‘There will be constant changes for the better’: Distology CEO on new year strategy
Hayley Roberts is focusing on partnership all while considering buyouts
As Distology is closing its last quarter of FY24, the company already intends to “galvanise” its strengths in 2025 through constant changes, partnerships, and maybe even acquisitions.
These potential reshuffles will come at a time where “the threat landscape is constantly changing,” Hayley Roberts, CEO of Distology, tells CRN.
More than just being part of this cybersecurity evolution, Distology wants to drive it, as shown by the addition of cybersecurity vendor Halcyon to its portfolio last month.
“Halcyon are exciting for us, because while people talk about AI security - and that's a big future growth area in cloud security - anti-ransomware is massive.
“It's still a major problem for many large organisations.
“While a lot of other players try to fix that, Halcyon really does fix it.”
But while this deal was made rather smoothly, such isn’t the case with all companies.
“There are times when you find some great, interesting vendors, and times when you have to work really hard to get them out to market,” says Roberts.
“Often it can be to do with the timing of the market, or whether the vendor is ready for the channel or not.
“We do a huge amount of due diligence on that and we're doing some really exciting things, from an incubation point of view, for some vendors.”
The distributor might also move towards more mergers in the future, as the CEO says she is “not ever going to rule out acquisitions.”
“Acquisitions are an interesting area for us.
“We have looked at popping the hood in every area and where we need to craft and grow.
“We've got some exciting things that are coming.
“We’re looking at having experts coming in to help us understand what is out there.
“We’re also exploring the ecosystem ourselves by looking at what makes a good vendor-distributor partnership, and by helping our VARs, our partners, our system integrators, and our MSPs to do more with their customers.
“But even if I wouldn't rule acquisitions out, I wouldn't say they are our key focus at the moment.”
Whether it will be through partnerships or buyouts, the distie is planning on broadening and strengthening its activities outside the UK and into the heart of Europe.
“We have the Benelux, and we are really starting to focus more on the DACH region by growing our German proposition,” Roberts tells CRN.
“That's slightly slower, because it's a bigger area and we need to get it right.
“We’re going to look at the Nordics as there are already opportunities there for us.
“We just need to make sure we get it right.
“We're not going to go into regions just because it looks good, we're going because the blueprint of regional growth works.”
End of FY24 and beginning of a new one
While most companies have already started their 2025 financial year, Distology is getting near the end of its last FY24 quarter, as the UK-based distributor is currently focusing on “getting the sales in” and making sure it “improves on last year.”
“We've got a lot of good things going on, and there's a lot of different revenue streams in our business, one of which is a fairly new one; SDR as a service, which is proving extremely successful.
“That is where we do end-user lead generation; vendors pay for the service, and we do win back campaigns, vendor data churn, new market lead gen, MQL follow ups, that kind of thing.
“We've got three vendors who have already signed up for it.
“That’s an in-house service that we do both here and in the Benelux.”
When looking into the next financial year, the distie wants to focus on “galvanising” its strengths in the areas it has “managed to create in the previous year.”
“We're always looking for the next opportunities that will add value, and that is where we're going to be focusing next year.
“There will be constant changes, but all for the better, and all to service our partners.”
But as this year has already been marked by different events, such as the launch of DeepSeek, the rise in tariffs imposed by the US, or the global IT spending predicted to ramp up almost ten per cent, CRN asked Roberts whether she saw other trends impacting the channel in 2025.
“AI is going to be talked about continuously.
“It's the new thing everyone's raving about, even though it’s not that new.
“But lots of vendors are developing in the AI security field, which is wonderful.
“It's a really nice thing to be aware of, and we're doing a lot of work on it.
“I don't think it'll see the boost in sales yet, but it’s at least a couple years away for now.
“I think we're still going to be talking about ransomware.
“Email security is another huge growth area, even though we've had lots of iterations, we still have the problems with email security that we've always had, and increasingly so.
“It’s something we need to watch.”