Blanco’s recent channel activity in North America has been focused more on the SMB with erasure-as-a-service, but a new partnership with SHI is targeted squarely at the enterprise and including Blancco in SHI’s holistic solutions.
Christina Walker, global director of channel sales and programs at Blancco
Data erasure provider Blancco Technology Group has announced a major new addition to its partner network, through an agreement with global solutions provider SHI International. While most of Blancco’s channel is focused more downmarket, SHI has a strong focus on the enterprise, and Blancco expects that the new partnership will help them significantly in that space. The new partnership comes on the heels of their announcement of five new U.S.-based partners last month.
Blancco’s original Go-to-Market model was direct. They initiated their channel program in 2015, and it now makes up approximately 45% of their total sales. They provide organizations with a hardware and software platform for data erasure, including a digitally signed, tamper-proof certificate that verifies that sensitive data has been permanently erased and cannot be recovered. Their core market is regulated industries, and their audit trail is designed to satisfy many such regulations, including PCI DSS, HIPAA, EU GDPR, ISO 27001 and NIST 800-53.
“We are the number one provider for data erasure for the enterprise, and in mobile erasure,” said Christina Walker, global director of channel sales and programs at Blancco. “The mobile environment is a priority and evangelizing it is best accomplished by VARs and MSPs, Erasure-as-a-Service has been important for us in this market, and it has been very significant for us in the U.S. and Canada. We have investing in some of the partners in North America providing erasure-as-a service, including data erasure into the cloud. We have seen a lot of traction lately there with the five partners we have signed up in the last year.”
The enterprise market has a strong focus on compliance, and this market has been doing well with the GDPR having come into force in Europe, and the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 scheduled to go into effect in two months.
“We have always been strong with regulatory-focused companies, where they need an audit trail,” Walker said. “However, we have made leaps and strides there. The ‘right to be forgotten’ is somewhere where we really fit well. There are still many organizations, however, who are still waiting, and who won’t make a move until they see it affecting someone in their industry. My ask to them is are you willing to be the one who has the breach and gets affected.”
The SHI partnership is expected to drive Blancco’s channel enterprise business significantly.
“Our relationship with SHI is focused in the larger enterprise segment, while these other new partnerships are more erasure-as-a-service for the SMB,” Walker noted. “They recently signed on, and the focus is on getting them implemented and onboarded.”
Blancco is highlighting that SHI has chosen to add their software and hardware solutions in their Customer Innovation Center [CIC], an 8,000-square-foot testing and customer demonstration facility located at SHI’s global headquarters in Somerset, NJ.
“SHI is focused on providing holistic solutions, and their CIC lab is a show-and-tell for the enterprise around each total security solution,” Walker said. “Their already installing us into their CIC lab is significant. They will focus on us as part of their holistic solutions, that close the loop on the entire data lifecycle message they have been building out for enterprises.”
Last year Blancco signed on with Ingram Micro for their distribution in both the U.S. and Canada, and the Ingram relationship was important in bringing about the SHI one.
“Ingram works with us in two different capacities,” Walker said. “They provide introductions to key partners, and they support us with their data centre and security groups. They were an integral part of getting us to SHI, and our expansion with SHI will be done in tandem with Ingram.”
The SHI-Blancco relationship will initially roll out in the U.S., and will expand from there to other regions, including Canada.
