Leveraging its vast installed base of Sophos Endpoints and the integration capability of Sophos Central, channel partners can upsell Sophos MDR and offer MSP services for enterprises. Combined with attractive deal margins offered by Sophos, Jason Ellis says partners have brought opportunities worth a billion dollars to the vendor.
For Sophos the biggest change in its product portfolio is the emergence of its security as a service, Managed Detection and Response, MDR offering. With a growth rate of 54% and an overall contribution to business of between 20% and 25%, Sophos MDR is its fastest growing offering. A key growth driver for the Sophos MDR business is its vast installed base of Endpoint customers.
“We have over half a million Endpoint customers across the globe, and those customers are struggling to have the expertise to be able to monitor their software,” says Jason Ellis, Vice President Channel Sales EMEA, Sophos.
“Software is not enough. You can have all the software in the world, but unless you have got the people that can monitor it and identify threats, it is not sufficient,” continues Ellis.
Sophos enterprise customers purchase the Endpoint software licenses and then purchase the Sophos MDR licenses. This ensures they are supported round the clock and across the year. Sophos MDR also has connectors into the multiple cybersecurity products from alternative vendors that may be operating at an end customer’s installation.
“We can take the logs from those products into our MDR service. From a partner’s perspective, that means they are able to go into a customer’s environment, and they are able to say we will just put a connector onto them. It is difficult for the partners to say, rip out that technology, but they are able to say, we can offer an extra level of security,” elaborates Ellis.
“Some of our largest customers will have Sophos Intercept X, our Endpoint solution. But what they are also doing, they are adding MDR to that solution. It really depends on whether they have got monitoring capability or not,” continues Ellis.
All Sophos solutions, including its Managed Service Provider, MSP solutions, are available on a single integration platform called Sophos Central. Sophos Central, allows escalation of an enterprise incident to be forwarded either to the trusted channel partner or directly to the enterprise. This depends on the initial MDR setup and the technical competency and certification of the Sophos partner.
“All our technologies snap into Central. If you are a customer, you can see your Endpoint, your Firewall, your encryption, or any services that you have, all from one place,” says Ellis.
Sophos Central can also synchronise all security solutions from different vendors that usually do not talk to reach other. “If you have got different solutions on the Sophos Central platform, then they will all be talking to each other,” says Ellis.
Partner programme
Built on three foundational pillars of profitability, partnership, and product the Sophos Global Partner Programme is designed to adapt to the unique needs of today’s next-generation resellers, managed service providers, and cybersecurity experts.
The structure of the Sophos Partner Programme remains the same as in previous years. It is a classic model of Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Authorised tiers. According to Ellis, it has remained the same as previous years, “Because partners like predictability.”
However for channel partners, the Sophos Partner Programme has a strong attraction because of the margins that it offers, and in return channel partners have brought significant opportunities to Sophos.
“Our partners, have shared over a billion dollars’ worth of opportunities across Europe, Middle East and Africa, and the reason they are doing that is because they make an incredible amount of money,” says Ellis.
The deals brought to Sophos by partners are protected by the deal registration process and annual renewals by incumbency protection with additional discounts. Incumbency protection is good for Sophos channel partners, because then the partners can make one sale, and have got a good chance of making the next sale as well.
In months ahead, Sophos is building an accreditation programme around its MDR product to acknowledge the development of skills by channel partners. This will help to bridge the gap between Sophos and the enterprise customer.
“If I look at our business in Europe or Middle East, 80% to 84% of our business, will be sitting in the sub 1,000 enterprise employee size,” says Ellis. While Sophos does play in the large enterprise space, it is important that that majority of its business sits in the sub 1,000 enterprise employee size, which can be addressed by local channel partners.
Partner Care programme
Partner Care is a new offering, which is a part of the Sophos Global Partner Programme that features a dedicated, 24×7 team of Sophos experts who handle non-sales related questions and operational support. The offering is designed to speed up response times for Sophos channel partners and Managed Service Providers needing assistance with administrative and operational tasks.
“We created a team some months ago, who are dedicated to helping partners with administration type of tasks,” says Ellis. For example, I need some help with quotations, or my license activation does not work, can you help us?
Sophos is providing a 24×7 help desk to get routine administration tasks done in a faster way. The Sophos Partner Care programme has generated a CSAT score of 90%.
Go to market
There are two primary go to market initiatives for Sophos and its channel partners. Ellis says Sophos is very Firewall dominated and has been asking channel partners to sell across the platform rather than just one solution.
“We are doing a Firewall refresh. There are a lot of customers out there with our XG firewall, and we are asking our partners to upgrade them to XGS.”
For enterprise customers, MDR is an immediate requirement, with the shortage of security skills, especially in Middle East and Africa, being a driver. And therefore for Sophos a strong partner message is to push MDR as that is an immediate customer need. Sophos has 22,500 enterprises using its MDR platform.
“We have lots of Endpoint customers that can just add MDR. We are seeing MDR take off, because it could be deployed in an afternoon. It is up and running and customers are protected,” says Ellis.
Sophos is positioned in the Gartner Magic Quadrants for both its Endpoint and Firewall products. Inside Europe, Sophos has 10,000 channel partners who are transacting with the vendor every quarter.
MSP programme
Sophos has been supporting its MSP business for nine years and is not new to the MSP market. It is encouraging channel partners to start looking at the MSP business since that is how customers want to be managed. It has onboarded 3,500 MSP partners across Europe, Middle East and Africa, out of which 10% are based in Middle East and Africa. For interested channel partners, Sophos provides an MSP platform and an MSP programme.
Sophos MSP partners can manage their enterprise customers through a single dashboard, that is through the Sophos MSP platform. This includes their Endpoint, Firewall, and MDR license usage and consumptions.
Sophos Central is also available as an MSP offering. The MSP partner gets a window on Sophos Central to manage each of the enterprise customer’s environment. They can view each enterprise customer’s environment and can deploy the required service action or required solution into their environment.
Ellis points out, “A lot of vendors out there have a licensing programme, but they do not have a platform where partners can manage their customers.” For Sophos the MSP Partner Programme is also a buying programme.
Elis does not consider that Sophos has competition in the MSP market space that it operates in. “The reason why I say that is because I do not think there is anyone that has Firewall and Endpoint on the same platform. There are MSP vendors that have Endpoint and there is definitely MSP firewall, but very few have both.”
