SonicWall Partner: Solutions Granted Acquisition Was Company’s ‘Missing Piece’

‘It looks like they’ll integrate all those pieces that SonicWall was kind of [doing] piecemeal,” Michael Goldstein, CEO of LAN Infotech, tells CRN. ‘I think the whole management portion and the monitoring piece definitely is missing for MSPs.’

Michael Goldstein said MSSP Solutions Granted was the missing piece of the SonicWall portfolio and that he will be giving the MSSP a closer look in the new year after SonicWall acquired the company.

“It looks like they’ll integrate all those pieces that SonicWall was kind of [doing] piecemeal,” Goldstein (pictured), CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based LAN Infotech and a SonicWall partner, told CRN. “I think the whole management portion and the monitoring piece definitely is missing for MSPs.”

Milpitas, Calif.-based SonicWall said last week that it had acquired Solutions Granted to enhance its managed detection and response offering and overall managed services business for MSPs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Woodbridge, Va.-based Solutions Granted has been named to CRN’s Security 100 list for the past five years as a leading MSSP in North America.

Goldstein said his company was looking at Solutions Granted earlier in the year and will definitely be further looking at the company now that it’s under the SonicWall umbrella.

“They have their stuff together,” he added.

[Related: Solutions Granted CEO: Success Comes From ‘Not Doing Things The Way They Were Always Done’]

SonicWall manages more than 1 million endpoints globally and has 17,000 MSP partners, according to Bob VanKirk, SonicWall CEO.

This is SonicWall’s first acquisition in more than a decade. In June 2010, SonicWall was acquired by Investor Group for $717 million, but the company hasn’t done an M&A deal since then. Amid the evolving threat landscape, though, VanKirk said it was time to bring Solutions Granted into the fold.

“We’ve been hearing from our partners, I’ve been personally hearing from partners for the past few years around how important staying current with the market is as well as the importance of providing solutions that are easy to use,” VanKirk said during a call about the acquisition. “It’s not a point solution that creates more alerts, but solutions that are easy to manage and easy to administrate.”

Within a few weeks, he said SonicWall will be expanding its endpoint capabilities with managed detection and response.

“We constantly are monitoring for cyberattacks and threats globally, every hour of every day,” VanKirk said. “There’s no question what we continue to see, and what we’ve seen over the course of the last few years: Cyberattacks continue to increase in size and also in complexity. We’ve built a track record around providing solutions with a high security efficacy and at a great price point.”

Michael Crean, CEO of Solutions Granted , who is staying on with the company and will be heading SonicWall’s security services division, said SonicWall’s channel focus and go-to-market strategy aligned with Solutions Granted’s strategy.

“I’m just so amazed and excited that we’re here and we get to take all of this hard work that we’ve been doing of being a protector of protectors, servicing its panel and helping MSPs protect their customers,” he said on the call. “Now we get to do it on a bigger scale with a company that’s got a bigger voice.”

VanKirk said SonicWall is “100 percent” supporting and doing business through the channel.

“And with Solutions Granted we are both focused on supporting MSPs and MSSPs,” he said. “This is an immediate service offering that we will take to our MSPs and MSSPS, and we’re really excited about the flexibility and the capabilities that we’re going to be providing right out of the starting gate.”

Crean added that cybersecurity is not a destination but a journey.

“We’re here to make sure that we meet you at your maturity level and help you go further than you are today,” he said.

The transformation of SonicWall, meanwhile, has been 18 months in the making, according to VanKirk.

“Underpinning that transformation has been taking an approach that is more outside-in driven,” he said. “It means talking less, listening more and not just for certain functions or individuals but across the board. Whether it be sales, whether it be product management, engineering, marketing or finance, everyone is tasked with listening and understanding our partners’ needs, concerns and direction and then aligning our solutions or services all around those needs.”

He said Crean and his team will provide insight across services and other key areas that SonicWall is working on both organically and inorganically, including platform capabilities and expanding management solution capabilities. The team will also focus on opening up Security Operation Centers globally.

Going forward, Goldstein believes MSPs will see a “new SonicWall” that’s even more MSP-friendly.

“I think everyone is trying to have a top-to-bottom solution,” he said. “I think this a great solution for SonicWall to have, a cradle-to-grave-type solutions stack.”