Michael Frisby on Infinigate Cloud progress and European expansion

Frisby chats to CRN about the group’s goals to drive M365 and Azure business in the SMB space

The skies are clear for Infinigate Cloud's growth ambitions one year after it was acquired by Infinigate Group and rebranded from Vuzion in April.

The merger resulted in what was dubbed the "industry's first" value-added distributor which combines cybersecurity and cloud services.

A year on from the deal, Michael Frisby, senior vice president of cloud services at Infinigate Cloud speaks with CRN about business opportunities for the road ahead.

Frisby reveals the group has grown more than 20 per cent year-over-year from a revenue perspective, claiming its core business has exceeded market growth to boot.

He adds the former Vuzion business sees healthy traction around Microsoft 365 in the security space, and a lot of excitement around new AI features from Microsoft, around which Infinigate Cloud is working with its resellers to help get them AI ready.

The SVP says these opportunities, specifically in the SMB space, are what he sees as the company's bright spots.

"There's high penetration of Microsoft 365 out there today. If you look at the corporate and enterprise space, there's high penetration of subscriptions in that world. But it's more of a mixed bag in the SMB world," Frisby says.

"I think the opportunity around driving more cost effective security solutions around things like Microsoft 365 Business Premium, is a big opportunity.

"The adoption of Azure is still relatively small in the SMB segment where we focus, and there's still a huge growth opportunity of helping customers modernise their IT infrastructure and moving that into the cloud."

Infinigate Cloud's three-pronged growth plan

Outside of the growth strategy around technology, Frisby explains his expansion gameplan operates across three axes.

The cloud distributor wants to grow its number of vendors significantly over the course of the next 12 months, having already added the likes of Barracuda, Hornetsecurity and WatchGuard this year.

"We've also been significantly increasing our reseller reach. We've gone from around 600 resellers at the time of acquisition and have now transacted with over 1,100 resellers in the space of that year as we started to work with some particular new vendors and going into new markets," he says.

"And that third piece is the new markets. We've got our secure cloud proposition that we're operating with the Infinigate UK team, taking natural synergies of both of us being in the UK.

"We've launched the Infinigate Cloud business in Switzerland, that's the first step of a broader plan for the DACH region.

"Germany's still about 40 per cent of the Infinigate Group's overall business and so making sure that we're bringing that secure cloud proposition is super important.

"We've got plans in place and with announcements coming around moving into the Nordics and also Benelux so it's been a busy year."

Infinigate Cloud's challenges

Frisby explains that the biggest obstacle his group needs to overcome is simply being able to deliver on the big ambitions he has set out.

"The biggest challenge for us is delivering everything we want to in the timeline we want to deliver it.

"Making sure we bring the right people in is always a challenge and so we're constantly adding people every month into the business.

"But ultimately, the biggest piece is just making sure we deliver what our ambitions are because we've got pretty big ambitions we're aiming high as a business and want to get there really quickly."