Sophos & Cyberoam creating the Right Eco-system Together

Kris Hagerman CEO, Sophos Last year in the beginning of 2014, Sophos acquired Cyberoam, thus expanding and deepening Sophos’ already significant product portfolio in network security, by combining Cyberoam’s Unified Threat Management (UTM), next-generation firewall and network security expertise. Together Sophos and Cyberoam were believed to be creating a winning combination at the right time, in the right product markets and in all the right geographies. Talking about the India market, Sophos and Cyberoam have jointly a team of about 500 people across India. It has its single largest office in Ahmedabad, from where it has its Engineering, Support and other operations of the company run. “I think India is the only market anywhere in the world for us where we have got a single large concentration of people in any office of Sophos. Secondly its is a huge market and a big opportunity for us. So I am here visiting the team members, meeting with the customers and partners and in general staying in touch with our team here,” says a jubilant CEO of Sophos – Kris Hagerman. Core competency of Sophos... Cyberoam has own a single order worth Rs. 2 cr. deal with NIC to secure various Government departments pan India.  Sophos and Cyberoam have been together for almost a year now. For both the companies, it was really a very exciting combination since they were bringing together two companies that have a long history in building great security products. “It was also an opportunity to combine best of both worlds so that we can build better products and can have more innovation and speed and expand our global reach on a global scale. During my career I have been involved in more than 30-40 different acquisitions but this is one single acquisition that has been the most successful integration I have been ever part of. The team here is terrific and they are working together really well. It feels like the combination is making us one big company,” shares Kris. The first and foremost mission of Sophos is to become the best in the world and deliver complete IT security to small and mid-market enterprise. This is also the vision that it wants to accomplish. The principle that it follows is what it calls ‘Security made Simple’. “Today in our Sophos Labs, we are seeing 400,000 unique pieces of malware a day. Tomorrow we see again the same number of malwares, the number is going higher and higher. But we on behalf of our customers and partners deliver world class and enterprise-class security capabilities, end-user security, mobile security, server security, network security and do it in a way that a regular IT administrator can use,” explains Fris. There is probably somewhere between 30-50 million SMBs around the world. The vast majority of them don’t have dedicated IT security experts and they don’t have the time, resources to build the dedicated team. Sophos steps in to deliver the security that works for them. There is a global network of hackers which is becoming a vast criminal undertaking. It is a very huge business and the scale of it is extraordinary. “The fundamental question is how we can stay on top of that and keep our customers secured. We hire great people around the world who are true security experts. We have a strong lab here in Ahmedabad, in our headquarter in UK, Budapest, Sydney, Vancouver; we have a global reach by covering the whole of the world 24x7. In addition to that we give people in the lab our developed automated tools and techniques which render them even more powerful. The final thing that we do is to leverage Big Data; we leverage enormous amounts of data that flow in and compare them across all of our different labs. When we spot something bad, we ensure that we fix it right and protect our customer,” says Kris. Talking of Smart City, Sophos sees it as an opportunity for taking its technology forward in both end user security and network security and provide a fundamental layer of protection. “Whether it is enterprise, or government, school or state departments etc., we give them security and protect the user data flowing through their systems. This way they can focus on the works that are most important to them,” Kris says. Today Sophos has over 200,000 customers globally in both network and end-user security and has around 100 million endpoints covered by its products. Its end-user security products updated 6 times a day whenever it is needed. Both Cyberoam and Sophos are growing at a faster rate than the market. Cyberoam is growing twice the rate of network security market globally and also growing faster than the competitors in India. “We expect to accelerate even further. We are making more investment in India and in our team across every function- engineers, finance, systems and sales engineers etc. We believe that we can and will become a dominant security player in India,” sums up Kris.   Sophos has a very strong marketing team here in India. Matt Fairbanks, Chief Marketing Officer, Sophos shares with VARINDIA the marketing strategy and the opportunities that it eyes here - The first thing that Sophos does to position itself in the market is to look for best technology and educate the market on its values. One of the things that Sophos finds it so compelling about Cyberoam acquisition is very complementary - the marketing teams of both the companies are very similar. It also sees significantly more investment opportunities in India for marketing. “We think that the values we offer, the level of security, our support organisation are the reasons of our success. In India, especially the support is world class, its one of the key differentiating factors. We are very excited to bring the Sophos team together with the technological expertise of Cyberoam to build our brand and awareness in India,” asserts Matt. Sophos works with its partners in a big way. It is completely committed to the Channel and serves as its go to market model. It is also doing a phenomenal job with whitepaper on educational seminars, webinars and as we look at next generation firewalls, UTMs and other security system, it is going to leverage India team to build those whitepapers, marketing and educational pieces and to customize them for India and other markets. “It’s a challenging thing to write about a solution for a particular vertical and region. There is a lot of talent in India that is going to be the marketing engine behind us addressing the verticals. Technological depth, skill in English can provide exciting opportunity for the people,” remarks Matt. A 100% of its revenue goes to the Channel. So when whitepapers are created, Sophos goes and work with its channel to educate them and they in turn go and educate their customer base globally. Sophos is betting the future on Cloud and is investing heavily on it. The reason for leveraging the Cloud is that it is a better way to manage security products and people understand Cloud based management interfaces well. It fundamentally delivers better security as Sophos has started integrating the Cloud solutions & products. “We are the only security company to offer a single Cloud based management platform for the entire product portfolio. We are continuing to deliver one product after another that is managed within that portfolio of Sophos Cloud. We are also offering this product for about 15 months as this is the fastest growing product in the history of the company. We expect that progress and momentum to continue,” says Matt. Leveraging Cloud, the company has got a very exciting range of offerings starting from Cloud Managed Security, Cloud delivered security and a hybrid security model.   Sunil Sharma VP Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam "We observe growing awareness on security as businesses realize how it ties with IT and business goals. There is a clear acknowledgement for the changing role of security and how it functions as a catalytic force to turn disruptive into productive, helping businesses and CXOs embrace IT without any issues,"