Fortinet UK boss opens up on distribution shake-up

The network security vendor has just moved from a single to multi-distributor model in the UK with the signing of Arrow. UKI regional director Paul Anderson talks through the rationale for the move

You've traditionally operated a sole-distributor model in the UK, working with Exclusive Networks. What's the rationale for signing Arrow?

We've had a relationship with Exclusive Networks for a very long time. That doesn't change. They've been a very good partner of ours. This is really about extending the reach and capacity we have to work with the partner community.

It's actually not 100 per cent accurate to say we worked exclusively with Exclusive - but it's effectively right. When we acquired Meru, Exertis were a Meru partner and there was a period of time when we were doing business on a particular product line with them. And Arrow had had in a similar way a very restricted relationship with us for some time. But the idea now is to move from a single-distributor model, to having both Exclusive and Arrow.

How long did the RFP process last, how many distributors did you speak to, and why did you pick Arrow?

The process took about six months. We got down to a shortlist of three which we took to a full process. We chose Arrow because they aligned most strongly with our current priorities. In some ways Arrow are quite like Exclusive. They're very strong in terms of talking to a broad part of the community, both at an SMB and an enterprise level, but where they're ahead of the game is their platforms in cloud.

We want to increase our reach across the partner community. Our partners enjoy working with us and we have a very strong relationship with them, but my sense is we need to expand the number of partners that we talk to and that was really the driver.

How many partners are you looking to add?

In broad numbers there are around 800-1,000 partner today that form that ecosystem and the goal is to expand that to 2,500 to 3,000. But to put some context around that, it's in SMB that we're really trying to drive growth of partner numbers. It's about increasing the volume of people that know about Fortinet and have us as a preference as a brand.

To what extent is this appointment about giving existing partners a choice of supplier?

Whenever you have a single-distributor environment you always hear a bit of noise from some partners where they're saying ‘I'd like some choice'. I would hope as a result of this we can maintain the quality of service our partner community receives, but also give them a bit of choice. But the decision to bring on a second distributor was not because we thought there was a problem in our partner channel. It's more about growth.

Where are the growth hotspots for your partners right now?

We're being conditioned that cloud is the answer to everything, and I don't think it is.

There are very few customers I've spoken to who are going to be completely cloud. Most people's infrastructure is very much hybrid. And I think that in people's rush towards talking about the cloud and saying ‘we're a cloud-first vendor', sometimes we've missed that businesses aren't quite like that and that we need to support the whole environment.

Secure SD-WAN is a topic we're seeing a huge amount of reciprocation in. There's a lot of people talking about SD-WAN, and then the conversation after that is ‘how do we secure that'. So that's an area we're seeing a lot of growth in.

Is coronavirus having any impact on lead times for your channel?

At the moment, we haven't seen any issues in terms of manufacture or logistics. One of the challenges is that with the nature of global media today we magnify issues really quickly - and that in itself can create some problems. What's important for vendors like us is to work with our partners and customers to try and plan as well as possible. If we've got impact in one area, how can we potentially use a different area? How do we ensure we're getting ahead of the issues of making sure stock is available when people need to roll out projects? It does complicate life. And I suspect it is going to be a bit of challenge.