The agreement is a North American one, but it’s expected to be about eight to ten months before Votiro’s content disarm and reconstruction [CDR] technology finds its way to Ingram Micro partners in Canada.
Tel Aviv-based Votiro Cybersec Global Limited has announced a strategic alliance and distribution agreement with distributor Ingram Micro which will see its next-generation security technology become available to Ingram resellers within the North American market. Out of the gate, it will be available in the U.S.. Canada is coming, but they aren’t quite there yet.
Votiro plays in the content disarm and reconstruction [CDR] space. That is literally what it does – provides zero day protection by disarming a potential threat at the gateway, by automatically disarming every document that comes in, regardless of the source or type, and then reconstructing it so that it can be opened and used normally.
“Cybersecurity vendors typically look for bad things in a document,” said Aviv Grafi, Votiro’s CEO and Co-Founder. “What we do instead is take the good parts from documents that people need, and create a safe document with the same look and feel as the original document, which will be safe for the user.” Their Votiro Disarmer solution is available for email, the Web, content collaboration platforms, file transfer, removable devices and applications
“Mid-size enterprises and up is our sweet spot,” Grafi stated. “We are making an effort to make it available for SMB customers, but we are not there yet.”
Votiro launched the product in 2012. By 2014 it was mature, and was having its first significant sales. At this point, their market was primarily in Asia-Pacific, and mostly in financials, insurance and banking. Today, most of their customers are still in Asia Pacific. The Ingram Micro deal is intended to change that. But they don’t see this as a volume channel play – at least not right away.
Aviv Grafi, Votiro’s CEO and Co-Founder
“Our strategy is to build a relationship with a handful of trusted partners – good resellers and one distributor – that will help us with reference customers in North America,” Grafi said. “After that we can expand those relationships. But we don’t think we can handle 30-40-50 partners at once while penetrating a new market.”
Votiro, like most Israeli companies, has a 100 per cent channel strategy.
“The company was started on that basis, and the product was built to be channel-ready,” Grafi said. “The channel generates quicker winds in foreign markets.”
Votiro is enrolled in Ingram’s Emerging Vendor initiative, which is designed to support new or smaller vendors.
“That was very appealing to us,” Grafi said. “We plan to use Ingram’s knowledge of the channel to select between 10 and 20 high quality resellers.”
Grafi said that Ingram Micro will also play a critical role with Votiro’s message for the North American market.
“They have a very strong brand,” he said. “We are already onboarded, and that will help us scale pretty quickly. They will hold multiple events over the next 18 to 24 months to introduce us to resellers, which will emphasize the fact that our technology is pretty unique in the market.”
Votiro already has a Canadian presence, with what Grafi described as two boutique providers.
“Our preference will be to work with partners who operate on both sides on the border, but we do have two Canadian partners,” Grafi indicated. “We think it will take eight to ten months to replicate the agreement with Ingram Micro in the U.S. into the Canadian market.”
