Illumio to light up UK & Ireland business with first distribution partnership

Ignition will be Illumio’s first UK&I distributor as the vendor aims to double business in the region

Zero-trust segmentation and ransomware containment vendor, Illumio, is announcing its first UK and Ireland distribution deal with Ignition.

The deal comes as the US-based vendor has seen positive growth in UK&I in the last few years and is aiming to double investment in the region.

"Illumio has always had a channel-first vendor strategy, especially in the UK&I," said Adrian Crawley, VP EMEA sales at Illumio.

"In the current complex hybrid environment, many organisations have focused on replacing VPNs and figuring out identity to connect people.

"However, they are realising they also need to contain potential breaches and ransomware attacks, which continue to rise despite security investments.

"There is growing concern over the potentially catastrophic impacts of ransomware. This highlights the need to think differently about prevention as well as containment."

Gartner identified microsegmentation as a major growth area, Crawley explains.

"They expect deployment to increase from five per cent of enterprises today to 60 per cent by 2026 - 12x growth.

"We're seeing explosive channel demand reflecting this. Although we have doubled resources and investment for pre-sales training, we still need an in-depth, broad approach. We remain specialist-focused, not broad market."

He says that while the company has strong strategic resellers and alliances in UK&I, it needed a strategic distributor to support overall growth.

"Ignition is SAS-focused without shipping hardware, suiting our needs. We expect massive growth in UK&I over the next few years.

"Ignition's strengths made them an ideal strategic partner to help us achieve this."

Dave Risk, UK & Ireland country manager at Ignition Technology adds that many Ignition partners have have been discussing zero trust for a while.

"Zero trust has become an overused phrase in the industry, but for us it's an approach, not one specific solution," he explains.

"We already had technologies like identity access management and privilege access management. But we lacked zero trust segmentation, which is a rapidly growing area.

"A lot of our partners need help with bringing these newer technologies to market.

"As a distributor, we offer traditional distribution services but also provide added value by supporting partners on their enablement journey.

"We handhold them with end users in early phases, taking the customer through the full solution journey start to finish. This helps the partner understand how to upsell the solution."

He summarises that Illumio's zero-trust segmentation addresses a high-growth market with lot of partner demand, and it fills a gap in the "zero-trust story" that partners need.

Going local

When asked about the reasoning behind choosing a regional partner rather than a pan-European distributor, Crawley explains that Ignition was chosen based on its expertise and ability to deliver on the specific needs of our solution.

"This is very much a services-led solution, so there is great potential for our channel partners to wrap their own services around our offering.

"Rather than a broad, generalist distributor, we required a specialist distributor that can provide targeted services and support at the local and regional level.

"Ignition fits the bill as a best-of-breed distributor for the UK&I region."

He also argues that Ignition has scale across EMEA through its parent company Exclusive Networks.

"This gives it the backing to continue growing while maintaining focus on our niche.

"We feel Ignition strikes the right balance - specialist support and services for the UK&I market with the breadth enabled by Exclusive on a global basis."

2024 loading…

As the New Year approaches Crawley makes a simple objective for 2024 - doubling everything.

"We've got to just double everything we do. That's the kind of high-level expectation that we have within the region.

"If you double the investment, you need to double the outcome, so we're seeing that as a key driver."

As for emerging challenges, Crawley explains that impending compliance deadlines like UK NIST 2.0 and EU CSID mandate stronger segmentation by end of 2023 to mitigate ransomware threats.

"Budget restraints mean customers need clear ROI and total cost justifications to change approaches.

"As disruptors, we must showcase how Illumio and Ignition can save organisations money versus traditional but ineffective security models.

"Education is also essential - the ‘sign of madness' is repeating the same actions but expecting different results.

"Partners must outline new approaches to drive better outcomes more efficiently."

He says this will lead to increased scrutiny and multiple sign-offs for purchase approvals, with a focus on clear ROI especially given current UK economic landscape.

Risk adds that the proliferation of many new technologies trying to penetrate the market across different capabilities and customer segments will be a big trend in 2024.

He also argues, "solutions will be getting purchased but then ripped out 12 months later because proper skills and services were not there to drive adoption and value.

"This is why we place major emphasis on building deep technical and services capabilities - both for our own team and in enabling partners to do the same.

"Without this expertise to drive customer success, deals end up displaced a year later or fail to deliver ROI.

"The market moves quickly so it's critical to have implementation skills and delivery mechanisms in place right away to translate technologies into real outcomes for customers.

"Lacking this, partners struggle to extract value, leading customers to eventually abandon solutions."