Partner Spotlight: Gigamon and ePlus Take a Customer-Centric Approach to Network Visibility and Security
ePlus was founded in Virginia in 1990 by Bruce M. Bowen to provide technology and financing services to companies around the world.
We recently chatted with Bill Wheeler, ePlus’s national principal architect of security solutions, and Pascal Perot, ePlus’s VP of strategic alliances, security solutions, to discuss how ePlus and Gigamon work together to bring top-notch network visibility and security to customers.
Gigamon: Who is ePlus, and what is the company history?
Pascal: ePlus provides products and services in cloud and datacenter, security, collaboration, networking, and AI to digital transformation, managed and professional services, or financing. We bring a vast perspective that helps organizations design, orchestrate, and seamlessly implement versatile technology solutions. Our unparalleled expertise has been refined over more than three decades, allowing customers to maximize the return on their technology investments. Security represents over 20 percent of our overall business, so it is a large and growing component of our business. Cybersecurity remains a top concern for organizations of all sizes amid the adoption of cloud computing and transition to hybrid work environments.
Gigamon: Describe your company culture. What makes you tick?
Pascal: We are very much customer-focused. We work with somewhere north of 3,700 customers, helping them achieve their business outcomes in an efficient and secure manner.
Gigamon: When and how did you become a Gigamon partner?
Pascal: We have been a Gigamon Partner since 2015. Gigamon has always brought extremely helpful solutions in relation to network visibility and security that cross multiple disciplines and domains for us. Gigamon is our key asset in our go-to-market for our customers.
Gigamon: If you had to describe Gigamon with just one word, what would it be?
Bill: Visibility. It was the biggest pet peeve of mine, and you guys solved that problem for me.
Gigamon: One thing that really comes to mind when thinking about ePlus is security. Is there anything about our partnership that comes to mind when you think about security and what we do together to help customers?
Bill: The one thing we really work together on to bring value to our customers is that deep visibility, the deep observability, where customers really know everything that’s going on in their network.
If you’re relying on logs, know that they can be manipulated and changed. But traffic in motion across the network is the real source of truth. That’s really how you know what’s going on. You can’t change and manipulate that.
Gigamon: Is there a particular security challenge with visibility that stands out?
Bill: Cloud is a big challenge. As everyone’s seeing more and more remote workforces, the visibility challenge doesn’t just move off-premises. We’re seeing a lot of hybrid environments, where we need to know what’s going on in the cloud and what is occurring on the network. Every place from that endpoint all the way to where the servers or services might be. With solutions like Gigamon, it makes my designs and solution builds for our customers a lot easier.
Gigamon: Can you give an example of where you’ve been able to use a Gigamon solution to address a customer problem?
Bill: Gigamon ThreatINSIGHT™ provides incredible visibility, because with it, I can put a virtual sensor literally anywhere. A little anecdotal story: I had it spun up years ago in our lab. One day, I’m watching a couple of segments I was curious about, and I get an alert. It turns out to be something spotted on a virtual machine. There was a little bit of traffic going on, it was completely anomalous, and it was actually the beginning of a command and control call.
ThreatINSIGHT caught it, and I had all the details I needed on the screen at that moment, such as when the event occurred and what was going on laterally and North-South. I said to myself, “Man, this is fantastic!” And we were able to hunt it down and kill that machine. The ease and the intuitive nature of the solution that Gigamon provides with ThreatINSIGHT is fantastic.
Gigamon: What do you think is coming in security down the road that folks need to be aware of?
Bill: Endpoint solutions and security are important, but we need to stop relying on endpoints and start designing Zero Trust models and architectures to start plugging in tools in the right places along the wire, along the network in the cloud, and start taking advantage of visibility and security tools. Gigamon has a great solution set for that.
Gigamon: What is the most memorable moment associated with Gigamon as a partner?
Pascal: If I had to pick one moment, it would be being selected as Partner of the Year. It was exciting for us, it gained a lot of momentum and helped us internally as well as externally.
Gigamon: What are the wow moments associated with Gigamon?
Pascal: We are always impressed by the partnership and support we receive from Gigamon. It is our dedicated channel team with Ty Parker, Ashley McLean, and the team helping us penetrate additional markets outside of service providers.
Gigamon: With ePlus coming into a new fiscal year, any highlights or initiatives that you have planned for next year?
Pascal: We have just come out of a very successful year, specifically in security, so growth in that area is expected. We have traditionally sold network-based security firewalls and network-based components. Gigamon obviously plays a role in both the networking and the security components, but as we look to go beyond traditional network security with the changes in the industry, like working from home and from anywhere, new areas of concern for our customers have come up. So Gigamon ThreatINSIGHT will be a key component of cloud-based security.
Gigamon: What are some of the benefits of the Gigamon Partner Program that stand out? Trainings? Incentives? Discounts? Co-marketing?
Pascal: I would say it is a combination of everything that makes our partnership shine. First, the team supports the program, and they are invested heavily in supporting the partnerships. Ashley, Ty, and the rest of the Gigamon team are the biggest asset that we have.
We also appreciate the training and lab equipment that brings the ability to do hands-on training and solutions. We have confidence in what we are talking about and what we are doing. The co-marketing and co-branding have also been huge. We have run many great campaigns and regional activities. Gigamon discounts and incentives obviously play a key role in this piece.
Gigamon: Thank you, Pascal and Bill, for making time for us and for being such a wonderful partner.
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