SecureData toasts double-digit growth as co-opetition grows

Role of vendors and resellers becoming increasingly blurred, SecureData CEO argues as his firm closes books on fiscal 2014

SecureData chief executive Etienne Greeff said he has noticed a rise in "co-opetition" between security vendors and resellers as his firm registered a double-digit hike in sales and profits.

The security services outfit, which is busy building its own intellectual property portfolio, posted a 20 per cent jump in revenue to £27.2m for its financial year ending 31 July 2014.

EBITDA leapt by 26 per cent to £2.9m as recurring revenues generated 55 per cent of sales.

Talking to CRN, Greeff (pictured) said the roles of security vendors and their reseller partners are increasingly becoming blurred as they stray further onto each other's turf.

SecureData, which has made two services-focused acquisitions in the past 12 months, is positioning itself as a provider of "tech-enabled services" in this new world, said Greeff.

"Everyone is trying to play in everyone else's space so there is less distinction between who does what," Greeff said.

"For instance, FireEye bought Mandiant, which is a consultancy that competes with channel partners. Websense has a cloud offering and, although it's sold by resellers, that's something the service providers used to provide. There is absolutely a convergence between vendors and service providers – as well as distributors – in this space."

SecureData followed up its January 2014 acquisition of rapid response services outfit SensePost with its August purchase of Paterva, whose tools are designed to allow users to extract and analyse large amounts of data. SensePost and Paterva's technology can be used to provide a managed overlay to the traditional third-party security technology SecureData sells, said Greeff.

Just 18 per cent of SecureData's revenue was generated by products in 2014, with 18 per cent coming from subscriptions, 27 per cent from consultancy and 38 per cent from managed services.

Greeff claimed the local knowledge possessed by resellers and services firms will give them the edge over vendors as the lines continue to blur.

"If you are providing managed security services, you need to have local knowledge of the customer's environment and the threats they face," he said. "This is very difficult for a vendor providing it out of a single datacentre in the US to do."