Exclusive Networks’ Carrie Hopkins on building specialist distribution in Canada and what Ignition means for partners

ROBERT DUTT: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show.

If you’ve been paying attention to the distribution landscape in Canada, you may have noticed that Exclusive Networks has been quietly building something. Exclusive is a global cybersecurity specialist distributor, and the emphasis on “specialist” is deliberate. They’re not trying to be everything for everyone. They focus specifically on cybersecurity and advanced networking, and they’re making a real push to make that model mean something in the Canadian market.

My guest today is Carrie Hopkins, senior director of business development and sales for Canada at Exclusive Networks. Carrie’s background is worth noting. She spent years at Westcon and Comstor before moving through a series of vendor-side channel roles, and she brings that perspective to bear on what Exclusive is trying to build here. We talk about the state of play in Canada, the distributor’s recently launched Ignition cybersecurity incubator program, and whether what Exclusive is doing today is the evolution of what the specialist distributor used to look like in the market, or something genuinely new.

Let’s get right into it. My chat with Carrie Hopkins.

ROBERT DUTT: Carrie, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

CARRIE HOPKINS: Thank you, Robert. Great to see you.

ROBERT DUTT: For listeners who may not be familiar with Exclusive Networks, how do you describe what you do differently from the broadliners? What does specialist distribution look like in practice, especially in a modern context?

CARRIE HOPKINS: Yeah. So, Exclusive Networks Canada is hyper-focused on a very curated line card. We’re able to provide the right support structure to scale faster and win faster for our partners. We have programs both for our core vendor lines, as well as our new Ignition vendor lines, that will provide combined deep channel expertise, as well as hands-on enablement through our engineering team.

ROBERT DUTT: You joined Exclusive, I guess, coming up a year now. What was the pitch that brought you in, and what were they asking you to build in Canada? What’s kind of the big goal?

CARRIE HOPKINS: So, the big goal, obviously, with any business is revenue generation, but it’s also to improve our footprint geographically, nationally. We are also from an in-region support perspective, as well as improving the number of vendors that are selling into our partner community. To do that, we have to bring our partner community to the right vendors that will help them grow their business. So, that’s really what we’re focused on.

ROBERT DUTT: You touched on geography and that. What were the gaps, both geographical and otherwise? Like, what did the Canadian market look like for Exclusive when you showed up? What were the gaps, and where has your focus been in this first year?

CARRIE HOPKINS: Yeah, I think the biggest gaps were really more vendor alignment. Geographically, we do have people based from Montreal out to Calgary. So, we do have physical presence there to help our partners with feet on the street, but we tended to be a little bit more hyper-focused on a few of our top vendors. I think for the whole team, and what we’re seeing, is that by curating a better cybersecurity and network security vendor list, we’re able to give our partners more. We’re able to reach new partners that we haven’t talked to in the past because maybe they weren’t aligned to our top vendors. So, growing that vendor list has really helped us expand across the country.

ROBERT DUTT: You spent quite a bit of time at Westcon and Comstor, which is probably the closest model I can think of to what Exclusive is doing that’s existed in the North American market. When you look at Exclusive now, do you see it sort of as the evolution of that model, or is it something genuinely different given the changing times?

CARRIE HOPKINS: It’s actually funny that there’s a number of ex-Westcon-ers here now, and that’s what brought us all together, is that this is — it feels like the Westcon of the mid-2000s aughts. When we all were working there before 2010, it was just such a great vibe. We had great people that were aligned to vendors and to partners, and we all worked together really collaboratively. That’s what I’m seeing now. While Exclusive Networks Canada is our own entity — we have Canadian footprint, we have Canadian finance, we have Canadian operations and sales — we do work really collaboratively with our North American team, which includes people like Heather Allen and Andrew Warren, who are also ex-Westcon. We’re able to really remember the great times of building up that business and then to also bring it into this new era with all these great new vendors who are bringing something new and innovative to the market, as opposed to just the old traditionals.

ROBERT DUTT: It’s not every day you get a chance to run it back, as it were. Keep it in that lane. Westcon obviously got absorbed into broadline here in North America, at least. Do you think the market lost something when that happened? And is what Exclusive is doing filling that gap?

CARRIE HOPKINS: Agreed. I think so. I think with the broadline, of course, there’s some great people still there today who are really great at holding those relationships. But what happens with the broadline, of course, is you have so many vendors and you have so many partners, and you can’t possibly give the same level of touch and care and commitment that we can here when we’re keeping it under that 20-vendor mark. We’re able to really go after our partners with the right mix of vendors that aren’t over-distributed, I would say.

ROBERT DUTT: So to that point, one of the fun things you’re able to do in the specialty distribution mode is embrace vendors who are a little bit earlier in the game, which brings us to Ignition, which just launched in North America. Cybersecurity channel incubator. Can you walk me through what that actually means? What does a vendor get out of being in Ignition, and what does a partner get access to?

