Avanet.com – Start into a new era
There are startups that have a five-year plan. However, it took us 5 years to figure out how we envisioned the future with Avanet.
Today we present you the first names of measures to get one step closer to our vision of the future. The first step is a complete redevelopment of our store. This time, however, it is not just an update, but the basis of a platform for the future of Avanet!
Perfecting the tried and tested
If someone were to ask us today about Avanet’s recipe for success, our Sophos Shop would definitely be part of the answer. Without the idea back then in February 2014 to offer Sophos products online via our website, we would probably not be as successful with Sophos today. The journey all the way to Platinum Partner is clearly thanks to our webshop.
Over the years, therefore, we have logically learned a lot about selling Sophos products online. Many ideas emerged about how we could make it easier for our customers to buy and manage Sophos products. Unfortunately, we reached the limits of our store system (Prestashop) with these very individual wishes. We would have had to program a lot of things ourselves, so we decided to develop the entire store ourselves.
But our thinking went even further. Since we make about 90 percent of our money through IT security with Sophos and the store is a main part of our business model along with the blog, we decided to unite everything under avanet.com!
Avanet.com
So here we sit, announcing what is probably the biggest change in Avanet’s history since its launch.
It all started with avanet.ch. With each new idea, we started building island solutions all around (Sophos Shop, Blog, Licensing Portal and various landing pages). With avanet.com we now want to combine everything that has proven itself over the past years under one strong domain.
Our plan is for Avanet to be found under only one domain in the future, avanet.com.
And what happens to the Sophos Licensing Portal?
As soon as we have launched avanet.com, we will take sophos.avanet.ch offline. When we released our Licensing Portal in July 2017, we wanted to offer an alternative to annual licenses with monthly Central licenses. However, we stopped the sale of such monthly licenses internally at the beginning of the year. The reason for this was that Sophos did not provide direct support to our customers on monthly licenses. So anyone who opened a ticket in Sophos Central with a monthly license was always referred to us. What also worried us were the planned price changes when Intercept X with Machine Learning was released. These changes were ultimately not introduced, but it would have definitely put a crimp in our plans. Of course, these two points were not ideal, which is why we had to pause the service for new customers.
Existing Sophos Central and XG subscription customers can continue to use the service as usual.
If we find a solution, we will offer the monthly Central licenses on avanet.com again.
What does avanet.com offer me?
Our future company site is completely built on a store strategy. Due to the success of our Sophos store, we would like to continue selling our services and products online and make it as easy as possible for you to manage and keep track of them.
Accounts
With our previous store, we were initially convinced that guest orders were sufficient and customers would not want to create an account. In the meantime, however, we have customers who order from us more than once.
On avanet.com you can now easily create a customer account and do not have to type in everything again for subsequent orders. Although we recommend our customers to have an account, it is of course still possible to order as a guest.
Updated products
In the last few months, we have unfortunately not had the time to give our store the care it deserves. This is now definitely a thing of the past! On avanet.com you will again find all Sophos products with the latest product images, comparison tables, descriptions, prices and part numbers.
Blog
After a long back and forth, our blog has now also found its definitive place. All those who read our news via the RSS feed will have to update the URL as soon as avanet.com is online. Our newsletter subscribers do not have to do anything. The messages will also land in your inbox in the future.
Services & Support
We have always attached great importance to the fact that customers who find us via the Internet do not see us as just a “store”. We not only sell Sophos products, but clearly earn our bread and butter with services and projects. Not without reason we are one of 7 certified Platinum Partners in Switzerland. We are familiar with the products and offer you our help in case of problems. Of course, we also configure the firewall completely or offer our support in the form of a workshop during setup. What we have taken over from our “Sophos Licensing Portal” is the knowledge base. We will continue to run these in the future under avanet.com.
Open tickets
If the knowledge base doesn’t help and you need our direct support with a problem, there is now also an official “open ticket” form on avanet.com. This form is the first step in getting our support workflow on track.
Closing words
We’re still in the early stages of practically everything we’ll be putting up on avanet.com next weekend. All that you will see is only the beginning of our visions. In the past, especially with the “Sophos Licensing Portal”, we made wrong considerations that we regret today. With avanet.com this should never happen to us.
As soon as the new website is up and running again, we will of course present you our roadmap for avanet.com. There you will find out which new features or improvements we will implement in the future. If you have any ideas or suggestions, we will be happy to receive them. 👍
