about sharing ideas. It's about networking. I think you are using other people's experience. You know that there's been some really good speakers this morning.”
“I've taken a lot away from that as well. I've picked up quite a lot of useful insights and things that I probably wasn't considering in the past so far. For me, really it's attending an event like this: there's so much expertise and so much experience and people looking at things from slightly different perspectives as well which allows you to build a broader picture and view. So I think, for a channel partner that's either in this market looking to extend what they do or looking to enter the market I would have said today has been really invaluable for them.”
