Restructured for growth

Channel Post speaks with Jose Thomas Menacherry, Managing Director at Bulwark Technologies on the company’s reorganization into two new entities and what this means for the channel.

Jose Thomas Menacherry, Managing Director at Bulwark Technologies

Briefly outline your focus in the Middle East market?

Our business objective and future focus is to constantly enhance our portfolio with proper expertise to meet the security challenges of customers in the region and address emerging business enablers. We recently launched two separate entities of Distribution, Bulwark Technologies and Bulwark Distribution, and plan to utilize this move to provide better focused and world-class customer service to meet the ever-growing demands of our vendors, partners and customers.

What does the new structure mean for the market and what prospects for growth do you foresee?

We have restructured our business into two entities. With this segregation we aim to focus on channel growth and development. ‘Bulwark Distribution’ will represent the fast moving security products, while the high end corporate security solutions will be distributed by ‘Bulwark Technologies’. In terms business units the company has structured itself into three units handling distribution and corporate products. Our core focus regions would be GCC Countries, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

The last fiscal year had some major highlights for Bulwark as a value-added distributor in the region. We achieved significant growth in revenues and through the launch of two new entities of distribution we are providing even better services to our vendors, partners and customers in the region. We have been constantly investing on new and proven technologies to provide world-class, best-of-breed products to our partners and customers.

What according to you is the priority for your company in this region?

I would say our priority includes working with leading vendors in IT Security domain and extending solutions to customers in the region through our established network of channel partners with proper support and product expertise.

Which brands/companies do you represent in this region? Which market verticals in the Middle East will drive majority of your growth in 2017?

We offer an integrated range of innovative and specialized security solutions and services for the IT Security industry. As a value-added distributor, we have a number of ‘best-in-class’ security products and solutions for endpoint security, malware protection, email security/archival, Enterprise Data Governance, IT asset management, Application Delivery, DDoS protection and much more. Acting as an extended arm to our vendors, we offer these products in collaboration with key vendors in the region including, but not limited to, Sophos, Lastline, Linoma, SecurEnvoy, Mimecast, Netsupport, MailStore, iStorage, ESET, EnGenius, Radware, Teramind, etc.

This region is very unique in terms of business requirements. Bulwark is well-adapted to this region and caters to a wide network of verticals. We attribute a large portion of our growth to verticals to which we provide tailor-made offerings like Banking & Finance, Oil & Gas, Government, Manufacturing, Hospitality, Medical and Education among others.

What is your position with respect to emerging technologies?

There is a greater demand for emerging technologies as new frontiers of technologies like social media, cloud, Big Data, mobile and Internet of Things are evolving in the market. Bulwark engages with product vendors to bridge any technology gap in its current portfolio and to meet the growing requirement of customers to secure their data and infrastructure.

Describe the channel programs and initiatives your company is part of in the Middle East?

We are involved in enabling our channel partners by creating and executing well-crafted channel programs. It is our continuous and ongoing effort to invest on channel initiatives which include long term partner growth plans, partner ‘certification and reward’ programs and channel enablement sessions. With our programs and initiatives we are able to promote greater synergy among our vendors and partners, and provide added value to end customers. The vendors value our initiatives and we see more vendors approaching us to take up their products through our established channels.

In what ways is your company creating a more positive experience for channel partners working with the company?

Bulwark keeps its channel community up-to-date on the specialized cutting-edge technology products and solutions while simultaneously providing world-class service to its customers. Our constant focus is on channel growth and development. Our product portfolio enables us to offer our partners complete solutions that fulfill IT compliance and security requirements of the customers. As a value-added distributor, we work as an extended arm for our vendors. We have a team of experts offering value-added services for solutions from our vendors to partners and customers. We also provide training and channel enablement sessions for our partners and provide them with marketing support through demand generation and various marketing campaigns. Our growth in the region has resulted from continuous empowerment of our channel community.

How are you helping channel partners to leverage the alliances they have with the company to expand business opportunities?

We provide a number of value-added services to our partners that include pre-sales consulting, training, channel enablement programs, post-sales implementation and technical support. Channel development and growth into focused territories across GCC and Middle East has been our constant endeavor. As part of this strategy, we execute comprehensive, action-oriented and established channel programs which benefits our channel through deal registrations, better rebates, joint marketing activities, technical and sales enablement. With the above approach, our channel partners are able to offer wide range of products and solutions to their existing customers.

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