 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering Accelerate 2017, brought to you by Fortinet. Now, here are your hosts, Lisa Martin and Peter Burris. Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live at Fortinet Accelerate 2017 in Las Vegas. We've had a great day so far talking to a lot of Fortinet folks, some of their technology alliances, partners, and up next, we've got Eric Cole from Ingram Micro. Eric is the Vice President of Advanced Solutions, and Eric's going to have a chit chat with myself, Lisa Martin, and my co-host, Peter Burris. Eric, first and foremost, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Your first time on. So Eric, you are an Ingram Micro veteran. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. You have previously been their Vice President of Network and Security, business unit responsible for leadership, for strategy and channel sales, working with solutions, or networking SPs. Tell us about Ingram Micro. What is the role that Ingram Micro plays in bolstering Fortinet's channel? Sure, yeah. So I've been at Ingram for 18 years. It's kind of hard to believe. But our role is really to help kind of shorten the sales cycle for Fortinet partners, right? So we want to help our partners to become more highly trusted and more profitable security advisors. And so I'll call it our security practice because I think security is at the tipping point now. So where it used to be kind of networking security, my portfolio is primarily security and most of the former networking guys are leading with security as well. So we play an integral role in really helping to make it easy to do business with our vendor partners. Fantastic. One of the things that has been a topic that we have heard from the general session today and throughout a number of our guests is you mentioned, you know, really kind of networking but also networking and security really being no longer separate conversations and the opportunities, proliferation to mobile and IoT devices is really creating a talent impact, talent shortage. How is Ingram Micro helping to maybe mitigate some of the challenges that companies are facing with respect to how to deal with these daily attacks? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of key challenges, right? It's complexity. You know, it's not just the complexity of some of the technology solutions that are supposed to help us in protecting our data but when you think about BYOD and the internet of things and I mean there's already a connected device for every human on this planet, right? And that's a security, that's like a CISO's nightmare is how to protect all these things. So that's a huge challenge and then, you know, to be able to have the resources to manage the solutions that are complex in themselves, you know, that's a big challenge and it's not just for the end users themselves. I mean, there's thousands and thousands of IT security integrators with varying degrees of competency. We're serving all of them and even some of these guys are struggling, you know, with the complexity. And I think, you know, one of the other things that we constantly hear from partners is, you know, SMB's and mid-market companies they're under attack like never before, right? They don't make the headlines like Yahoo or some of the things that are going on in the political world. But, you know, these small companies are under attack and if they get attacked, you know, they don't make the news, they just go out of business. And so that's a huge challenge. So demand's going up significantly. This is a great spot to be in. I go to conferences like these and, you know, a new breach hits the wire and we're high-fiving, you know, that's good for our industry, right? But at the same time, there is, as demand goes up and the capacity to serve that demand increasingly has to move into technology because of some of these labor shortfalls, it means there's a whole bunch of reconfiguring of where value is created, who's creating value and how they're creating value. How is Ingram-Micro finding itself mediating what partners want, what the industry has to offer and ultimately what the customers that your partners are trying to serve, how are you finding your business evolving? We have transformed more into a services company than ever before, right? If you think about IT distribution, it used to be about getting a box from point A to point B. That was so far in the past. And for us, it's around how do we help augment and provide services, kind of what I would say throughout the security sales cycle so that we can help these trusted advisors or even if they're not a highly competent security advisor, how do we help them look like they are so that they can serve and protect their clients better than anybody? Actually, you brought up a good point there. Can we ask you about the security sales cycle? You've mentioned you're an 18-year veteran at Ingram-Micro. How have you seen the security sales cycle evolve as security itself has evolved and we have this daily expanding threat surface? What's that sales cycle like now? So like I said, many, many, many years ago, it was all about moving the products or helping with some financial services. But today, Ingram plays a pivotal role throughout that sales cycle. So for us, it kind of starts with training and education, so helping our partners to make sure that they understand the benefits of going to get certified for Fortinet Technologies or the benefits of getting your technical accreditation so you can move up into the partner stack and better serve your clients. It's also around helping our partners to understand a position like security awareness trainings as an example, right? I mean, you can have the best technology in the world, but if you still don't understand what today's threats are, you're at risk. The second area would be around kind of what I would call pre-sales professional services such as assessment work. So the Cyber Threat Assessment Program that Fortinet has, so we're authorized to go and help our partners do that. We've done it in conjunction with partners. I mean, we have partners on the phone, all the time, we'll send them out a demo, we'll help them get that CTAP done, and once that thing is in, it's closing a sale, so you can really drive demand. You have a better understanding of what's going on in the network, and that's all before we've even delivered a product, right? So then you kind of get into the core, what I