Sherweb’s Value-Added Marketplace Plan
Going deep on security is the company’s strategy for standing out in a diverse packed, diverse and fast-growing competitive scene.
Will Sherweb be among the future distribution partners Coro has coming? I don’t know one way or the other, but you could imagine Coro feeling a little left out if Sherweb doesn’t invite them onto its line card at some point. After all, the cloud marketplace has added security solutions from usecure, DefenseX, IRONSCALES, HacWare, ConnectSecure, and Nord Security to its catalog since the start of April alone, with Keepit and Check Point not far behind.
In fact, only one of the many additions to Sherweb’s marketplace this year (RPA vendor Rewst) has not been in cyber. And no, that’s not a coincidence. Sherweb is placing a big strategic bet on security.
“We see the growth potential,” says Roddy Bergeron, a cybersecurity technical fellow at the company.
It also sees security as a path forward through a packed, diverse and fast-growing competitive scene. Per Canalys, vendors—along with their partners and end users—have six different routes to market available to them now plus an accompanying set of marketplace development platforms:
Sherweb’s strategy for standing out in that crowded field is to redefine itself as a cross between a multi-specialty cloud marketplace like Pax8 and a security-focused, value-added distributor like Exclusive Networks. Bergeron, who was CISO at Louisiana-based MSP Enterprise Data Concepts for two years prior to joining Sherweb, has played an instrumental role in that effort, initially by comparing the company’s security portfolio to controls defined in the CIS framework.
“We identified very early on that there were some gaps in our security offerings,” he says. “Especially as security becomes more complex, we can’t just offer email security or endpoint protection or just the basics anymore. We have to start grabbing more advanced tools and bringing vendors in who can help with that.”
Which is exactly what Sherweb’s been doing in recent months through all those marketplace additions, each of which, according to Bergeron, was carefully selected.
“We’re trying to do a more curated list of programs or vendors, the ones that we think are making big impacts in the space, and then help drive our partners to those,” he says.
That, however, is the “marketplace” part of what I’ll call Sherweb’s value-added marketplace vision. The value-added part, in addition to outsourced help desk and NOC services and free resources like Sherweb’s Microsoft 365 security assessment tool, emphasizes partner education. Bergeron learned the hard way as an MSP that talking with SMBs about security products rarely ends well.
“No one cares what kind of firewall you put it in place,” he says. “No one really cares about the antivirus on their computer.” They do care, however, about the damage a ransomware attack or PII leak can have on their top and bottom lines, which is why Bergeron had much greater success with clients when he started structuring conversations around business risk and security strategy.
“Instead of looking like a cost center, we looked like revenue protection,” he says, adding that what had been a 16% close rate rose to something more like 80% as a result. Bergeron and his team are now teaching partners how to drive similar success.
“You have to talk about the outcomes that you bring,” he says. “You have to talk about how you’re protecting revenue. You have to talk about how you’re protecting their reputation. You have to talk about all the other things that matter to their business.”
That said, tools are how MSPs ultimately deliver revenue protection, which makes providing a complete selection of them an ongoing priority for Sherweb. According to Bergeron, more solutions in more categories will appear on the company’s marketplace over the months ahead.
“We’ve got some pretty cool SASE products coming down the pipeline,” he says, as well as some risk-based vulnerability management systems. Watch this space for details when they arrive.
No really, you should listen to my podcast
Sherweb’s security strategy is precisely the kind of thing we get into every week on MSP Chat, the podcast I co-host. Check it out here or wherever you get your podcasts.