CARRIE HOPKINS: Yeah. For the vendors, we’re giving them — again, we’re giving our vendors a team of highly skilled distribution people that knows the market. Most of my employees here have been either in distribution or in service provider and resale in Canada for anywhere from six years to 15, actually, or more, for a couple of us. And so they’re getting a strong team. They’re getting a team with the right support structure. They’re getting dedicated SE support. So we have dedicated SEs aligned to each one of these vendors. And then they’re also getting an integrated hyperscaler pathway as well as we build out our hyperscaler go-to-market motion. So the partners that we align with, we will help them nurture, grow, and scale well, and also enabling our channel partners to differentiate because they’re bringing on something really cool and unique to be relevant and bring new value, whether it’s from vendor platform visibility or network detection and response, but done in a more unique way. We’re hoping that we can bring them that value.

ROBERT DUTT: Looking at the initial North American cohort with ExtraHop, Zluri, Docker, Sendmarc, PagerDuty, Meter — that’s not all pure-play cybersecurity in the traditional sense. I’m curious, how are you defining the scope of what Ignition is about?

CARRIE HOPKINS: Yeah. I think it has to fit with our partner mix as well. In Canada, our partners are possibly not as verticalized as in some other larger regions. In Canada, most of our partners, if they’re selling networking, they also will sell security, or they’re looking for that vendor that’s going to bridge the gap. So even though a vendor, for example, like ExtraHop — you might think of them as network detection and response, but there is a security play in there. There’s a security SOC play that works really well, and it helps our Canadian partners who are talking to the network team introduce a vendor that also connects them with the SOC. That could be said for Sendmarc as well. Again, you think of that as email demarcation points, which could lean into the networking team, but we need to talk to everybody. Our Canadian partners are talking to both sides of the fence, so we need to give them those vendors.

ROBERT DUTT: Well, and yeah, it speaks to the moment too, in that security is part of every sale, but particularly every networking sale.

CARRIE HOPKINS: Exactly. Yeah.

ROBERT DUTT: From the Canadian partner perspective specifically, what does Ignition mean for them? Is it about giving them earlier access to emerging vendors, de-risking those bets with players who may be less familiar, something else?

CARRIE HOPKINS: I think you hit the nail on the head. We’re doing all the research for them. I was speaking to a partner just yesterday at the Winnipeg Western Canada Information Security Conference, and he was saying that his inbox for his LinkedIn is filled with vendors reaching out saying, “Please, sell us.” How does an MSP or service provider decide which vendors they should engage in? We’ve done that heavy lifting for them. We’ve researched, we’ve determined that these are the right fit for the Canadian market and the US market, and we’re happy to bring them a more curated list. Again, let us do the heavy lifting. We also are getting our engineers trained, so it’s not just a team of people sitting in a room deciding that monetarily this is a good fit. These are our engineers who can speak to their engineers and show them exactly how this fits with what they’re selling. It also provides our partners with a really unique differentiated approach. They’re not selling that one vendor, they’re selling a combined solution.

ROBERT DUTT: Yeah, I was going to say, how prescriptive, how in the weeds do you guys get in terms of, “Dear MSP, think about this vendor along with this vendor,” piggybacking the core vendors with the Ignition folks?

CARRIE HOPKINS: That’s exactly the play. We’ve done extensive research on what are our partners currently buying from us, but also what aren’t they buying from us, maybe because we don’t sell it or they’ve chosen to go a different direction. What are their websites saying that they sell? We’ve taken all of that information, we’ve compared it with the new vendors that we’re bringing on, so we have an extensive list of top-priority partners that we feel are a great fit for multiple of these vendors. Then we have the next level down, so we’ve completely curated a target list of partners that we’re going to reach out to say, “We know you’re a business, we understand it. We think that Docker is the right next step for you,” or, “We believe that Zluri really fits when you’re selling A, B, and C.”

ROBERT DUTT: This is North American in scope. How are you getting in front of those vendors and assessing where they are at currently in Canada and where you can step in, make introductions, ease path to market, those kinds of things?

CARRIE HOPKINS: That’s one of the things that we find with the Canadian market is there’s not always feet on the ground with new vendors. That’s, again, where we step in. We do have feet on the ground. We’re learning about their solutions, so if they don’t have a local CAM, that’s us. That’s our job is to help them build their business and help them build the right business. Recruiting a lot of partners isn’t always the right first step. It’s recruiting the right partners who will embrace the technology, learn the technology, and help it lift. Then we can see what is the right number of partners for the technology in Canada today. We don’t want to flood the market. We want to make sure that all of our vendors have the right partners to properly serve the market.

ROBERT DUTT: I’d imagine that dynamic’s also working in the other direction, in so much as you say, MSPs and other solution providers are being flooded with new vendors, especially in the security space. The fact that you guys are, to a degree, backstopping them — that you’ve done the vetting and you’re standing behind them — has to add something.

CARRIE HOPKINS: Exactly. Yeah.

ROBERT DUTT: Beyond Ignition, what can you tell me about the broader push for Exclusive in Canada right now? In terms of, you said you want to stay pretty strategic on vendor lines. What are you thinking about partner recruitment, headcount? Basically, where are you building right now?