would call channel enablement and operations, which is, look, yes, we have to help our partners get the technology, but it's also around, we're serving more Fortinet resellers than any other company in any country from a distribution standpoint. I'm really proud of that, but they're all varying degrees of competency, and so we have to act as though we're their Fortinet channel account manager, and so we love doing that type of work. The next part of that sale cycle would be around, hey, how do we finance that? So there's a multitude of financial services offerings or leading with Fortinet's MSSP program to help close an opportunity in variable financial models, and then it's around implementation, right? So a lot of partners may find an opportunity and they can't get to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Well, they can tap into our network and we'll help them find a provider that can do that implementation service, and then wrapping it up with kind of remote monitoring and management or managed services and those things. And now Fortinet plays a role in many of those categories, so we would lead with those solutions to make sure that a security advisor is really taking advantage of offerings throughout the sale cycle, whether Fortinet offers them or whether we're working with a third party provider. So you mentioned that you are the largest distributor working through with Fortinet technologies. You also mentioned something earlier too that is interesting and that is that kind of leading into kind of differentiation. You talked about Fortinet being able to go from the enterprise down to the SMB and the fact that while we're hearing so much media about enterprise attacks, that's what gets attention. Talk to us about the differentiation that Ingram Micro is getting as a result of partnering so in such a focused way with a Fortinet that is able to get into and help those small media businesses not go out of business. Right, right, and Fortinet's in a great spot because they've been serving from the SMB to the mid-market to the enterprise and to your point, yes, the Sony's and the Yahoo's, they make all the headlines. Companies like 80stees.com that got attacked and almost went out of business, they don't make the news. And so we play an integral role because we're serving thousands of resellers that actually are working with those small companies. And so we have to help them understand the technology, understand the new, like there's announcements today. We have to help get that message out to the Fortinet channel and really help augment their channel efforts with that. As you think out over the next couple of years, given that it is the movement from a product to a service orientation, in many respects, requires that much more data, that provide visibility that makes you that much more intimately tied to your partners, what will be the role as a business person, what will be the role of data, data security, more secure networks to you as a business person? I mean, as a business person, it's just going to keep accelerating. I mean, the demand for information isn't going to slow down. The demand over the networks, it's just going to keep expanding as quickly as are the devices in our hands. It's one human has a device or one device for every human on the planet today, that's going to double or triple in the next few years. That demand for data and data protection is going to go right along with it. One last question for you, Eric. One of the things that was interesting today was a lot of the predictions that we were learning from Fortinet. We had Derek Mankey on the program, and he did a blog, his team did, leads Fort Agard Labs about really six predominant evolutions and challenges, and it was quite striking. I'm curious, there, your perspective, as we're seeing this threat surface expand, one of the things that he was talking about was the need to kind of bridge the gap between public sector and private sector and what Fortinet is doing there to facilitate things where they don't have jurisdiction, that maybe a police organization would need to be involved in. As we look at Fortinet kind of going in that direction and helping to bridge the gap there and share knowledge and threat intelligence across public and private sector, and to your point earlier, helping the SMB market, which doesn't get that visibility. Last question, what are you most excited about? Fortinet's just starting their fiscal year 17. What excites you most as a distributor for this year of opportunities? So I would say, it's a couple things. I mean, they had an exciting announcement today around their intent-based, and that's really exciting. I mean, to be able to drive simplicity and to management and being able to be able to understand what's going on, I mean, our partners and ultimately the clients, they don't want point products. There's a lot of security vendors that are offering point products. These customers want business outcomes, and they want simplicity. I mean, it's really easy to be a cyber criminal today. Ransomware is a service. You can go out and start flooding emails out, and then all of a sudden you rent the malware, and you'll get paid if you can infect somebody and they have to go pay for it, right? So protecting against that has to be as simple as it is to be a cyber criminal. And so I think that it's exciting with what they're doing there. In terms of this event, and Derek is a great leader in security, he was out at our big event in November, and so I was catching up with folks like him. I love these events to come and check in with our partners, and we've been afforded a distributor for, this will be our 10th year anniversary, and we're also a customer. And so it's exciting for me to come in and see our friends and familiar faces and catch up with everybody and see what's new. But so yeah, we're really excited about the future with Fortinet. In those 10 years, we've been above market growth every year, don't tell my boss, he assigns quotas, but they've been a great partner for us. Well, it sounds like from what we've heard today from yourself and from your partners at Fortinet, this year presents a tremendous amount of opportunity and challenge. We wish you continued success, Eric. Thank you so much for your time on theCUBE. Thank you very much. Thanks. We thank you for watching theCUBE as well, and I'll thank you on behalf of my esteemed colleague, Peter Burris, but don't go away, we'll be right back.