Exclusive Networks: From distributor to cybersecurity orchestrator in APAC

“A good thing is that we are cybersecurity specialists and we only focus on cybersecurity. So, it gives us a lot of advantages compared to a generic distribution company or generic distribution-focused competitor that does everything,” says Bennett Wong, Senior VP of APAC, at Exclusive Networks.

When it comes to cybersecurity, Exclusive Networks is known globally as the go-to-market cybersecurity specialist that provides partners and end-customers with a wide range of services and product portfolios via proven routes to market.

With customers in over 170 countries, the French distributor’s vendor portfolio is curated with leading industry players and combines a local perspective with the scale and delivery of a single global organization.

In the Asia Pacific region, Exclusive Networks continues to see a strong demand. While the region is much more diverse compared to other markets globally, Bennett Wong, Senior VP of APAC, at Exclusive Networks shared that the distributor wants to be even more prominent in the market as a cybersecurity ecosystem partner for a lot its vendors and partners.

“We are present in 10 different markets, which includes Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and India. When we look at the general participation rate for cybersecurity growth, it's hovering between 12% to 14% from a quarter-to-quarter basis. The growth rate continues to be high, especially now with AI workloads. There's no stopping cybersecurity adoption across the market. So, the opportunity is really huge,” Wong said.

With its APAC headquarters in Singapore, Wong explained that Exclusive Networks has also invested in its head count, growing its team in the region, as well as enabling more partners and vendors in their go-to-market.

“We're also invested in capabilities for pre-sale solution architecture and delivery capabilities across the region. This is supported with a center of excellence or what we call cyber labs to do centralization of proof of concepts (POCs) and demos. We also have training and enablement capabilities for customers. These are all paid training and real certification. So, we're training customers in cyber technology adoption and how to administer or use technology for cybersecurity,” he added.

More importantly, Wong stated that Exclusive Networks should not be seen as just a generic distributor.

“We are a pure cybersecurity specialist distributor. We don’t do anything else outside of cybersecurity. So, our focus is just that,” he said.

Speaking to CRN Asia, Wong also hopes that partners in the region will recognize the distributor more, given the investments made in the region, which are not just relevant but also bringing a lot more intrinsic value to both partners and vendors.

“We want to continue to expand on that. We have a good foundation and a good base. We have a good portfolio and have a very strong partner ecosystem and partner base. Our goal is really to bring real value and being a critical part of the cybersecurity solution offering to the market,” Wong said.

“And being a specialist, we want to be able to share more and give back to the market where the trends are, and what's happening and what our partners should be considering when they talk about cybersecurity to their customers. We want to be on that journey to help our partners transform and help them to adapt to all these changing needs of cyber,” Wong added.

What follows CRN Asia’s conversation with Wong in Singapore. Do note that content has been edited for clarity.

Can you tell us a bit about the cybersecurity vendors Exclusive Networks partner within the region?

There is a group of core vendors that probably will drive a large part of the cyber budget consumption in the market. Then you will start to see emerging vendors coming up offering specific solutions that some of these core vendors may have gaps in and there could be a market bias towards some of this.

We don't have a hard target or a fixed number to say well; we want to stop at 100 vendors or something like that. We don't have that hard target. What is important for us is to look at what the market demands are and how the partners are telling us as well as what the end-users are telling us, especially when we reach out to a lot of these end-users.

We don't transact with end-users, but we work with these end-users to bring them on board in conjunction with our partners. We also take that market feedback, and we look at where the opportunities are and with the trends that we think the marketplace within our existing portfolio fits.

I intend to continue to remain to have a lot of agility in the market, to focus on the outcome and that's what we want to focus on. And what drives the outcome of the end-users to our partners is where we want to go after.

Once we have that focus, then whether we have a hundred vendors or we have a thousand vendors, it doesn't really matter because all this is supposed to drive the right outcome for the end-users. And that's our primary goal.

If the end-users are successful, I think we will have the right solutions to offer. A lot of the end-users are also now consolidating how they use cybersecurity.

As a global distributor that works with a lot of cybersecurity vendors, how is that “Exclusive”? Can everyone get a share of the pie in your growth and expansion plans?

Having been in the distribution business for a long time, this is the typical question that we always get asked by a lot of vendors. The model for us is that we are not the IP owners of this technology. The vendors own the IP, but we own the route-to-market. Through Exclusive Networks, the vendor has a opportunity to increase the chance of sustaining the market through our route-to-market capabilities. That's what we do.

In order for us to do so, we have dedicated teams that are dedicated to the vendor's success. These teams are all measured and accounted for only the vendor's revenue target setting that we agree with the vendors.

Secondly, I think all vendors, even in a broad market, will have their own different priorities, focus and the way that they want to approach the market. We want to make sure that it's very generic.

I think every vendor is also different in their approach. We don't think that there will be conflicts, but I think the market has also got its preference. If you look at, even though there's a lot of platform discussion in the market, a lot of standalone vendors continues to be relevant in the marketplace today.

It's not one or the other. Customers will continue to look at best of breed solutions. That's where we come in. We want to be able to bring the best breed offerings to the market, regardless of whether it's a standalone solution or platform discussion.

Our team will want to look at it. What's the use case? Where is it located? Is it a hybrid cloud? Is it on-prem? Is it cloud-native? Is it a digital-native customer? How do we support and propose different solutions that will work best in that customer environment through our partners?

Our job is not to tell the partner or the customer which is a better vendor. All solutions will work, but rather, in that different application, it's the best offering to take to market.

