Exclusive Networks charts a digital course

Exclusive Networks has given an update on its progress through 2020, indicating that it continued to expand in terms of revenues, vendor relationships and geographical coverage.

The distributor had a busy period last year, with three acquisitions that took it into nine more countries and a decision to appoint a fresh CEO back in September.

Six months into that role, Jesper Trolle, CEO of Exclusive, described how it had come through a year that will forever be remembered for the coronavirus pandemic.

The firm reported an 8% increase in organic growth to take revenues to €2.6bn, added 17 vendors to its portfolio and welcomed 450 fresh colleagues to the business last year, both through acquisition and additional hires.

Trolle said that although the pandemic had clearly changed the world, Exclusive had managed to keep the core components of the business going.

“As a company, we kept focusing on being disruptive and innovative, focusing on being the best partner that we can be for our vendors and our customers,” he said.

Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond, the distributor made it clear that it was looking beyond its cyber security roots.

Trolle said that at the end of the year, the firm “declared our intent to become the go-to space for DevSecOps and cloud-native technologies and services”. He added: “I look at this similarly in a way that we have been considered the go-to specialist for cyber security for the past two decades.

“Working with the right ecosystem of vendors that is needed for a complete security infrastructure will always be the cornerstone of our strategy. Technology providers continue to value our specialist approach with deep technical skills.”

The other recent development at Exclusive has been the development and roll-out of its X-OD platform.

Trolle said it was vital for the company to have a means of helping resellers and vendors react to the growing subscription economy.

“Over the last six months, we have rapidly expanded X-OD across nine countries in EMEA, we have onboarded several of our strategic vendors,” he said. “We are onboarding new partners daily. This year will see us expanding outside of EMEA and into North America and APAC as well. It is clear that this subscription-based model is quickly becoming one of the preferred IT consumption models. We are seeing this business growing at five times the rate of our overall business with, frankly, no signs of slowing down any time soon.”

Trolle said the year ahead would involve more of a shift by customers to digital, with a need for strong security, but it was clear that those users would be seeking support from their channel partners.

“The channel plays a key role here in delivering this mission,” he said. “Together, the channel ecosystem sits at the core of all technologies that are necessary to enable a trusted digital world. We are not a silo, we are one big ecosystem and we will remain relevant.

“As for Exclusive Networks, the mission is pretty clear. We want to help drive the transition to a totally trusted digital world, by being the global specialist in trusted digital infrastructure.”