CRN Channel Awards - Finalist Q&A with Rachel Rothwell, Senior Director – UK&I, France, Italy, Spain at Zyxel Networks

Rachel Rothwell talks being a finalist at this year's CRN Channel Awards

Why do you think awards like the CRN Channel Awards matter?

It’s important to set high standards in our industry and to recognise companies and individuals that have really delivered outstanding results.

What would winning this award mean to your company?

It would be a tremendous achievement for every member of our fantastic team and for all of our partners as well. Winning the CRN Vendor of the Year Award in 2025 was a big step forward for us and our channel – one that made everyone sit up and take notice, and to believe in what we are trying to achieve. Winning again this year would add further impetus to the amazing commitment and dedication of our team and our partners.

What would you say is your company’s proudest achievement over the past year?

Two things come to mind. Helping even more partners to establish their own functioning, viable, and effective remote managed services business with our Nebula platform; and establishing Zyxel Networks as a recognised player in the network security market.

What have been the biggest challenges of 2025 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?

For partners the challenge is always getting the balance right between continuing to support their existing customer base and exploring and developing new areas of business that will bring in additional revenue streams and secure their future. Zyxel Networks enables them to keep on growing their networking solutions sales, whilst also building their managed services and cybersecurity value propositions. Our unique partner programme, which rewards partners not only for selling more products, but also for building their managed services customer base, is playing an important role in doing that.

How do you think the industry has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

More partners are now convinced and committed a managed services future. There is a genuine belief that automation and AI can really change the way that networking partners do business. That we can make configuration, installation, and management easier and more efficient for customers and for ourselves. And that we can and will do more. I’m genuinely optimistic for 2026.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

I see continued and growing opportunities for MSPs with our Nebula management platform and with our security solutions. Zyxel Networks is now recognised as a key player in both of these areas, and that’s something we will build on with our partners. WiFi 7 has a significant growth potential in 2026 as businesses switch their attention from upgrading laptops to modernising infrastructure. 5G will continue to grow. We expect the hospitality and education markets in particular to be big areas of opportunity for our partners and we’ll be supporting them in driving sales in those areas.