Zimperium’s acquisition last week by Liberty Strategic Capital will increase the emphasis on growth, which will see more channel resources as well as other additions like M&As.
Tim Wheatley, Senior Director of Global Channels at Zimperium
Mobile and application security platform provider Zimperium has expanded its access to public sector customers in North America through a new partnership with public sector-focused distributor Carahsoft Technology Corp. In the U.S., Carahsoft will serve as Zimperium’s Master Government Aggregator, making the company’s FedRAMP authorized mobile threat defense solution available to the public sector through Carahsoft’s reseller partners. In the U.S., the solution can also be obtained through NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V, and Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – Software 2 (ITES-SW2) contracts.
Zimperium’s original Go-to-Market model was heavily reliant on OEM business.
“We have been heavily aligned to OEM partners, with the principal three being Ivanti [through their acquisition of MobileIron], Trellix [the XDR part of the former McAfee Enterprise] and SentinelOne,” said Tim Wheatley, Senior Director of Global Channels at Zimperium. “One of the largest banks on the planet has embedded us into their consumer app to protect against phishing and rogue networks.”
More recently, Zimperium has changed their Go-to-Market model to de-emphasize the OEM business somewhat, and increase the channel business.
“We have shifted more to building our own channel and building more direct while continuing to invest in OEM partners,” Wheatley indicated.
“This year, business is significantly increasing on the mobile app protection side of the business – where we are the platform, so there isn’t anyone to OEM it to,” said J.T. Keating, SVP of Marketing at Zimperium. That makes channel partners key to both the OEM and non OEM components of the business, and it makes distribution more important than ever.”
“That’s why we are building a bigger partnership with Carahsoft,” Wheatley added. “My team has grown from one person at the end of last year to eight now, with more coming.”
The additional increased resources come courtesy of Zimperium’s acquisition little over a week ago by VC firm Liberty Strategic Capital, led by former Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.
“It is early on in terms of the announcement, but we have been talking with Liberty between four and five months,” Keating said. “We had approaches from a a few different players. One of the reasons we went with Liberty is that Mnuchin completely understands this space, and is passionate about building it. That contrasts with some other VCs, who are still cash cows. There will be a significant investment in our Go-to-Market and some M&A before too long. Liberty’s focus is on growth and that’s also the theme of what we want to do.”
Before the Carahsoft partnership, Zimperium had access to the public space through a smaller federal-focused distributor, Vertosoft.
“VertoSoft is a distributor who introduces newer techs to the federal space, and so that was a great fit for us,” Wheatley said. “Now that we have more gravitas in the market, we decided to add additional partners – resellers as well as the new distributor.”
Wheatley said that while they had done a little work in the Canadian government space before, the relationship with Carahsoft in Canada gives them a launching pad to go deeper.
“I just talked with the Carahsoft Canada team, and they said they have 150 partners in Canada who they thought would be a very good fit for us,” Wheatley noted.
Wheatley said that the Carahsoft relationship will expand Zimperium’s business in three ways.
“We are planning to do events,” he indicated. “Carahsoft hosted us in their booth at HIMSS, and we met with both U.S. and Canadian groups. We have been put into a new program with AWS, which is also a huge Carahsoft partner. Our FedRAMP attestation is on AWS and we are talking about building out private offers with AWS.”
The second pillar is around DevSecOps.
“Right now, we are in the early stages of planning out a joint Carahsoft, AWS, GitLab and Zimperium program around DevSecOps,” Wheatley noted.
The third big pillar is a campaign with Zimperium’s big OEMs – who also work with Carahsoft.
“We are driving an orchestrated campaign with Trellix, Ivanti and SentinelOne, and activating their alliance teams,” Wheatley said.
Wheatley also indicated that Zimperium is considering an initiative in Canada which is already underway in the U.S. public sector.
“We may also spin up a push in public sector akin to what we are doing in the U.S. public sector with our Citizen Secure initiative,” he said. “Through it, Zimperium is helping SLED organizations provide safe digital sidewalks for their citizens, through free downloads to protect against things like phishing, malware and rogue networks. We can do the detection on the device without having to go to the cloud, which is important for privacy purposes.”
