Rob Elliss, Vice President of EMEA Sales & Operations for Identity and Data Protection at Gemalto
Last week during our Gemalto Accelerate 2018 EMEA partner and sales kickoff event in Athens, it was evident that transformation is taking a very rewarding shape in the digital era. Digital Transformation is reshaping every industry and will present companies with great opportunities to open new markets and launch new services that will reshape the lives of everyone on this planet. But it will also present new threats and data privacy challenges because of the vast amounts of data that will be created, collected and stored.
Consider this. In 2011, three of the five most valuable companies in the world were oil companies. Just six years later, all of the five most valuable companies in the world – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft – were digital companies. This just shows how much more value data has in the world economy.
With the ever-increasing number of data breaches, data protection is becoming a major focus for organizations. During the countdown to the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the role of data encryption and access management is fast becoming mission critical. Gemalto, with its extensive network of channel partners and portfolio of encryption, key management and access management solutions, is uniquely positioned to help organizations meet data privacy mandates and help them accelerate their overall digital transformation initiatives.
A large number of our channel partners embraced the spirit of transformation and achieved remarkable growth as result during 2017. I would like to recognize three specific partners for outstanding performance:
Firstly, our UK reseller, Bytes Security Partnerships (BSP) walked away with the “2017 EMEA Partner of the Year” award, having doubled 
their revenue with Gemalto during 2017. Bytes’ accelerated revenue growth and commitment to expanding the range of Gemalto solutions within their customer base truly stood out. This award reflects their proactive attitude in seeking opportunities for Gemalto, their technical expertise as well as the strong and growing integration between the Bytes and Gemalto sales and technical teams.
The “2017 EMEA Distributor of the Year” award went to Demos, who achieved triple digit growth year over year with Gemalto in the Russian and CIS markets. The Demos team displayed
true agility and played a significant role in developing projects with the local Gemalto team, in many cases helping to influence buyer decisions with their proactive approach to developing business in the region. The team has a consistent track record of developing trusted partnerships with their reseller network.
Lastly, I would like to congratulate our UK distributor Exclusive Networks who won the “2017 EMEA Partner Marketing Excellence” award in acknowledgement of the highly visible and innovative “GDPR Battle Bus” roadshow they hosted across the UK. The campaign served as a platform to communicate our approach to data security and the six steps to GDPR 
compliance to both the reseller partner network as well as directly to customers and prospects. The tour provided Gemalto and Exclusive Networks with the opportunity to host a high number of face-to-face meetings with customers, prospects and channel partners, resulting in the creation of a number of highly relevant sales opportunities.
I am very proud of the success we had this year with our channel partners, and am looking forward to even more growth and success in 2018. We will continue to invest in building a strong channel to support our growing customer base and enabling them to develop new solutions. With the ever-increasing number of data breaches in recent years as well as the GDPR mandate to be implemented in May this year, we have a tremendous opportunity together to help businesses protect their data and ensure they are fully compliant with the new regulations. I look forward to working with our entire channel network to take advantage of our combined knowledge and expertise in the arena of data protection to help customers solve these issues.
