Cato Networks Partnering with Nuvias for EMEA Channel Expansion

Cato Networks is partnering with distributor Nuvias Group to expand its presence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Nuvias says it will extend Cato’s reach through the EMEA channel with a partner program and specialist services including partner training, solutions engineering and configuration.

Cato Networks’ Mark Draper

“The channel plays a critical part in Cato’s growth, helping us drive relevance, pipeline, and market share by leveraging the scale and expertise of partners,” the firm’s EMEA channel director, Mark Draper, told Channel Futures.

The firm currently has 90 active VARs and MSPs in the region. More than 75% of its business is channel-led, with a 52% growth in quarter-over-quarter, channel-led bookings.

“The introduction of Nuvias Group as our first pan-EMEA distribution partner will help increase this further, taking us into new region and countries where historically we had limited presence,” said Draper.

With Nuvias’ help, Cato Is looking to recruit partners with expertise in networking and security and which typically serve the midmarket, as well as small businesses with a global presence.

Wilson also said Cato is looking to limit potential partner conflict: “We are not looking to sign hundreds of partners per country. Our focus, resources and investments will align with partners that see the value in our proposition and who ultimately lead with Cato in the regions in which they operate.”

Cato is the first implementation of the Gartner SASE framework, which it said, “empowers partners to instantly profit from the disruption of the $60 billion managed network service market.”

First defined in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Enterprise Networking 2019, SASE converges disparate network and network-security capabilities including SD-WAN, SWG, CASB, SDP/ZTNA, DNS protection and FWaaS onto a global, cloud-native architecture.

Cato says the platform enables enterprises to move away from legacy MPLS networks built with a bundle of point solutions and expensive managed services to a modern network that is “global, secure, agile, and affordable.”

“As a cloud-native service, we enable our partners to benefit from the reoccurring revenue model of SaaS. This is much more appealing than the traditional appliance-capex based model,” said Wilson.

Cato will provide free training and certifications, and free demo equipment and licenses.

Wilson also pointed to strong margin opportunities for partners: “Cato’s product gross margin is amongst the highest in the industry. Also, our partners sell their managed services around Cato Cloud and mark up these margins by more than 100%.”

In a statement, Nuvias executive chairman Paul Eccleston, described Cato as “an innovative addition to our advanced networking portfolio.”

He added: “Cato’s cloud-native platform can be tailored to address a host of business challenges, enabling cost-efficiency and convergence through a simple, transparent architecture. We are excited to support our channel partners by delivering tailored services enabling easily deployed solutions for business.”