'There will be a shift in cybersecurity spending rather than a slowdown' - Exclusive Networks UK boss
Distributor’s UK boss opens up to CRN on acquiring companies to build out its services skillset and why he is optimistic for double-digit growth next year
Cybersecurity spending by businesses will see a "shift" in focus rather than the slowdown predicted by analysts, according to Exclusive Networks' UK boss Graham Jones.
The pandemic has led to uncertainty as to the state of IT spending next year, with some analysts forecasting a dip in spend on cybersecurity, particularly after the initial rush to secure infrastructure set up to facilitate remote working.
But Jones said that tightened IT budgets will cause business leaders to re-evaluate where they spend their money and that he has seen cloud access security broker (CASB) software and Netskope's offerings "take off" with customers.
"I don't think we'll see a slowdown, but I think we might see more of a shift now," he explained.
"We've seen a lot of it in the SD-WAN space with the move to cloud everywhere and people at home. You've obviously got IoT and OT worries about what edge devices are coming in and what devices are now in the network and if they can be trusted.
"There's a lot of stuff that has shifted, but we're seeing that cybersecurity is holding up. The only thing that we saw slowing down a little bit is some of the venture capital (VC) backed vendors - where the VCs have maybe throttled back investment. Cybersecurity, datacentre and cloud are our three circles, but from what we're seeing we're still in a good place."
Earlier this week Exclusive announced that it had acquired UK-based DevOps and containerisation specialist Nuaware. The addition of its offerings plays into the distributor's strategy of growing its services portfolio.
"We had a general chat with them just before Christmas last year and we saw this was a 90 per cent services-based company with real potential to scale if they had the backing, and could also take us into that DevOps and containerisation market," Jones elaborated.
"As a distributor, yes, we can sell the product and make our margin and the channel could sell the product and make their margin. But this is an operation that is actually almost pulling it through the channel and they are doing it really well."
Exclusive is also on the hunt for other opportunities that will allow it to build out its services offerings, Jones said.
"We are looking for more services opportunities and we want to build out the group's services," he stated.
"The strategy is to do more services on top of the traditional value added distribution bit and these guys are great services enablers.
"We've got the distribution capability and they've got the skillset and its now about how we can best maximise that. Nuaware allows us to start looking at how we can build more services in that area and help them scale, and they can help us with the street cred in the DevOps market."
Jones is anticipating double-digit growth next year as vendors become more optimistic about navigating the challenges of the pandemic.
"We've just finished our budget phase for next year and we're budgeting for double-digit growth," he said.
"I've spoken to a lot of the VPs in the last two weeks about next year's budget and nearly every vendor is thinking much more optimistically and most are recruiting again, so I'm mildly optimistic."