But customers would normally ask and would need guidance from you guys, right?

In cybersecurity, we look at the customer. What sort of customer deployment scale are they looking at? Is it a country's deployment? Is it regional deployment? Are there far larger markets that try to deploy?

Secondly, we also look at the existing infrastructure or deployment they really make in the environment. Third, we also look at these customers. What is their deployment application workload? Where do they sit? Do they sit in the cloud? Is it a hybrid environment? Or is it an on-prem requirement?

From there, we want to be able to advise customers, based on the current environment that they have, what would be the most appropriate or most relevant solutions for them to adopt and consider. And that's where our team comes in.

Naturally, I think using Gartner Magic Quadrant top right-hand box is always a very safe way for a CISO to make a decision. Many times, it will feed. There is actually a broad base of so-called cyber vendors who definitely have a space to play with across the different offerings that the customers are looking for.

But there will also be a specialization that sometimes such a solution will work better in their customer environment. And ultimately, I think having that skill set, that knowledge, doing a POC and a demo will also help customers to define what they think would be the right solutions.

When we go to market, we often find that through our partners, the end users may think that this is the best solution for them. Until when we go in, when we do a demo, a POC, and based on the workload applications that they're trying to secure, then they realize that its very different.

And I think it's a journey of discovery for end users themselves, through our partners and through us. And our job is really, with a broad portfolio of offerings, to go out to market and help our partners to define and curate that.

Looking at the acquisitions and consolidations in the cybersecurity industry, how does this impact your strategies with customers?

A good thing is that we are cybersecurity specialists, and we only focus on cybersecurity. So, it gives us a lot of advantages compared to a generic distribution company or generic distribution-focused competitor that does everything.

So, because we're so deep in cybersecurity, we tend to have to see the first movement or even anticipate the first movement of any trends, changes or direction change. That gives us the first level advantage.

I also think it's good that some of these vendors are consolidating. And the reason they're consolidating is because of platform play. They see a lot more gaps, and it's faster to acquire, to build capabilities than maybe to self-develop or to integrate with their own offloads. So, I think it's good for us and it's good for the whole industry.

Because a lot of these vendors that are doing the acquisition tends to be very large vendors who already have a broad big customer base. And by acquiring more capabilities into their portfolio, they are now able to bring a broader so-called ease of deployment to their cyber customers, which I think is good for the industry.

The third thing is that we also start to see that as technology evolves, there could be another new wave or evolution of threats. As AI matures, you need to have a different set of solutions.

But at the same time, we also think that there could be opportunities for new vendors, deep-skilled, technology-focused, very narrow-based and with very deep knowledge vendors that will emerge.

We also work with some of our existing vendors that just acquired some of these identity players. Ultimately, I think it still comes back to market trends. And having that wealth of experience and being a specialist at cybersecurity, there is no distraction for us.

It really gives us the ability to focus, anticipate, and make the right bets.

Some of the vendors have also revamped and updated their partner programs, making it more focused on distributors. How are those changes made by vendors in their partner programs impacting how you guys change your business?

Yes, we're starting to see a lot of vendors more than ever putting distribution as a core part of the go-to-market strategy.

Which is why we have also evolved Exclusive Networks. What we have done is that we have really built vertical specialization and functional specialization. For example, we talk about the go-to-market capabilities, we talk about the engineering technical capabilities that we have built, we talk about the training capabilities, and we talk about our in-country resources that has got the market know-how to serve the market differently.

And the profiles of sellers that we have are also a lot more different from what we used to see many years ago. So, I think it's a natural evolution of where we are going, where the market is going. And cybersecurity is a very interesting segment.

A lot of our partners are generalists, meaning to say that they sell a wide variety of solutions to their customers. And that's where we come in as specialists. We come in; we help them to define and support them in their space.

While they offer the end-to-end blueprint to their customers, we become the extended specialist arm for the partners and for our vendors. So, we are literally a go-to-market solutions provider.

So, we are not just distributing a product. We are no longer just doing a transaction. The focus is really the whole thing. The pre-transaction and the post-transaction. We are not just supporting them on pre-transaction and transaction level, but post-transaction. We have been able to do so because we are a dedicated team. We have years of experience doing that.

And we have been very successfully helping the partners and the vendors, customers and users to do so. So, I think that enables us to really transform into an end-to-end orchestrator or provider for cybersecurity. And that's where we want to be.

With that said, you have a personal favorite vendor?

From a vendor's standpoint, we don't have a favorite. If you think about it this way, prior to this platformatization of offerings go-to-market, we have been very deeply focused on standalone solutions. And that's what we have been doing for many years, until we started to see these trends happening.

But even with platformatization, we don’t think that these standalone solutions will go away. It's just that they will be adapted differently in the customer's realm.

And whether they are platformatization or offerings end-to-end or they are standalone specialty solutions, I think so long as the vendors are offering real value and they are bringing real value to the customer and solving real problems, I think they will continue to be relevant to the environment.

Customers are very smart today. It used to be that they need salespeople to go in and educate them and brief them so that they know and they can budget, they can plan, they can think about their blueprint.

Now, when a salesperson goes in, the salesperson has a harder job to sell because the customer probably is so well-wrapped and so well-equipped with knowledge and because of AI and information widely available, they are now so ready. So, in our opinion, I think there's no favorite.

We tend to be very biased for solutions that work. I think that's very important to us - solutions that work and we're convinced. And that's how we also solve our portfolio of products.