Thales‘ ninth acquisition in the digital security space likely will result in an uptick in business for managed services providers.
The global leader in advanced technologies acquired Imperva in December 2023, making North America the second-largest country of operations for Paris-based Thales. Plus, the deal was expected to give channel partners access to expanded global cybersecurity capabilities for enterprises and government entities.
John Polly
The combined firm has more than 6,700 partners worldwide. This partner organization is among the first that Thales will integrate, so it can quickly build a streamlined experience and cross sell, John Polly, Thales vice president of global channel and alliances, told ChannelPro.
Thales will roll out the new combined partner program in early 2025, Polly said. “With cybersecurity challenges increasing rapidly, not only in frequency, but also in severity and complexity, the acquisition allows customers to address these challenges with the most comprehensive solutions for the broadest range of application, data security, and identity use cases.”
How M&As Benefit Partners
In general, mergers and acquisitions in the channel space often create growth opportunities for services providers, according to David Wilkeson, CEO of consultancy MSP Advisor. “If an M&A results in improvements to the software and support, I think it’s great,” said Wilkeson, adding that he could not comment specifically on the Thales/Imperva deal.
There are several other examples where this has been the case, Wilkeson said. He cited ScalePad’s integrations with N-able products to help partners manage their assets and monitor backups.
“Both have done a great job with acquiring products and making them better,” he said. “There’s a bigger team working on development, a bigger budget for security and platform considerations, and a greater sales reach so there are more MSPs on the platform.”
Unifying the two companies’ mature partner ecosystems enables Thales to take the best from each program, Polly said. It allows the two product portfolios to combine across applications, data, and identities. It also enables Thales to double down on its partner focus, he noted. “I believe [this] will bring a lot of upsides to our partners.”
An Opportunity for Expansion
Beyond streamlining programs and systems, combining the Thales and Imperva portfolios adds new capabilities with the latter’s application security business, Polly said.
“We’ve enriched our data security offering with complementary features, such as visibility over the data that we can protect. This gives partners an opportunity to expand their portfolios and consolidate the number of vendors they work with. This combined portfolio offers partners almost everything they need to keep their customers’ data secure and all paths to it.”
David Wilkeson
Merging the two ecosystems also offers partners flexibility over the path they choose to take and creates opportunities to differentiate based on their expertise and specializations. This makes it easier for customers to find the right partner for their needs, Polly said.
Overcoming the Downside of an M&A
Of course, there are times when MSPs do not reap the benefits of an M&A. In fact, there are plenty of examples where such a deal has made things worse in the channel, Wilkeson said. “Theoretically, bigger is certainly better but unfortunately, that doesn’t always come to fruition.”
Some acquisitions have stifled the roadmap or caused customer service to suffer, either because of a change in investment priorities or growing pains during the integration of the purchased companies, he noted. “It’s hard to predict when that will happen at the outset of an acquisition, but when it does, it’s very hard on the existing customer base.”
But Thales seeks to avoid this with a focus on closely on addressing those possible roadblocks up front. “A lot of the benefits of our ecosystem merger are what’s equipping us to navigate these obstacles,” Polly explained.
Thales wants to bring partners easy and consistent experiences, according to Polly. “Our partner team is educated on both Thales and Imperva programs, ecosystems, products, and account teams to enable easy cross selling. We’ve also made it easy for our partners to onboard each program before we combine programs.”
A crucial component of that involves maintaining both companies’ channel-first strategies, Polly emphasized. “We continue this approach as we unify our programs by taking our time to closely collaborate with our partners to collect feedback to ensure we’re building a program that makes sense for them.”
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