Strengthening Cybersecurity Through Collaboration: Eric Kohl on The Ingram Micro–Proofpoint Advantage

Hey everybody. Welcome back to Ingram Micro One. We're here with my new friend Eric, talking about the relationship between Proofpoint and Ingram Micro and how that's kind of changing the way we transact business in the cybersecurity space.

Buddy, welcome to the Show. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Well, one of the things that we do know about cybersecurity is it changes all the time, right? I mean, just when we think we've got one more whack the next one comes up, how does the relationship between Ingram Micro and Proofpoint kind of help the providers and, and and their customers at the end of that day kind of stayed current Yeah. And protect them from the threats we face?

Yeah. Well, first I'll say that we celebrated our 10 year anniversary with our Proofpoint partnership this year. Um, and it's been a very exciting partnership.

I've been involved with it since we signed the contract 10 years ago, and we've certainly seen the strength of this partnership grow and grow. And so it's been a really exciting relationship for us. But, you know, early last year, mid last year, we sat down together and just started having conversations about what can we do to free up the channel to respond faster to the threats that their clients are seeing?

And this, you know, where we are today is a result of just asking those simple questions. It seems like what you guys are really doing is taking as much friction out of that process as we possibly can. And some of that may be using AI and other technologies, but what is the mission and what are some of the things you're targeting to kind of make it easier to do business?

Yeah. Well, you know, one of the things was for the commercial market segment, again, we wanted to empower the channel to act faster, right? So today a channel partner has a net new opportunity.

They can go to the X vantage platform, you know, new products, new solution bundles. They can select, you know, the product that suits the needs to address the risk that that client is facing. And instead of waiting three days or as long as it takes to fly to the moon, right?

They can submit this information in there and have an approved quote back in minutes. Right? And that's a game changer, you know, for the partner community.

And that's critical. 'cause the end customer doesn't have a lot of tolerance for that process, right? Right.

'cause they're sitting there saying, I can't really say to the end customer, lemme get back to you in three days with that and Yeah. You know, hopefully nothing bad happens. Exactly right.

Yeah. It, it is all about, you know, speed to execution and, and helping them to respond to those threats faster than ever. Um, what went into the, uh, measurement side of this equation?

So how are you tracking success? How are you looking at working with the partners? What's on the back end of this thing?

Well, you know, I would say that there, there's been a lot of new, right? It's a new process. It's a new way to go to market with their channel organization.

It's a new way to go to market with their commercial sellers. And this whole journey, this whole 10 year journey we've been on, our role has been to be an extension of their channel. And so for many, many years we would talk about, I can do everything that a Proofpoint channel account manager can do, but I can't approve special pricing.

Well, now we can. And so there's been, like I said, new solution bundles like prime threat protection and others. And um, you know, for us to be able to bring that to market faster than ever, you know, for, for a solution provider to sit down with a healthcare system and say, Hey, I can turn a quote around for you while we're sitting here having a conversation.

You know, those are the types of things and pipeline continues to build for these commercial ready, ready to go SKUs Outta curiosity, I noticed that you guys have invested in AI and around the sales agent and you're taking historical data and market opportunities, correlating that and giving some advice to the partners. I think the partners are also building their own AI agents or will eventually into the purchasing cycle, right? How do you think this whole ecosystem will evolve in time?

Well, that's what Sanjeev is here for, right? We got to see it firsthand and uh, you know, I think we're just in the infancy, right? When I think about, I've been at Ingram a very long time.

I've been in the cyber practice for roughly 25 years. And I think where cyber was 20 so years ago was where we are with the maturity of AI right now. Meaning, you know, you've got thousands and thousands and thousands of partners that are capable of selling cybersecurity.

And our role there is to help them to go to market faster, to be more profitable, how they show up differently as it relates to kind of all these things. Ai, we're in the very, very early stages of partners really formulating their AI strategy. And certainly as you think about cybersecurity, I mean, the game is changing right in front of our eyes with AI too, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Where it's not just the good guys using it, the bad guys are using it just as much. Which Brings us to our next question.

Are you starting to hear from the partners saying, Hey, we think there's gonna be a cybersecurity opportunity around ai and what can you guys do to help us get them? Yeah, and again, it goes back to being the extension of that channel, right? And I know as an example, you know, pretty much every cyber vendor out there, Proofpoint included, is, is using AI right?

