Netsurion has been around for many years, but this is the first distribution deal for the MDR provider, and they chose a new company with a white glove model whose founder has already succeeded in distribution with the same model.

Managed Detection and Response provider Netsurion has launched their first distribution partnership with Radius Channels, a distributor with a unique Go-to-Market strategy. That strategy was adapted by Radius founder and CEO Howard Goldberg from his first distributor, Skydata, which distributed EMC in Canada until its acquisition by Arrow many years ago. The deal will initially cover North America and Europe, with options to go global. It will empower MSPs and channel partners to solve complex IT challenges, and is designed to make Netsurion cybersecurity more accessible to small- and medium-sized businesses through both MSP and reseller channel partners.

Netsurion has been around as a cybersecurity vendor since 2009, initially as a SIEM platform, and entered the managed security space in 2015. This business has always been channel, with Netsurion’s sweet spot being the midmarket, the SMB and the lower end of the enterprise. Early this year, Netsurion made a couple of tweaks to their strategy, however. First, while their initial channel had been mainly MSPs, they decided to expand their presence into the VAR space. They also doubled down on their focus on SMB and midmarket customers. In both cases, the agreement with Radius was intended to drive these strategies.

“This is all a part of the extension of that strategy, which is to reach out to a greater community of channel partners,” said John Addeo, Netsurion’s Chief Revenue Officer. “I joined the company a year ago. It was obvious we had to make changes to our strategy to get to where we wanted to go. We needed a distribution partner that really understood us, and we started talking with Howard and Radius.”

Unusually, for a company that focuses outside of the enterprise, Netsurion has never had distribution for their MDR business.

“This our first distribution partner that wasn’t related to a previously sold-off hardware division which isn’t relevant,” Addeo said.

The Radius partnership was the result of a long search.

“We explored relationships across the board, from the big distributors to the small ones,” Addeo indicated. “We did not want to get stuck as a number in a line card, and we believed that we would be just a blip for a major disti line card. On the other hand, with Radius Channels, we get great and wide-ranging services.”

“We have a unique model,” said Howard Goldberg, Radius Channels’ founder and CEO. “That model is an updating of one utilized at his first company, Skydata, a Toronto based distributor which distributed EMC in Canada, until Skydata was acquired by Arrow in 2006. Goldberg then held several senior roles at Arrow for over 13 years, and founded Radius in Denver in August 2021.

“We asked ourselves whether we needed to recreate the transactional infrastructure that most distis have,” Goldberg said. “We decided no. What distis do well is they have the means to transact efficiency. So we obtained this through a partnership with Climb, which is assisted by the fact that we both focus on emerging vendors.

“Radius was founded to enhance the value distributors bring to the market,” Goldberg continued. “Distis have been challenged with declining margins. We  developed a model that focuses on outreach and opportunity creation where we work with partners to orchestrate opportunity.”

This is a very similar model to the one Goldberg used at Skydata, even through  that earlier company was focused on high-end storage serving the upper part of the market.

“We created opportunities at the end-user level and pulled them through,” Goldberg said. “That was easier in Canada because of the size of the market. In the U.S., we do that by leveraging the partner community.”

He explained how the Radius business model works.

“We have channel specialists, who are a blend of marketing and sales roles. They involve themselves in a lot of outreach, promoting the brand, talking with sellers and SEs and talking how the solutions we represent can fit into their portfolio. They look for ways to organize a three headed engagement – and then they move into a sales role, getting involved in quotations and the purchase order.

“We are talking to VAR partners and MSPs every deal, and we talk about all our vendors and how Netsurion fits into that as part of a broader solution,” Goldberg continued. “Netsurion also has integrations with over two hundred different vendors, so you can use it to monitor and manage a lot of people.”

Radius is focused on the M part of the SMB and on the midmarket.

“We do enterprise deals all the time, but the midmarket has faster sales cycles and superior growth,” Goldberg said. “While large organizations have security challenges of their own, they do have the security wherewithal, with the smaller companies do not. Mid-sized companies have a shortage of people and limited security budgets, so it’s a perfect opportunity for us to solve a real problem.”

“The lens that I’m looking at this partnership through is as a high touch white glove service that provides business planning, guidance and Go-to-Market strategy,” Addeo stated. “We have started down the road on resellers. We launched our reseller program last year and want to take that forward. Then when we are ready, we want to expand into other markets.”