Cybersecurity landscape changes very fast as compared to any other technology domain across the world. The players in the market need to work continuously to secure the digital assets of valuable customers by offering effective and advanced solutions. Sophos, the world leader in next-gen cybersecurity solutions, is leading the war against all kinds of cybersecurity threats and helping India to peruse the digital transformation journey. Sunil Sharma, Managing Director Sales, India & SAARC, Sophos, the man behind company's leadership position in the Indian market, recently interacted with Telecom Today and shared company's overall business plan for the Indian market.
Q: How do you see the brand's overall business growth in FY 2019?
A: Sophos is now established as a leader in the fast-growing market for next-gen cybersecurity solutions, founded on powerful artificial intelligence capabilities. We are well-positioned competitively, with industry-leading technology and a differentiated strategy for synchronized security. For the fiscal year 2019, Sophos' revenue grew by 11.2 per cent to 711 mn USD while our total subscription base touched 1.2 bn USD.
Q: What will be your overall business growth or target revenue for FY 2020?
A: The world of cybersecurity is changing rapidly, driven by more attackers, using more sophisticated approaches, in an overall technology landscape that itself is undergoing radical change: public cloud infrastructure, SaaS, AI, zero-trust networks, 5G, IoT, security delivered as a service, etc. If cybersecurity solutions are to be effective today and looking forward, they must continue to evolve – and rapidly. Sophos has fully embraced this challenge, and we are proactively driving an exciting transition to next-gen security across our product line, and across our customer and partner base and expect a steady increase in our revenue and billings in FY 20-21 as well.
Q: What will be your key focused products line-up /verticals in the year 2020?
A: We are excited about the opportunity to continue to drive Sophos' evolution into a fully next-gen cybersecurity company – which is already well underway – and to lead the industry in applying next-gen technologies and business models to deliver better protection for customers that stays ahead of the ever-changing threat landscape, and at the same time is easier to manage and administer. We are making strategic investments in a variety of areas like:
Synchronized security in which multiple Sophos products, including endpoint, firewall, server, mobile, email, and others – could share information in real-time, with unmatched levels of speed, detection and automation.
Sophos is already a leader in applying artificial intelligence and deep learning to improve cybersecurity. Going forward, we will continue to advance our AI capabilities and broaden and deepen our use of AI across our entire next-gen portfolio.
Our endpoint, network and server products – in both physical and virtual form – already help protect public cloud environments. With the recent launch of our Cloud Optix product, based on technology from our acquisition of Avid Secure, we are meaningfully enhancing and extending our security value proposition in cloud environments.
"As a service" is taking over virtually all areas of technology and technology-driven businesses, and cybersecurity is no different. Over time, we expect to make all our solutions available as a service.
Q: What will be your channel strategy to drive substantial growth?
A: Our partner network is a key asset of our business, and we are independently recognised for the high-quality program offerings we deliver to our channel. We continue to make a significant investment in our partner network, providing the tools, training, and support to enable them to succeed. Sophos sells its products through a global channel of more than 53,000 partners and Managed Service Providers (MSPs). In India, we will continue to expand our channel reach across II and III markets, while strengthening our channel depth across the country to provide next-gen threat protection to businesses of all sizes.
Q: How do you assure excellent service support to your customers?
A: Sophos delivers high quality support to our India customers from our Ahmedabad headquarters where we have nearly 200 professional staff. Sophos' support plans suit the needs of every customer – we provide basic technical support as well as give direct access to senior support engineers and customized delivery solutions for our customers. With Sophos Professional Services, customers can be sure that the consultation, implementation, and configuration of Sophos' solutions are aligned with their security needs and best practices.
