Cybersecurity execs on what they love about Australia’s MSP community

Execs from several leading cybersecurity vendors including Sophos, Arctic Wolf and Watchguard discuss what opportunities they see down under.

Australian IT partners are seen as a strong community and on par with US partners according to several executives.

CRN Australia spoke to several cybersecurity executives at an exclusive roundtable at Xchange Denver where leaders expressed what they love about the Australian IT channel.

Scott Barlow, chief evangelist and global head of community at Sophos said Australian MSPs have a very open attitude towards new ideas and programs.

“There’s not this debate going on when you talk to the Australian team or partners around bringing [an idea] into a country and trying it there,” he explained.

“They’re very open to try whatever’s worked in other regions and they’re eager to deploy.”

Mike DePalma, VP of business development at OpenText said from his point of view, Aussie MSPs have a “very strong community.”

“Those MSPs work very well with each other, they are so much more collaborative, and we see it in the States, but there, it’s like there are one unit,” he said.

“We are the channel, and when they come to events, they all dress the same. Direct competitors in Australia are friends and work together, which I think benefits them overall.”

He noted, “I’d say their maturity is close to par with the States and I think because they were able to hockey stick ramp up because of that community.”

Dave Baggett, CEO and founder at Inky Technology said Aussie MSPs are early adopters.

“Every country has a different adopter eagerness and they’ve done well in Australia, I think because they’re early adopters,” he said.

Adam Winston, field CTO, Watchguard Technologies said Australian MSPs are sceptical, vendors need prove themselves to partners.

“Try it out, and then you trust you, your word isn’t good,” he said.

“It always helps if you have a local team that discount that enough. Native Australians that are working there have worked there with the MSPs for years, you won’t even get the trust most of the time.”

Opportunities

Looking at opportunities for MSPs in Australia, Barlow at Sophos said MDR is going to be “table stakes” for partners.

“Even in ASEAN which is usually a couple years behind, they’re already picking up on not just the next generation endpoint protection, but okay, I need to look at XDR. I need to look at MDR,” he said.

“We saw a big uptake towards the end of our fiscal year on firewalls as well. There’s a lot of CVEs on a variety of different firewall vendors and so we’re seeing a massive amount of opportunity due to some of the other firewall vendor.

“We actually have a desk that will help migrate from one firewall to another as well,” he ended.

Xchange is run by CRN Australia’s parent company, The Channel Company. Xchange is coming to Australia in 2026.