Infinigate CEO on growing MSP business in the UK

Distribution boss says the UK will be a target market this year

Infinigate is looking to bolster its ranks has it grows its MSP business in the UK, according to CEO Klaus Schlichtherle.

speaking to CRN's sister title Channel Partner Insight, the CEO of the Swiss security VAD Infinigate has named recruitment as his top priority, but specifically focused on the distributor's cloud MSP arm.

Since acquiring German cloud and MSP tools distributor Acmeo in October 2018, that unit of the business has delivered 25 per cent of Infinigate's revenues.

In its FY2018, group revenues were €527m (£446m)

To grow that, Schlichtherle is planning to roll out the MSP business in four more of its 11 countries this quarter.

"We have just signed a lot of vendor contracts in this area, and are starting now in France and in the UK," he said.

"And we're basically generating our first [MSP] revenues in those two countries. It's small revenues at the moment, as it is the beginning, because that's the nature of the business. But the growth rates for our MSP business [in Germany, Austria and Switzerland] has been really spectacular, so we have a couple of people on it to build it in the UK and France, and we're in the middle of recruiting customers."

The heart of Infinigate's MSP business remains in Germany.

Schlichtherle added that the VAD has recently built momentum in adding vendors to the MSP business there.

That's in contrast to the experience his sales team faced last year.

At the time, Schlichtherle told CPI that some of his vendors were "wary" about embracing the distributor's monthly billing model.

"The MSP cloud business model is so different to, let's say, the on-premise license business. It took a while to have a mutual understanding on what is the opportunity and risk in that business model," he said.

Schlichtherle is confident that having overcome this hurdle, the increased roster of vendors in Infinigate's MSP stable "will show in our numbers".

"We're also bringing legacy Infinigate members into the MSP and we're seeing really good progress already."

Up next will be entering the Nordic and Benelux MSP markets.

"We will enter those markets in spring time. And those plans are also well underway," he said.

"All the technical prerequisites which we need, in terms of platform and portals, are being put in place in the different languages."

However, in Schlichtherle's view, his key 2020 priority hinges on the ability of the VAD to recruit enough qualified staff.

"Our plans means recruiting the right people. And that's our biggest obstacle because of our value-add distribution model. It requires keeping the technical skills on pre-sale and post-sale training certifications; basically a lot of technical people."

"And that's actually already meaning some countries grow faster than others because we're struggling to hire."

However, Schlichtherle's is still optimistic about the cybersecurity market in 2020.

"I think it's going to be another strong year because there's a real need out there to have all companies and even individuals, secure their data, their infrastructure, and network and firewalls, etc.

"I see people predicting that there's another eight or nine per cent growth happening because of that, naturally. And then obviously, we want to grow double that."

This article first appeared on the website of our sister title Channel Partner Insight