SPIRE Helps OEMs Carry Their Overhead Burdens, Resolve Manifold Painpoints-SPIRE Exec

NAVEEN BHARADWAJ tells Clifford Agugoesi exclusively, on the sidelines of CyFrica 2020, 25-26 February, at the Lagos Continental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, south west, Nigeria, SPIRE has sexy value propositions across industry verticals.

Part 2

CYBER ERA: What is SPIRE SOLUTIONS’ line of business and which markets do you cater to?

NAVEEN BHARADWAJ: SPIRE SOLUTIONS is a value-added cybersecurity distributor helping governments and the private sector with niche solutions and services such as EDR, threat hunting, threat intelligence platform, digital risk protection, account take over prevention, quantum encryption, email authentication, gamified security awareness, network visibility and security orchestration, to name a few.

SPIRE was founded by our President Mr. Sanjeev Walia in 2008. We are headquartered in Dubai, UAE, and have over 750 customers in GCC countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman, and North African countries like Egypt. As part of our 2020 expansion strategy, we are focusing on Nigeria as the pillar for WestAfrica and Kenya as the pillar for East Africa.

CE: Who are your main stakeholders and what types of partnerships, if any, is SPIRE looking at in the African market?

NB: This is going to be a long answer so please bear with me. Our business revolves around three core stakeholders without whom our business wouldn’t sustain or thrive.

Firstly, customers – the very purpose of our existence. We build trusted security partnerships with organizations with critical infrastructure and sensitive information such as government entities, parastatals, ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), telcos, energy sector, oil and gas, large enterprises, banking and finance. This is very much our sweet spot. We take a two-fold approach with our customers: 1) we understand their current pain points and help resolve the mutually relevant ones using our experience and expertise; 2) we help forecast emerging challenges and changing threat landscapes based on the intelligence we gather from our research and exposure to global vendors and are the first to launch many new solutions in the Middle East. For example, we were the first to talk about security orchestration, automation and response platform (SOAR) in 2014 when many customers didn’t know what it meant or why it’s important for them. But today, many banks, telcos and government entities are not just talking about it but also using our SOAR solution.  We were the first to launch gamified cybersecurity training and awareness when people were thinking why you would gamify training. But look now everybody is gamifying things.  Another area is IoT security, which was being widely ignored.  People spoke of IoT, connected devices and all of that but not many pay attention to the fact that most IoTs are firmware enabled and that firmware is susceptible to hacks. They cannot be treated like normal IT devices and need to be addressed differently – so SPIRE launched dedicated IoT security solution.

Secondly, our technology partners -cyber security OEMs, vendors who produce or develop cyber security solutions. Based on our interactions with customers, the pulse of the market that we feel and the threat landscape trends, we proactively partner with reliable and niche vendors from regions like North America,  Europe and India that can effectively solve some of the incumbent cyber security issues in Middle East & Africa.  These vendors are typically not already present in our region and likely thinking of expanding with limited overheads and lots of guidance from locally established partners. So, we step in as an exclusive partner, become their regional arm or regional office, and invest our resources such as time, personnel, money, reputation, experience and more to build a practice around their solution areas. It works very well for them because we cover the whole nine yards for them by becoming their regional arm without much investment from them, we reduce their overhead burden and start generating leads and business in a new market or help expand their presence in existing markets.

Lastly but equally importantly, our channel partners – local systems integrators, resellers and consultants. We do not sell directly to customers; although we educate them, advise them and cater to their needs and interests. Whichever market we operate in, we value local dynamics and believe in creating local economic value, so we identify, develop and engage capable local channel partners. When our customers want to procure something from SPIRE, they always go through our local channel despite having direct access to us. We help our channel identify handful of solutions from our portfolio that fit very well into their service offerings and enable them with knowledge and tools needed to go-to-market and start opening doors.  The channel needs time before they can lead advanced conversations around the aligned solutions on their own, so during that learning phase we support them and encourage their team to shadow our team.

CE: What’s the size of these channel partners? What’s your opinion on their value?

NB: We are very considerate in having a balance between both small and medium (SMB) partners as well as large partners to cover both breadth and depth in the market.

Large established partners bring their brand value and resources to the table in addition to being able to commit to performance bonds, tender bonds, etc. They are also preferred by certain customers for those reasons and we tend to align with them for such customers. Not all large partners run for us on the ground though as they work with multiple partners, but they appreciate what we bring to the table in terms of our niche solutions and associated expertise.

Then there are small and medium businesses SMBs, let’s say with 10 to 100 staff for example, they are hungry for new business and always eager to introduce new and relevant solutions to the market. They will invest with us, assign dedicated resources that will run around for us on the ground, talk about us to their customers, open doors and engage us frequently in customer conversations to help generate mutual business. These partners are very important too as they activate the market with us.

CE: What amount of space do telcos occupy in your African strategy? Has any of them spoken to you about 5G, for instance?

NB: Let me tell you about our home ground Middle East first. Some telcos are both customers and partners because they operate as MSSPs (managed security service provider). For ex. Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Saudi Telecom Company Solutions (STCS) in Saudi Arabia and Etisalat and Etisalat Digital in the UAE. These are leading telecom operators. I believe Etisalat was also present in Nigeria and now they are called 9mobile if I’m right? Such partners certainly talk about emerging trends like 5G and internet of things(IoT), and the need to prioritise security as it’s a business obligation.

In Africa, or Nigeria and Kenya to be precise, yes, we will be talking to telcos like MTN, Safaricom, Airtel, 9mobile etc. As we have just started focusing on this market, it will take some time before we reach advanced conversations with them. We are confident that, similar to the Middle East, telcos in Africa too will soon be our customers and we will also partner with some of them to enable some parts of their MSSP offering to augment their offering to their enterprise customers.

CE: Finally, talk to us about your Media Partners and how ready are you to enlist some in this market?

NB: I personally believe that the media might have a fantastic solution, they might have an amazing offering, but it is important for people to hear them. They need to have good readership and viewership. Media plays an important role in providing a platform for people to hear us, so by partnering with credible, trustworthy media, we can gain brand visibility and position content through thought leadership, not sales pitch. So yeah, it is a win-win for us, the media and the industry as everybody is hungry to produce, publish and consume content.

CE: Thank you very much, Naveen, for agreeing to talk with us even on short notice.

NB: Thank you very much, my pleasure. I wish Cyber Era all the very best and look forward to hearing some great news about your growing readership and viewership.

• Naveen Bharadwaj is the Director of Strategic Partnerships and Projects at SPIRE SOLUTIONS, who is set to lead their expansion to Africa, starting with Nigeria and Kenya.
• Editor’s Note: This is the conclusion of the two-part interview with Naveen.