Interview with Aitor Jerez, commercial director of Sarenet

With a large market share in Euskadi, Sarenet is expanding throughout the
National territory. We spoke with Aitor Jerez, commercial director of the firm about the projects for this year.

Interview with Aitor Jerez, commercial director of Sarenet

What goals have been set for the end of the year?

Sarenet’s intention is to grow 5% over what was invoiced last year. With growth distributed between the channel and the end customer. To achieve this goal, we are offering wholesalers our new service formulas with high added value. In services, the part that corresponds to our CIC department (Cybersecurity and Customer Engineering) has been the most active in recent months, and we are continually closing projects at the customer’s site, the truth is that it is working very well. We also have the focus on everything that has to do with IoT and Industrial IoT projects.

What do you think are the main challenges faced by the IT departments of Spanish companies?

I would mention two that I think are relevant: the first is motivated by the change that has meant erasing the physical borders where data is stored and processed. Before, everything was in controlled environments and now there are no borders to protect and control, we find that everything is dispersed in different providers in the cloud, with different forms of access, and users connect from different places with their own devices in Many occasions. The increase in the surface of the company exposed to cybersecurity incidents has increased exponentially at the same time as the number of attacks, all this is a nightmare for companies. The change from a perimeter security model to a model of total distrust, in which we must protect the data as if it were exposed on the Internet, is one of those challenges. The other challenge has to do with new technologies in programming. Working with the new formulas such as containers, moving them and deploying them from Kubernetes is an important change.

“Sarenet’s intention is to grow 5% over what was invoiced last year”

What does Sarenet offer to meet these challenges?

The main value for a company is that we make a multidisciplinary team available to companies. We are a company with a very strong technical profile and we have different business areas: we have a systems area, capable of setting up and managing very complex platforms. A network area, which acts directly and without intermediary companies in all the elements of the physical network, from the routers and switches of our core, to the router in the client, and which also works with all technologies. The CIC and networks area has a lot of knowledge in everything that has to do with cybersecurity: firewalls, network access control systems, networking of all kinds, cybersecurity audits, employee awareness campaigns and endless measures to protect company data.

You talked about cybersecurity. What does this market mean for Sarenet?

It is a business area in itself that is growing exponentially. There is more and more exposure and more attacks that are always for profit. Cybersecurity cuts across all lines of business and if we had not developed this area, our clients would have had many problems. We have spent years betting on training and certifying our technical staff in these areas, and we work with the main cybersecurity manufacturers such as: Fortinet, Sophos, Aruba, DarkTrace, Veeam…

The migration to the cloud seems to have been parked by other more relevant issues such as AI or automation, have companies managed to make a successful migration to the cloud?

Well, I wouldn’t say that cloud migration has been parked, there is less talk, yes, but we continue to outsource their servers to companies. On the other hand, let’s not fool ourselves either, Big Data and AI go hand in hand, and it is necessary to store data in the cloud and on many occasions use new technologies with containers using data analytics platforms orchestrated by Kubernetes. In short, we continue to migrate to the cloud and at the same time new needs appear.

Sarenet has a wide presence in Euskadi, however, they are expanding to other territories. They have recently opened an office in Malaga, do you plan to continue with this momentum?

We have several strategic objectives and one of them is to strengthen our market in Andalusia. To do this, as you mentioned, we have opened an office in Malaga and have held some events in search of a channel. Growth in areas where we have not historically been is slow and laborious since we have to make a brand and we do not have our own staff to get closer to the end customer, so we have to rely on the channel. We will reinforce these actions with a presence in the two great events that are the fairs of the AOTEC and ACUTEL associations.