'We had to rework our portfolio for the UK' CEO of Middle Eastern distributor on the firm's second UK launch

Spectrami CEO Choudha says acquisitions are on the agenda for security-focused firm

Middle Eastern VAD Spectrami has revamped its strategy to take on the UK market, two years after making its entrance into the space.

Established in 2011 with a focus on security, Spectrami launched in the UK in 2016 after securing investment from multibillion-dollar Abu Dhabi-based investment fund KBBO.

At the time, CEO Anand Choudha told CRN that he was "bullish" about growing the company's operations across both the UK and Europe.

Two years on, Choudha now says that the aggressive strategy that led to Spectrami's success in the Middle East did not work as well with the UK market.

"We tried to bring in that same approach from the Middle East to the UK," he explained to CRN.

"We hired a team of people here, but that wasn't very fruitful because this market is more mature and moving towards the cloud."

The VAD also had a different working relationship with vendor partners in the two regions, which led to it having to carve more of a niche for itself in the UK.

"One thing that we learned was that all the vendors that we had initially launched from the Middle East had been very successful and already had existing relationships with other distributors in this region," he said.

"So we had to rework our portfolio for the UK market in a way that made us unique to be able to go to resellers and contribute to their growth.

"We revamped our product portfolio for this market which is more in line with what the market needs and we continue with that legacy of bringing in unique and niche tech to the space."

The CEO previously stated that he was gearing up for an acquisition spree in the UK.

However, no acquisitions have been made by the VAD, though this is not for the want of trying, according to Choudha.

"We evaluated a few distributors that were in the market but then we could not find the right fit in terms of either the business portfolio or the valuation," he said.

"We have seen a lot of acquisitions happen in the last few years and there aren't many up for grabs - either they are very early start-ups that have yet to figure out their model, or else they are very big companies.

"We are still reaching out to anyone and everyone who thinks they align with us and can grow the business together."

Choudha has brought on Jason Dance, former sales director at Exclusive Networks, as executive director of Spectrami UK, along with Sean Fane as its UK MD.

It has an office in Bracknell which will be the base for its EMEA operations, and is currently on the hunt to fill eight positions.

Spectrami counts LogRhythm, CrowdStrike and BlackBerry among its vendor partners in the Middle East, and works with Authlogics, Datera and Peer Software in the UK.

"Our portfolio is geared towards this world of containerisation and enterprise cloud orchestration and how enterprises cope with the demands of scaling a flexible infrastructure that supports the demands of their users," said Fane.