Three Reasons Sherweb’s Alliance with Huntress Matters
The deal highlights Microsoft’s huge presence in security, Sherweb’s “value-added marketplace” strategy, and the power of culture in the channel.
It’s not as if it got no attention, but I would have expected last week’s news of Huntress signing its first-ever distribution agreement with Sherweb to have gotten a little more attention.
After all, Huntress (which was valued at $1.55 billion as of last June) is a well-known name among MSPs and widely respected for its technology, threat research, and devotion to community. Outside of Pax8, meanwhile, it’s hard to name a marketplace operator as focused on MSPs as Sherweb, which has over 7,000 partners at present.
So for the two companies to have become alliance partners is noteworthy for a number of reasons. Here are three:
1. It underscores just how large Microsoft looms in the security market. Syncro has said as much here recently, and Huntress is placing big bets on that proposition as well, as we’ve discussed here before. Sherweb, for its part, has invested heavily in Microsoft expertise, a fact that helped bring this deal together, according to Michael Slater (pictured), the distributor’s head of sales.
“They’re a very focused Microsoft partner, we’re a very focused Microsoft partner, and we serve the same segment, the same customers, the same people,” he says.
2. It illustrates just how committed Sherweb is to building a “value-added marketplace” strategy around security products and services, both to fuel growth in a high-growth solution space and to differentiate itself from fellow marketplaces like Pax8 on the one hand and broadline distributors like Ingram Micro and TD SYNNEX on the other.
“That’s definitely the direction,” Slater says. “It’s selling the products but also adding the wraparound services.”
3. It reinforces how much culture matters in the channel. Which shouldn’t actually need repeating by now, but often does. MSPs value partners who make mutual success and personal attention priorities. Sherweb, according to Slater, knows it.
“A thing that distinguishes us and is a big part of our business strategy going forward is that focus on the human touch,” he says, noting that everyone on his sales team is goaled annually on how often they visit partners in person and accompany them to client meetings.
“In the big disti world, that hasn’t happened in God knows how long,” Slater says. Huntress appears to agree.
“When it came time to expand our reach, we weren’t looking for just any partner—we were looking for a badass ally who values relationships over transactions and knows MSPs deserve more than cookie-cutter solutions,” said CEO Kyle Hanslovan in the press release announcing the alliance. “Sherweb’s culture, commitment to quality, and partner-first mindset make them the perfect fit.”
Which in turn landed Sherweb something of a line card coup in a very competitive field.