Cracking The Integration Challenge

In my 20+ years leading business and corporate development efforts at security and infrastructure companies, the process to build, maintain, support, and sell integrated products has always been a frustrating endeavor with ever increasing cost and complexity. 

It’s also a BORING and thankless task.  No developer is excited about it. Customer success hates them.  Sales don’t trust them.  So it’s no wonder that Business Development teams either throw up their hands or beg for help. Synqly was founded to solve this problem. 

Integrations between cybersecurity products are critical and provide many benefits. The demand is at an all-time high and demand continues to grow with the introduction of new security vendors and expansion of leading vendors. 

Product integration benefits are clear and their value is constantly increasing because they enable:

1. Improved resource utilization/reduced staffing requirements for managing integrated solutions 
2. Reduction in attack surface gaps and fewer new gaps 
3. Expansion of Security and Infrastructure vendor capability through the integration of complementary solutions

How Did We Get Here?

I’ve led business development initiatives for cybersecurity vendors for two decades. Back in the early 2000s, when the cybersecurity industry was still in its infancy, I was lucky enough to land a job at BMC software, where I focused on product strategy, acquisitions, and licensing. I executed over 25 licensing deals for BMC. Then I joined webroot and helped plan and execute their first acquisition. Later, as the security industry started to explode, I got further into partnerships while I was at McAfee,  Cylance and Illumio.

I realized very early on, that while these vendors undoubtedly brought us innovative cutting-edge tools and technologies, the multifaceted nature of the cyber threat landscape demands multifaceted defense. There is no one solution that can address all needs and requirements. Enterprises must utilize a variety of technologies to protect their digital assets, and as a result, their technology stack keeps growing every year. 

Today, it's not uncommon for companies to own 75 or more cybersecurity solutions. However, this abundance of tools often leads to a significant challenge: managing and coordinating this complex array of security measures effectively.  Companies find themselves struggling to keep pace with the sheer volume of solutions, their updates, and the ways they should be applied against the evolving threat landscape. In this intricate cyber chess game, the key lies not just in innovation but also in the strategic development of a cohesive enterprise architecture to form a robust, cohesive, and adaptive defense against an ever-present and ever-evolving adversary.

However, while Integrations should be simple to develop and deploy, the reality is that developing new integrations is a cumbersome manual process that is expensive and time consuming. Internal resources are rarely available for developing new integrations, because Product and R&D groups prioritize the development of capabilities for the vendor’s core solutions. Hiring external resources is both expensive and time consuming.  It increases the ongoing complexity of maintenance and support, which is critical and all too often ignored. 

Throughout my career, I’ve seen time and again that the development of even basic integrations took months. And this isn’t unusual.   Speaking with others in the space, I heard similar stories: A CPO shared that he was able to push only 3 integrations in 4 years(!) - not because there isn’t a need, but because of the lack of resources. Another company indicated that of the 40+ integrations they advertise, they are only certain that 4 work properly. Still a third told me that they were walking away from sales because they couldn’t cost-effectively fulfill integration requirements from customers. Since we’ve founded Synqly, I’ve heard many other stories like this. 

Introducing Synqly

At Synqly we want to solve this challenge with an industry-first platform that is dedicated to enabling technical integrations between cybersecurity and infrastructure technologies. The platform will provide integration connectors that will enable any vendor to integrate with any other solution, to help vendors quickly create the integrations their customers need.

With Synqly you will be able to:

• Expedite integration development by 10X
• Minimize the resource investment needed
• Ensure security and other integration best practices
• Provide visibility into integration usage across all customers
• Reduce employee burnout and frustration

I’m excited to start our journey to develop the industry’s first cybersecurity integration platform. As the CEO and Cofounder of Synqly, I cannot express how enthusiastic I am about this endeavor. Our team has already shown incredible dedication and ingenuity in tackling this challenge, and I have no doubt that together, we will pioneer new solutions, push boundaries, and make a significant impact in the industry.

I also want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude for our early stage investors: SYN Ventures, Okta Ventures and Secure Octane. Your partnership plays a pivotal role in shaping our journey and propelling us forward.

If you’d like to follow us please join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/synqly/

Yours Truly ,

Joel Bouman

CEO and Co-Founder, Synqly