CARRIE HOPKINS: Yes. Building with headcount. Where we’re adding right now — in fact, this morning, we’re adding to our quoting and order management team because we never want to lose sight of one of our biggest values, which is our speed and efficiency and accuracy of our quoting. When it comes to distribution, you have to do the basics really brilliantly. We do that here. Sub-[time] turnaround on quote request, sub-[time] order management process. We are quick and efficient, full stop. We’re going to keep doing that. We’re going to add headcount to that. We’re opening up headcount in the second half of the year to help us really embrace all of the new vendors that we have on board. In the last six months, we’ve also onboarded vendors like A10 and Infoblox who are going to make a big impact in the coming year. We’re fully supporting them with extra headcount.

ROBERT DUTT: What’s the long-term vision for structure? I know distributors in particular tend to vacillate somewhat over time between a heavily North Americanized model and independent Canadian. Just curious what the long-term thinking is there for you guys.

CARRIE HOPKINS: Long-term is that we will always have feet on the ground here in Canada. That gets reinforced to me, and I reinforce it with my leadership every time, every chance I get. I am also a big advocate for having in-country vendor business managers so they can have those channel business conversations. They’re talking to the peers who know the market. They know the FX challenges. They know that we’re provinces instead of states. It’s like that. The great news is with our Ignition team is that the leader of that team, Michael Compizzi, he’s located just in Rochester, New York, which is a short two-hour drive from where I’m based. He will be in Canada quite often as well. We will have North American support, but in-country dedicated resources.

ROBERT DUTT: I would add he’d be closer if it weren’t for a rather inconveniently placed lake.

CARRIE HOPKINS: [laughs]

ROBERT DUTT: Canadian partners have a lot of choices in terms of distribution, maybe not quite as many as 10 years ago, but still there’s a number of choices there. What’s the honest pitch for why a Canadian MSP or VAR who isn’t already working with Exclusive right now should take a look at you guys?

CARRIE HOPKINS: Our partners will never be lost in the shuffle. They will have dedicated support. They will have quick and efficient turnaround, and they will have a vendor line card that supports their business. Simple to the point.

ROBERT DUTT: That works. The last one for me: what should Canadian partners be paying attention to over the next six to 12 months, either from you guys exclusively or in the market more broadly?

CARRIE HOPKINS: I don’t think that a podcast about technology can end without saying the word AI. [laughs] Didn’t get your [nerd/name] achievement unlocked.

ROBERT DUTT: There you go.

CARRIE HOPKINS: I think that it’s important to note that there’s so many vendors and so many technologies coming out saying that they support AI, saying that they support different security functions around AI. It’s important that you work with a distributor who’s going to take the time to research each of those vendors on your behalf and have a fully engaged engineering staff who can speak to what it’s doing. Do you need it yet? Is it something that’s going to actually sell to the Canadian market? We’re going to make sure that our Canadian resellers have fully vetted solutions, that they’re not chasing rabbit holes. The number one important thing is that they know their business, they know their customer’s business, and where all those assets are. What does your Canadian partner need? We feel like we have the line card to fulfill that.

ROBERT DUTT: Well, look forward to seeing how things roll out with the initial Ignition cohort and beyond, as you continue to develop Exclusive here in Canada. Carrie, thanks for taking the time.

CARRIE HOPKINS: Thank you so much, Robert. I appreciate you.

[Music transition]

ROBERT DUTT: There you have it. Carrie Hopkins from Exclusive Networks.

I’d like to thank Carrie for her time today. It was a genuinely good conversation, and I appreciated that she was willing to get beyond the talking points and into what the model actually means in practice for Canadian partners.

If there’s one thing I take away from the conversation, it’s that the specialist distribution model Exclusive is building — and Ignition is probably the clearest expression of this — is trying to solve a real problem. Canadian MSPs and resellers are being pitched by an enormous number of emerging vendors, and they don’t have the bandwidth to vet each and every one of them. What Exclusive is saying, essentially, is: we’ll do that work. We’ll bring you the vendors we believe in. We’ll backstop the relationship. You focus on your customers. Whether they can deliver on that promise at scale is something we’ll be watching, but the thesis is certainly sound.

The Westcon thread that came up in the conversation stuck with me too. There was something that worked about that model before consolidation rolled through North American distribution. It sounds like at least some of the people who built it think there’s a second act here.

Thanks for listening. If you’re finding the podcast useful, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most of the major directories. Ratings and reviews are always appreciated and really help other people in the channel find the show.

Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

[Music]

A couple of quick flags:

1. “Sub-[time] turnaround” – I couldn’t decipher the exact numbers she threw out there. Worth a quick listen on your end to fill in the blank.
2. “Didn’t get your [nerd/name] achievement unlocked” – MacWhisper clearly mangled this. Sounds like some kind of gaming joke about saying the word AI on a tech podcast. “Nerd achievement unlocked” is the most common internet phrase, but if you remember what she actually said, drop it in.
3. “monetarily” – I left it as-is since it could be correct, though it scans a bit awkwardly. Could also be “more than merely” if you want to give it a listen.

Otherwise this should be ready to go. Good batch recording session?