To, to reduce the burden of, you know, day-to-day security practitioners, um, and ultimately respond to these human-centric critical threats faster than ever. And so we'll continue to see that, right? So yeah.

What, uh, metrics are you guys actually tracking? I mean, how do you measure success? How do you know what success is?

Yeah, Well I would just say, you know, look, we work very closely together and uh, we work very closely with our commercial sales leader and, uh, Sherry Rhodes who was here yesterday on stage. And, uh, we, we hold each other accountable for some very specific metrics and uh, and I think we are definitely going in the right direction. Of course, security requires a bunch of tools and solutions, right?

There's no one size fits all. So yeah. How do you kinda work that with Proofpoint when you're trying to build a solution where there's multiple right, is involved and how does that whole process get smoother?

Because we're taking out the friction. Yeah. Um, you know, Microsoft is a great example.

They've got a good, you know, integration and partnership with Microsoft and we wanna make sure that we're bringing the Proofpoint message to the Microsoft community and vice versa. And I think you'll see us continue to build out these things within the X Vantage platform as well to make those recommendations. Hey, if you're picking up Office 365, are you thinking about Proofpoint threat protection to augment that as an example?

So I think there's probably more to come there. We of course, you know, have had the notion of customer relationship management forever and a day, but there's also vendor relationship management, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Is that becoming a discipline in its own right and a, and a thing that you and the partners are kinda working through, but it seems like this too can be, uh, a set of best practices. Absolutely.

And um, you know, there are other vendors that each have their own specific channel initiatives that they're trying to accomplish. And you know, just thinking back, you know, the, the, how this went with Proofpoint was, it was a design thinking session. What are you trying to accomplish and how do we go build something unique together?

And that's what we've done. Now every vendor, you know, has a different strategy or slightly different, but I think this is just the starting point for, you know, how to capitalize on this platform to go drive meaningful results and, and ultimately to empower the biggest sales force there is, which is the channel. True that.

So Proofpoint partners have a lot of choices when they want to go get something. So we were talking to them right now. What would you tell them about why Ingram to work with Proofpoint versus anywhere else?

Yeah, well it's, you know, the platform is important, but it's also the people. And I think we've done a very good job with our people, again, acting as an extension of that Proofpoint team better than anybody. And the, the relationships that we have with the solution providers and those partnerships are super important.

And at the end of the day, you know, people buy from people they like the platform makes it easier to spend more time having discussions about the right threat protection. And so, you know, we continue to get feedback and learn, right? There's more enhancements coming, you know, as you start on a journey like this, you don't know all the answers.

And we listen to our partners and they say, Hey, have you thought about this? So we're launching deal registration as an example, that will be all there and instantly available on the X Advantage platform. I think from there we start thinking about, hey, what lifecycle services do we start doing?

How do we help educate the channel on what new solutions should we be upselling as we go down this journey together? So I think the sky's the limit. I think one of the other things I've seen you do is invest more in your own cybersecurity professional services team that has the partners back.

Yep. Um, is that too gonna become something that I can maybe call on a, on, on a moment's notice just like the transaction? Absolutely.

Yeah. And we're already doing some of those services specific with Proofpoint and others, but you know, I've always said that, you know, there are thousands of cybersecurity partners in the United States, right? Our role is to help the partners buying from Ingram to be more profitable and proactive.

And one way we can do that is by injecting services capability to make them look like they're the top security practitioner in the country. And they can do that with Ingram Micro. So we used to have this line between what we call resellers and managed service providers, but if everybody's leaning on you a little bit for the services, eventually all the partners kind of evolve in the service providers.

Yeah. Set another way, right? I mean services, you're gonna build it, you're gonna buy it or you're gonna partner, right?

And so we want to be that partner that, you know, even if we're not the one delivering some of those services, although we've built it out for Proofpoint, they can tap another partner on the shoulder to deliver, you know, whatever services they need. Or perhaps it's in a adjacent part of the cybersecurity landscape. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. One of the challenges that we hear is, and there's been a lot of talk here at the show about this notion of focusing more on business outcomes, but in security you're kind of trying to prove a negative that something didn't happen. So therefore how do I kind of measure that or Yeah.

