(Left to right) Taking adaptive security solutions into progressive and innovative enterprises in the region: Chris Moore, Regional Sales Director, Middle East and Turkey, Blue Coat; Yazan Jammalieh, Regional Business Development Manager, Scope Middle East; Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director MENA, Westcon Middle East Group.
Blue Coat’s channel is ditching the legacy threat card used for entering the front door and are gearing to meet business on the same level.
Blue Coat’s channel partners in the region have started preparing themselves for a new go to market strategy realigning themselves with their reengineered vendor partner. Traditionally known for securing the web, Blue Coat now regards this role definition as part of its legacy history. In the beginning of June this year, Blue Coat announced globally and regionally, it was reengineering itself to become a business assurance vendor company pivoting across three product excellence centres. These include continuity, agility and governance. Using these portfolios, the road map Blue Coat has rolled out for itself and its partners would be to elevate the role of the IT security department, where it works hand in hand with business decision makers towards enhancing organisational productivity and innovation. At present IT security managers, more often play the role of policing officers by exercising rights of denial rather than playing the role of business enablers.
“We want to change the way security is delivered and understood and made use of by businesses. The challenge is to block part of it and open part of it – which is a more intelligent way of saying yes, rather than saying no. We want to work with people who use our solutions to understand they are an important part of the business and provide these services,” elaborates Chris Moore, Regional Sales Director, Middle East and Turkey, Blue Coat. He points out, day in and day out for some time now, security vendors have been spelling doomsdays that lurk around the corner for every business. By adopting the metaphorical role of the IT Ministry of No, in the best interests of an organisations protection and in their designated functionality, IT security departments have literally stone walled employees and business processes into stifling silos. Reinforcing Blue Coat’s need to change itself as a security vendor were the worrying results that emerged from a global business survey conducted jointly with the Economic Intelligence Unit.
Across the survey of 1,900 business and IT leaders, 84% of business and IT leaders worldwide agreed that empowering employees drives greater efficiency in the business. 52% of business leaders indicated that IT policies slow innovation while 53% believe they slow customer service. Worldwide, 68% of the fastest growing companies increased profitability by using new technologies compared to only 39% of slow growing companies.
During the regional Gartner CIO Summit, in Dubai in March this year, the topic of security policy and organisational culture was addressed in considerable detail. CIOs were educated on the need to become progressive and aligned to business users and interests. They were told enterprises face a paradox of sorts. They are compelled to accept BYOD and cannot execute a complete lock down of their operating environment in the nexus enabled world. If the chief security office only has No as an answer and they continue to have a poor working relationship with business, the chief security officer would need to be replaced. “An aggressive security officer who cannot balance the needs to protect the organisation with the needs to drive the business effectively is not a leader. Good brakes actually allow you to accelerate with confidence, but merely saying No is just riding the brakes and you end up nowhere,” said David Cearley, Vice President and Gartner Fellow, Gartner Research. “If you try to overdo it or over control it, you will end up nowhere. But if you design for openness you can still protect the enterprise.”
The challenge is to block part of it and open part of it – which is a more intelligent way of saying yes, rather than saying no
In essence the challenge is to balance the needs of both sides – the business user’s requirement to have free flow access to technology and devices thereby empowering innovation and the IT security department’s role to monitor and protect the IT environment. By reengineering and realigning itself internally with this changed approach towards delivering IT security into the largest and most demanding business environments, Moore believes Blue Coat can help IT security administrators jump the value barrier. “The IT security department can elevate itself into a higher piece of the business organisation by using business assurance technology as an approach and looking at these areas of responsibility – continuity, agility, governance, inside the business.”
Blue Coat’s channel partners have similarly started the process of realignment. Says Yazan Jammalieh, Regional Business Development Manager, Scope Middle East, a value added distributor for Blue Coat, “We were briefed earlier on the repositioning of solutions, in order to align our go to market strategy and approach towards our channel partners and what messages to carry to end users.” Scope Middle East maintains a regional support service centre for Blue Coat and has certified professionals in the area of proxy security, WAN optimisation, visibility and lab testing.
Jammalieh indicates that Scope Middle East would probably start working with specialised security partners first in order to take Blue Coat’s business assurance technology portfolio to end users. Says Steve Lockie, Group Managing Director MENA, Westcon Middle East Group, “Blue Coat is the only security vendor promoting business assurance technology to prove that security is what you make possible.”
A lot depends on Blue Coat being able to communicate its restructuring to end users. As a value added distributor, Scope Middle East facilitates requests for quotations, bill of quantities, and other solution inquiries from its resellers and system integrator partners. If the solution specifications from end users to channel partners and vice versa do not change over the next few quarters, it means Blue Coat’s repositioning would not have been successfully communicated into the end user segment. “We have a good presales team in preparing such solutions and previously we used to get a lot of requests asking for such solutions. At that time Blue Coat did not have these solutions. From my experience this is something that is requested and now that it has happened it will be easier for us because Blue Coat is a trusted solution,” reflects Jammalieh. Westcon’s Lockie also points out Blue Coat will make channel enablement programmes available to educate and empower their partners to take this new approach to their customers.
Regional industry consultants and research companies studying the Blue Coat restructuring and repositioning point to various milestones that Blue Coat would need to go through while establishing itself in another value space for end users. The business assurance and continuity aspect of its new value system may confuse end users into believing it is entering the business continuity product and solution space – whereas Blue Coat is using its products and solutions to build security continuity, which means being relevant for business users and not just the IT security department. “This means more lockdown when it is necessary and less lockdown when it is not necessary,” comments Moore, clarifying the new stance adopted by Blue Coat. Therefore continuity as used in Blue Coat’s new buzzword language is more of continuity of business processes around end users, enabling them to work productively and innovatively rather than meandering through the blocks and checks of a restrictive and prohibitive IT security policy. “Security is about what you make possible. There is no need to block – only enable intelligently.”