26 CYBERSECURITY 01732 759725 With Lance Williams, Chief Product Officer, Distology it to provide partners with an expanded range of services. To find out more about what sets Distology apart, Technology Reseller met up with Chief Product Officer Lance Williams, who has just celebrated his two-year anniversary at Distology after 16 years at Softcat. Technology Reseller (TR): For readers who may not be familiar with Distology, please could you give a quick overview of the company and explain how its approach differs to that of other distributors. Lance Williams (LW): Distology is a European cybersecurity solutions provider and distributor. I put the words in that order because we're focused on developing a capability to serve people who need help with cybersecurity solutions, and we happen also to distribute. The channel is persisting with a vernacular that has suited it for the last three decades, where you have definitive lines between the vendor, the reseller and the distributor, but the world is changing due to the fast evolution of the cybersecurity threat. Our entire brand is disruptive because we're a solutions provider that sells through the channel. Calling us a distributor instantly puts us in a pigeonhole, when in reality we have a specialist sales team that in partnership with the solutions engineering team can talk to end customers and qualify opportunities on behalf of resellers and vendors, as well as a great alliances and marketing team and now a highly reputable services team based in Berlin. A large organisation like Softcat might have 2,000+ employees, but if they don't have a deep specialism in identity they will need support from a company such as Distology to provide specialist support during conversations with their customers. A smaller organisation, like Highgate IT Solutions, a focused IT reseller, may require assistance from Distology in alternative ways, such as providing technical skills to help with customer calls. That capability is central to what Distology is today. TR: Isn’t what you offer what some people would call value add? LW: It is, and we would happily take on the VAD acronym. However, that too has been damaged over time. Every distributor wants to call themselves a VAD, but hiring a pre-sales person to cover 200 vendors isn’t value – it's just somebody who struggles with technical depth of expertise. And in my experience a lot of distributors still don’t open themselves up to support resellers with their customers. There are pockets of brilliance, particularly amongst smaller specialist distributors, but I know from my time at Softcat how frustrated I could get with the distribution channel in general. I joined Distology because I saw they were on a disruptive path. TR: What else attracted you to Distology? LW: I wanted to leave Softcat, which I joined in 2005 when it had around 100 employees, and work for a smaller company, so I got in touch with Hayley, who I‘d known for 12 years from her days working at Altimate (later bought by Arrow), to ask about up and coming vendors. Instead of recommending a vendor, Hayley surprised me by inviting me to join Distology instead. The reason for the move really resonated with me. She said: “Lance, I want you to come here and make your imprint on Distology because I want to build something that feels more special than your average IT company. I know everyone says that, but I genuinely mean it. I want people who don't necessarily know they want to work in the technology sector to feel included and welcome, and to do that we've got to make a very diverse place and embrace people from all walks of life.” Coming from a huge company to somewhere much smaller where you can make a difference and see that difference happen very quickly was a big attraction. June 1 was my two-year anniversary at Distology and I can safely say my time here has been everything I thought it would be and more: we've made an acquisition; we've gone into Germany; the Netherlands is going well; we’ve got a services business we didn't have previously; and we’ve got really, really great people. I love working with Hayley and the rest of the leadership team. Distology has been making waves – and winning awards – since it was founded as a specialist cybersecurity distributor in 2014. From the outset, CEO Hayley Roberts and her senior management team have positioned Distology as a disruptor with a distinctive approach and ethos. Today, it specialises in distributing solutions across three main areas underpinned by identity: workplace security (Okta, Yubico, IRONSCALES, Jamf, Echoworx); multi-cloud security (Okta, Auth0, Fortanix, ThreatX, Cyolo, Vercara); and cybersecurity operations (LogRhythm, Okta, Auth0, Verkada, Drata, Harbor, WithSecure). In March 2021, the company’s European ambitions received a boost with investment from mid-market private equity firm NorthEdge, which has enabled it to grow its Benelux operations, including a move to new premises in Utrecht, and, in September 2022, to acquire Squareball, a Berlin-based software engineering firm with a strong focus on identity and access management. Squareball, now called Distology Studios, not only gives the distributor a foothold in the DACH region but also a 10-strong team of experts in software engineering, product design and solutions architecture that will enable Q&A Lance Williams
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