Simon Taylor, regional channel manager, Middle East and South Asia, nCipher Security, shares regional plans and discusses partner opportunities in the cloud era.
Can you give an overview of nCipher Security?
nCipher’s cryptographic solutions secure emerging technologies such as cloud, IoT, blockchain, digital payments, and more. These solutions help meet new compliance mandates with the same proven technology that global organisations depend on today to protect their sensitive data.
Can you elaborate on the business objective and channel strategy?
I manage the Middle East and South Asian markets from a channel point of view. At nCipher, we are striving to educate how best to develop solutions from a business point of view, always with an underpinning foundation in security.
nCipher Security was acquired by Entrust Datacard earlier this year, which boasts a 50-year legacy of developing solutions to protect businesses and individuals. As a 100-percent channel driven organisation, we cater across all verticals because security is critical in all industries.
Historically, we used to operate in a single-tier channel model. However, over the past four years, we have migrated to a two-tier model. We work with distributors such as Arrow (which has recently been acquired by Mindware) and Credence Security.
Microsoft has recently opened data centres in the UAE. How can partners double up their cloud game and how will this impact the region?
This is quite positive for the region. It shows that one of the world’s biggest IT organisations is buying into the developments of the UAE for digital transformation. It reinforces the stability of the country as open for business on a global level. What it means for the channel community is that they now have a huge opportunity to strengthen their cloud offerings. They should dive deeper into their end-user base to become more of a trusted advisor and understand the actual business drivers beyond just the technology ones. By doing so, they will be able to help our customers to migrate into a cloud platform, which gives the ability and agility to take their business to the next level. Partners can come in with second-tier resources and technologies, which can enhance their ability to increase their revenue and aid customers to move to cloud securely.
When you talk to your partners, what are some of their common challenges and how can they best sell your solutions effectively in the digital era?
Some resellers will have a big challenge in moving away from the technology side. Moving to the cloud is not a decision that the IT department makes. It is much more of a C-level boardroom discussion because they need to evaluate business agility, cost savings and factor in the importance of security at all stages. The IT department’s role will be to help implement the solutions. The challenge from a channel point of view will be to stretch their existing relationships and begin to build a better profile of the organisation at a more senior level. They can then work with customers ensuring that security is just as important as the ability to transform their operations to a cloud-based one.
Can you elaborate on your plans for the region?
The market is going to see us doing a bigger push on our sales end. We are working closely with Microsoft and our partners and customers can expect to see us growing the business together. Microsoft view our relationship as absolutely key within the Gulf region to grow their Azure consumption. The market potential is huge and we are going to tap into that as we enable government organisations and enterprises to move their sensitive data into a cloud format.
We also have plans to increase our reseller network. I believe it’s a real opportunity for Microsoft resellers to come to us because we have additional revenue streams, and allow them to underpin greater consumption of the Azure platform. So that’s a real reach out from our point of view that they should be talking to us more.
