By Martin Ekpeke
More than 90 professionals gathered in Nigeria for the Sophos Experience Partner Roadshow 2025, the leading annual event for Sophos’s channel partners in the region. The event not only showcased Sophos’s strategic vision and latest innovations in cybersecurity but also honored its most outstanding partners.
The roadshow culminated in an awards ceremony celebrating excellence, commitment, and performance across various categories. Reliance Infosystems Limited was named Sophos Partner of the Year, while ZetaWeb Business Solutions received the award for Sophos MDR Partner of the Year. Other honorees included:
- Sophos Distributor of the Year: Mart Networks Solutions Limited
- Sophos Campaign of the Year: OTIS Integrated Systems
- Sophos Outstanding Contributor of the Year: Pacific Solutions Technologies Limited
- Sophos Outstanding Customer Success of the Year: Casper Technologies Limited
Throughout the day, Sophos shared insights into its innovation, strategic vision, and best practices for combating cyber threats, particularly the growing challenge of ransomware. According to the latest Sophos Threat Report, ransomware accounted for 70% of incidents for small businesses in 2024 and over 90% for medium-sized organizations.
Under the slogan “Channel-best is not just a slogan, it’s our DNA,” Sophos highlighted its unified platform, Sophos Central. Powered by artificial intelligence and supported by Managed Detection and Response (MDR) experts, Sophos Central is designed to protect the entire attack surface, including terminals, networks, email, and cloud environments.
“During the event, we showcased our initiatives to improve the partner experience, expand their training, and integrate the Sophos and Secureworks portfolios to offer simpler, more scalable, and profitable solutions,” said Prish Thaakar, Director of Sales Africa for Sophos. “We are thrilled with the high level of participation and dedication of our partners, who are increasingly relying on MDR solutions to protect businesses of all sizes and industries from the most advanced cyber threats.”
The roadshow featured interactive sessions, panel discussions, and tailored training for various profiles, including sales, technical, marketing, and managed service providers (MSPs). Discussions covered Sophos product roadmaps, go-to-market strategies, advanced threat detection, and keys to driving collaborative success.
Sophos also emphasized initiatives aimed at streamlining partner operations, such as Sophos Partner Care, a 24/7 team of experts assisting with license management and business operations, and Sophos Customer Success, a dedicated contact point for maximizing customer onboarding, retention, and growth.
“The awards reflect Sophos’ commitment to a strong and resilient partner network, in line with its vision to accompany end customers from strategy to implementation of security solutions,” Prish concluded, extending thanks to all partners for their contributions to Sophos’ and cybersecurity’s success in Nigeria and globally.
The event coincided with the recent appointment of Chris Bell as the new Senior Vice President of Global Channel, Alliances and Corporate Development at Sophos, who is leading the transformation of Sophos’ channel strategy. It also marked the launch of MSP Elevate, a new business acceleration program for managed service providers, who already defend over 250,000 customers worldwide through Sophos.