Technology Reseller v40

technologyreseller.co.uk 25 INTERVIEW emerging technologies and bringing them into their portfolios so that they can better support end user customers wanting to reduce the number of cyber security suppliers they have to deal with. “To be an ideal partner for our existing vendors and our existing partners, we really need to be able to engage early with new technology that comes out or that one of our existing vendors acquires – because all of our existing vendors are acquiring to build out their portfolios as they go forward. At Nuvias, we need to be able to go from early engagement through to scalable acceleration; in the UK, having Cloud Distribution in an emerging space and giving them more bandwidth to scale beyond what they have been able to do in the past and pull in this scalable platform of Nuvias as a line of sight in supporting partners, a line of sight in supporting vendors.” Nuvias was already doing this to an extent, but it was not an existential imperative as it is for Cloud Distribution. Its and understanding which partners can help make that happen. What must I be able to do to close that business? How will I support it with a vendor that might not be very streamlined from an operations point of view? “Cloud did very well in developing some of these opportunities. They introduced Meraki into the UK. There was a time when 80% of their business was Meraki. Then Cisco bought Meraki and they lost it because, guess what, they were not perceived to be the right partner for Cisco going forward. This turned out to be a real boon for Cloud because it meant they had to go out and find a replacement, and that was a cornerstone in their development as a business. Having to go out and find alternatives to replace an existing revenue stream built them into what they are now. That early engagement and ability to drive net new, is what they have done very well.” England adds that these capabilities are particularly important in the highly fragmented cyber security space where there is a constant turnover of new threats and new solutions, from start-ups and from existing vendors that are acquiring supply chain model. “In 2019, as I came in, we were still on the tail end of some of these operational changes. For example, the system implementation of 2018 didn’t work very smoothly, as is often the case. Implementing a new ERP system and transitioning from an existing system to a new system across four different businesses was a big project, as you can imagine. We are now coming out of that and heading into Phase Two of our strategy.” So, what does Phase Two involve? For England, a key priority, on the cybersecurity side especially, is the ability to engage early with emerging technologies, to generate momentum from a standing start and then use the scale and relationships of Nuvias to accelerate adoption. Hence, the attraction of Cloud Distribution. “Cloud has a track record of introducing new technology, introducing emerging technology from a very low start point. If you are coming in without water already flowing down to get that mill wheel turning, you need to go and make that happen, by understanding the use cases UC side has really picked up. Obviously, anything that sits in a branch office was impacted – voice-as-a-service, including handsets, and, on the UC side, things like Poly gear that would have been sitting in a meeting room. Those parts were affected. On the other hand, just look at what Zoom did. We are the Zoom partner, so we are set up here for a lot of further growth. We have got aggressive growth plans in our UC business because of that. We are going to be expanding this year a lot on the UC side.” Future growth “We think there is a major opportunity for growth as businesses come back because there has been a slowdown in investment in what goes into physical offices. We don’t believe offices won’t be needed any more or that people are going to be coming in with a laptop and connecting with their mobile phone and won’t need an office network. We don’t think that will be the case. “Instead, we think there is going to be a strengthening of IT spend as companies come back. The pandemic has led to an acceleration of companies’ digital transformation plans and we don’t think they are going to row backwards on that. I do think there is going to be a desire to support more home working, which will be in addition to office working. And I think people will want to keep some of the virtues of this virtual business model. On the collaboration side, there will continue to be a real surge in the number of video conferences, so there will be movement of video equipment into home offices and also back into offices.” continued...