It's been a week since Dell announced plans to acquire SonicWall, an MSP favorite and a maker of firewalls, secure wireless solutions, secure remote access and more. And for some MSPs, the fact that Dell is the new owner hasn't been such an easy pill to swallow.
HTG Peer Group founder Arlin Sorensen noted in his blog last week that he's received a volume of emails about the Dell, SonicWall deal from MSPs concerned about what it all will mean.
Indeed, Sorensen tells MSPmentor, "SonicWall has the greatest penetration of any security vendor in the firewall space by a significant amount. They were an early sponsor [of HTG] and have aggressively trained and invested in HTG and the results have followed. It is safe to say that HTG members have had a strong relationship with them based on mutual investment by both HTG and SonicWall."
So it's not a surprise that SonicWall's CEO reached out to Sorensen last week to answer any questions he had. In his blog post, Sorensen puts it this way:
"I got a call from Matt Medeiros who is CEO at SonicWall. He had Marvin Blough, who leads sales there, on the phone with him and wanted to catch up with me about the announcement Tuesday that Dell was buying their company. I have to say that these guys are a class act. They didn’t call to put a spin on what was happening and try to sway me into the Dell camp.Sorensen points out that "relationships are the core of life and business. They are hard to build and harder to maintain." Therefore, it's unwise to throw them away without proper reflection. Basically, we don't know what is going to happen yet.
"I’ve had my share of challenges with Dell over the years in how they have worked in the SMB market, and have made some strong statements about their approach in the marketplace. But during our call we were able to talk facts and the background on the deal. I absolutely trust the SonicWall leadership team – and am not making any rash decisions on what may happen."
Check out the blog and some of the comments under it, including some from concerned partners and one from Dell Channel Chief Greg Davis, who also posted a comment on MSPmentor.
