Centreon looks for UK growth via the channel

French IT monitoring specialist Centreon has set its sights on growing the business in the UK, and doing so through the channel.

The firm has already been moving beyond its core French, DACH and Southern Europe bases and about 18 months ago opened a North American office in Toronto and there are plans to ramp up the business in Asia.

But before that, the UK is the next market that is being targeted and Centreon is keen to make a difference here. Last month, it appointed Juan Lyall as UKI country manager to drive its partner and MSP first strategy.

“The UK seems like a very obvious market to go and take advantage of,” said Lyall. “There’s a handful of UK customers already, but there is a fantastic opportunity to bring Centreon into the UK market and there’s some great breadth in terms of what that opportunity means.”

He said the business had always operated with partners and that was the way it would go to market here as well. “Everything we’ve ever done in the UK has always been pushed back through partners and that will absolutely be the way that we continue to go,” added Lyall.

The challenge is to build that network of partners and Lyall will be busy doing that over the next few months. “We recognise that in order to get that growth and get that coverage, you really need to be engaged with some good partners,” he said.

He said Centreon would be looking to make sure it had good geographical coverage, but also wanted to work with channel partners that were coming with a strong vertical market focus.

A two-pronged recruitment strategy will focus on partners that can target the SME space, with plans to recruit a select number on that front, along with MSPs that will add IT monitoring tools into their propositions.

“On the MSP side, let’s work with as many MSPs as we can,” said Lyall. “That gives us some coverage and that allows us to really engage with that sort of service provider market. We are very keen to talk to, and work with, as many [partners] as we possibly can.”

Lyall added that the market for IT operations tools had, like many other areas in recent months, been accelerated by the coronavirus.

“The end-user community, whoever that might be, it’s becoming more and more disparate,” he said. “Those few companies that were resisting the work from home or the remote workforce era almost overnight had to embrace that. There are a number of problems that come with that, not least what on earth is happening on my network, what’s working, what isn’t and what’s going to happen tomorrow and how can I be best prepared for that? Therein lies the opportunity for us and for our partners.”

Marc-Antoine Hostier, chief revenue officer at Centreon, backed Lyall’s channel-building ambitions, saying: “This UK opening is an important milestone in our growth strategy. I am also very happy to welcome Juan to our team – he has a perfect knowledge of the local IT and business challenges to support our MSP and partners first go-to-market strategy.”