Climb keeps EMEA expansion going

In its latest move to prioritise global expansion as a means of bolstering its position in the EMEA market, Climb Channel Solutions has now set up a presence in South Africa.

Speaking to MicroScope recently, Climb’s CEO Dale Foster said that it was keen to keep expanding the business through both organic as well as merger and acquisition (M&A) growth. The company hopes to provide greater levels of support for global customers and to develop a wider local user base through these moves.

At the same time as cutting the ribbon on an in-country presence, the distie has signed a deal with Sophos to offer its portfolio to channel partners in South Africa. The vendor has been working with the distie for several years, starting out in its native North America, before expanding into other regions.

The South African team will be led by Andrew Potgieter, who takes the position as sales director of South Africa, and will be working along with Sophos certified support staff.

“We are excited to bring Climb’s proven distribution model to South Africa. Our focus is on building strong, trusted relationships with partners and helping them to accelerate growth through enablement, responsiveness and access to leading technologies like Sophos,” said Potgieter.

“By establishing a permanent local presence from day one, Climb aims to bring stability, choice and international perspective to the South African cyber security ecosystem, supporting partners as customer requirements become increasingly complex and globally connected,” he added.

He indicated the firm would be building on the Sophos signing and had further plans to shortly roll out an AI programme for local partners to gain skills to sell and support users with the technology. 

John Mitchell, director of cannels EMEA North at Sophos, said it had an established relationship with Climb and was keen to take that into a fresh region: “We are pleased to expand our relationship with Climb into South Africa. Their strong channel focus and commitment to partner enablement make them an ideal distributor to help scale our presence and support partners in delivering best-in-class cybersecurity solutions.”

The past few years have seen Climb expand out of North America into the UK, Ireland and DACH. The firm has been busy expanding its reach already this year, adding Interworks.cloud, a value-added distributor operating in South-Eastern Europe, in February in a deal worth €8m.

Speaking last month, Foster said that the firm was still committed to using M&A as a means of expanding the company, with one of its target areas being EMEA: “There’s a lot of good targets and a lot of good companies. It’s got to be a cultural fit for me, first and foremost, because we don’t have IP, we are relationship based – just like the targets we have are relationship based. We got one acquisition done this year. I’m looking at two to three more.”

He indicated those deals would take some time, usually at least a quarter to finalise, and involved getting to know the owners and gaining a sense of whether they would be a cultural fit with Climb.