Mimecast recently announced a new partnership with Exclusive Networks, a global cybersecurity specialist distributor, with over 500 Mimecast resellers across the UK and Ireland set to move to Exclusive Networks. The new partnership aims to enable more companies to protect against cyberattacks and keep pace with a complex and evolving cyberthreat landscape.
To ensure the partnership’s success, Exclusive Networks will be extending its specialist Mimecast Channel team by an additional 15 people. This team aims to help drive efficiency, market presence, business development, and sales and marketing.
Mimecast said this partnership announcement forms a key pillar of its growth plans across the UK and Ireland, the Middle East, and Israel. Tom Corrigan, the company’s director for distribution and systems integrators in EMEA, spoke to Comms Business about what this new approach means for Mimecast’s partners here in the UK.
Efficiency and acceleration
When asked why a different approach was needed, Corrigan explained, “We looked at several key initiatives and what we’ve been thinking about is: how can we help our channel help their customers to work protected, but do it in a way that’s incredibly efficient?
“This is about accelerating business development, driving sales and marketing initiatives and also giving our partners a world-class experience. Our expectation was that if we give our partners a world-class experience and the technology that Mimecast delivers, the channel will respond.
“That’s why we decided to launch the two-tier partner programme, and Exclusive Networks is an excellent organisation and we’re very much looking forward to working with them.”
The next step
Corrigan added that formalising Mimecast’s relationship with a distributor is about taking “the next step with the Channel”. He explained that Mimecast wanted to partner with a pureplay global cybersecurity distributor and said, “This is important for a couple of reasons but mainly, if you look at a customer’s environment, the customer uses many technologies.
“Customers use a whole portfolio of technologies to give themselves defence in depth across their threat surface. Working with a distributor who carries a broader cybersecurity portfolio allows us to take solutions to those customers that are wider than our own.
“Whilst we’re fantastic across three surfaces [people, communications, and data], the customer has wider surfaces to protect as well. It’s hugely important that we show up together. We can then support through the Mimecast mesh, which is how we connect our technologies to other [vendor’s] technologies, to give a customer defence in depth, and also help the customer to maximise their investments in their cybersecurity estate.”
Next gen collaboration
The security landscape, Corrigan explained, is headed in this direction. He said, “If we look at where alliances are going in the security landscape, particularly around extended detection and response, or XDR, this is the next generation of integration and collaboration between vendors to give customers a world-class defence posture across their estate.”
In terms of why Exclusive Networks is the right partner here, Corrigan said, “[They] carry a portfolio of XDR vendors that are relevant for us. This is important in terms of distributor selection, but we also looked at their proven track record in scaling vendors both locally and globally, as well as the investment they’ve put forward to extend our already successful channel team by 15 people.
“These added resources and the skills that they bring means we would expect the channel to grow faster, drive more demand, and reach more customers who we can help ensure are protected.”
Moving from a one-tier to a two-tier partner programme can be a transition for existing partners, but Corrigan said the feedback so far has been “overwhelmingly positive”. This shift, Corrigan explained, is all about helping partners grow faster, easing doing business through a “narrower supply chain”, as well as giving partners “extra resources that they can use to fuel their own growth”.
This interview appeared in our November 2022 print issue. You can read the magazine in full here.