Or convince somebody the value of that. So how are the partners kind of measuring the value of their services and how are you helping them figure that Out? Well, I mean, there's only one right answer, right?

You're gonna get breached or you're not. But um, but I think, you know, it has to be more of an outcome discussion and not about a point product, right? What are the critical risks that you need to solve for today?

Are they using assessments to truly understand what those risks are? And then you kind of map it back to what outcome a technology or a a multi solution technology stack can go delivered. Somebody once told me being in security is kinda like being in the army.

It's long moments of sheer boredom followed me a few seconds of sheer terror. Uh, so when there is a crisis and there is an incident, um, how do you kinda work with the partners to ring that alarm bell and kind of get all hands on deck and 'cause they're gonna call you? Well, um, I don't know about that because I don't know, they're, hopefully they're not calling us because we've provided them with the right tools.

But you know, uh, it's a fascinating industry. It's been one that's fun to watch, you know, it makes the headline news pretty much every day with another mass scale breach. You just hope that it's not your day, right?

So, but yeah. Yeah. Well To a certain degree we've probably all been breached.

It's just a question when we figure it out. Exactly right. Exactly right.

And to that point, um, it does feel like the nature of the game has changed a little bit. It's not just like how many breaches did I stop? But it's on the assumption that we all know that we have been breached somewhere.

And then when it goes active, I think the measurement that people are looking at from the end customer side to the partner is saying, how long does it take you to respond to that and close that gap? And for that I need to have this whole ecosystem in place. Right?

Right, Right. Exactly. Right.

And I mean even like if you think about the cybersecurity insurance industry, right? We're not an insurance broker, but you know, we have partners that can go and help a client to understand not only when you need cybersecurity insurance, but what kind of remediation can you have on retainer, right? And ultimately what solutions do you need to buy to reduce the amount of that premium that you're paying, right?

So you have to follow the NIST framework as an example and make sure you've got a well architected security defense and then you know, when the catastrophe happens, how quickly can you respond? You mentioned the insurance industry and it seems like they are shifting more in custom words towards, towards consuming managed security services as a result. So have you seen the partners kinda shift the balance of their portfolio?

I think they have to, right? And um, ultimately if you're having a comprehensive discussion with a client, cyber insurance has to be part of it, right? And um, so you've gotta have the right partners to make that happen, but you also have to help them reduce their premiums.

And so yeah, that's all part of the whole integrated ecosystem. Is there something that you see the partners doing today that you would advise them to maybe tweak or change to be more efficient? Is there something on their side that you look at and go, Hey guys, you know, if this one little thing would change the world would be a little bit better place?

Well, I don't know if I'm answering this directly, but I've been at Ingram a long time and we talked to partners about all the services and all the things that we can do to help them. And without going through a laundry list of 9,000 things, I think it's just simply put, which is if you have an area of need and you don't know where to go, go to Ingram first. There was a guy on main stage with Paul yesterday and his quote was up there.

I wish I remembered what it said, but it was like, if I don't know what to do, I Ingram it, you know, which means I'm gonna go to Ingram and I'm gonna find the right answer, um, to help, you know, whatever I'm trying to solve for, for my client. To your point about that, one of the issues I hear a lot about is there's just a lot of skews to navigate. Yeah.

And they get confused and it becomes overwhelming. Yeah. So are you guys we're thinking about anything maybe with Proofpoint or somebody else to reduce those numbers that's Ex exactly what was done, which is creating these solution bundles that are designed to stop human-centric threats.

You know, whether you need, you know, obviously there's email security and threat prevention and all these things, but you know, you choose the package that you feel is gonna best suit that client. And so that's what we've done is create very priced to the market and ready to go and ready to solve those critical risks. Alright, we are close to the end of the year.

What are you most excited about going into 2026 Thanksgiving? Oh no. Um, uh, I love turning the calendar.

I love building the plans for next year and um, I think we've got some exciting growth opportunities, you know, here at our future with Proofpoint and others. And so it's an exciting time. You gotta close the year strong, but I really enjoy the planning season and getting ready for next year and setting lofty goals that we're gonna go hit.

Alright. Hey folks, you're heard in here, a good mantra for the coming year. If you're a Proofpoint partner, eliminate the friction.

Hey buddy, thanks for being here. Thanks. Appreciate it.

And we'll be back in a minute.