Forcepoint competitor on why it scrapped its EMEA strategy to 'start again'

iboss EMEA VP tells CRN that he sees no point in the vendor entering into competition with its partners

Born-in-the-cloud cybersecurity vendor iboss is seeking 12 UK partners after scrapping its EMEA strategy to "start again", according to EMEA VP Craig Talbot.

Talbot explained that iboss has had a presence in Europe for the past five years and previously worked in the region with a distributor that catered to the education market.

That partnership ended several months ago and the vendor wants to "start again" with its go-to-market strategy in EMEA.

The US-based firm was founded in 2004 and provides web filtering, malware protection and data loss prevention to customers.

Talbot is looking for "no more" than 12 managed security service providers (MSSP) and VAR partners that can continue iboss' growth in the education sector and bring the vendor into new markets.

"We are going to start with where our focus traditionally has been, which is the UK," he said.

"People in the team have had EMEA titles and EMEA remit but really the activity has been UK-centric with a smattering of opportunities driven by customers outside the UK market.

"Right now we will be locking down the UK and getting it up and running in the next six months, and in H2 FY19 we'll be looking to expand into the Nordics and other European regions."

Talbot specified that he is not looking for transactional partners yet, but rather those that will be "proactively engaged" in the co-sell with the vendor and helping it deliver its brand and message to customers.

Iboss started out catering to educational organisations, but now works with commercial and enterprise customers in the US.

Talbot took up the role as EMEA boss last month, and has previously held global roles at VMware and NetApp.

The VP is hoping to reflect this strategy in the UK, where the company will adopt a single-tier distribution model.

The vendor has opened an office in London and is concentrating on "nailing" down the UK market before expanding further into Europe.

Talbot revealed that plans for expansion into the Nordics and other EMEA regions were under way, but that the UK is central to any further expansion.

"We already have a budget locked down so that we can put small, local teams into those markets once we have proven results in the UK," he said.

"Trying to go across Europe straight out of the gates would be a mistake and that is why we are focusing on the UK and looking at other innovative markets, like the Nordics, and then perhaps France, Germany and the Middle East."

Iboss counts Forcepoint, Symantec and Zscaler among its competitors but Talbot says its differentiation is that iboss has the ability to work in the traditional datacentre as well as the cloud.

"We have some legacy competitors that are hardware-based providers to the market and they do everything that we do, but do it with an appliance that sits in the datacentre and the challenge is that the datacentre perimeter is no longer valid," he said.

"We differentiate ourselves by offering a cloud-based born-in-the-cloud service which matches the expansion of bandwidth and software applications that are now residing in the cloud for SMB, the enterprise and education markets.

"Zscaler are a cloud-only play but we have the ability to drop services into customers' datacentres as well as in the cloud."