Stand-Alone Product Versus Product Suite, or Best of Breed vs. “Integrated Solution”?
It’s the well-known problem of having to choose between a focused point solution or a suite of bundled tools
Introduction
A common IT security dilemma is whether buying a stand-alone best-of-breed product or service is a better decision than buying functionality that is bundled-in with a larger, multiproduct vendor. It’s the well-known problem of having to choose between a focused point solution or a suite of bundled tools.
The IT security world is often one of rapid consolidation, buyouts, and mergers as a particular part of the industry matures. What used to be a stand-alone, best-of-breed, product often becomes just one small part of an overall, much larger, product suite.
It can sound tempting to buy an integrated “solution.” Besides paying one invoice and licensing fee, it can mean dealing with one company, and sometimes with a very competitive price for the feature. Many times, a primary, wanted feature is “given away” as incentive to buy the larger suite of products. “Why buy just that one thing from best-of-breed vendor x when you can package our version of that functionality into your deal with us for just a bit more!” is the sales person’s proposition.
Good question. Here’s what we believe is the right answer.
Since our founding, KnowBe4 (www.knowbe4.com) has been approached and resisted becoming a part of someone else’s larger product suite for a host of reasons; here are just a few.
Focus
The key differentiator of a stand-alone product is focus. Focus from the developers; focus from management; focus by the entire company on one key functionality objective. It is difficult for a larger company to have the same laser-precise focus on product, customers, and on the specific threats the solution fights as it did when it had a single focus.
In most cases, staff from an acquired company is either reduced and/or their responsibility and objectives expanded to support the goals of the larger company. Even if the staff size remains the same, it becomes just one more line-item on business calls, budgets, and price sheets. Former best-of-breed vendors often become a minimized afterthought; just a me-too checkbox. “Yeah we have that”.
At KnowBe4, we have one focus. That is providing security awareness training to the world, enabling employees to make smarter security decisions, every day. That’s what we wake up 3 thinking about each morning. We don’t sell antivirus, or endpoint detection and response software. We don’t sell email gateways, firewalls, or encryption products. We don’t sell network intrusion detection products. We focus our platform solely to mitigate and educate about social engineering, phishing, and compliance. We give IT admins everything they need to run a successful continuous and comprehensive security awareness and training program so that they can drive secure behaviors and reduce risk.
We have the latest breaking news and articles written by over a dozen experts published daily to the KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training blog (https://blog.knowbe4.com/) and social media channels. We offer free tools (https://www.knowbe4.com/free-it-security-tools), whitepapers (https://www.knowbe4.com/security-awareness-whitepapers), and webinars (https://www.knowbe4.com/webinar-library), to help with security awareness training and phishing mitigation coupled with thousands of pages of free content and dozens of free tools, all dedicated to mitigating social engineering.
We understand that learning is not one-size-fits-all and that people consume content differently. As a result, we maniacally focus on providing content in many styles and versions that are easily consumed by every type of learner…through multiple mediums. And our platform is powered by cutting-edge innovation in machine learning and artificial intelligence. No other vendor has a comparable amount of free security awareness, behavior, and culture-focused documents, tools, and experts as KnowBe4.
Quality
Our focus enables us to provide a better, more feature-rich, more nuanced, product. When the entire infrastructure and management of a vendor is focused on one objective, it more easily allows for better listening to customers about a single objective, and incorporating that feedback into future product versions, more quickly.
If customers are complaining about a bug or missing feature, it becomes a priority. When the entire development team is working on a single “point-solution platform” their experience and common objectives simply allows for a better quality product to emerge.
KnowBe4 releases new features monthly, based on both the needs and requests of existing and new customers. KnowBe4 customer feedback is super important all with the desire of providing the best security awareness and training program available. KnowBe4 is the winner of dozens of independent industry and customer awards, like this one (https://blog.knowbe4.com/knowbe4-named-a-january-2021-gartner-peer-insights-customerschoice-for-security-awareness-computer-based-training-across-three-categories).
KnowBe4’s content is the best in the industry, in quantity and quality. And we constantly demonstrate that training doesn’t have to be boring; quite the opposite, actually. Check out our award-winning The Inside Man series (https://blog.knowbe4.com/world-premiere-knowbe4s-newseason-3-of-netflix-style-security-awareness-video-seriesthe-inside-man), as an example. It’s driven by a team of professionals dedicated to providing the best educational experience on the market leading to real, measurable, risk reduction.
They continuously evaluate our content line-up to ensure that it matches what is happening in the real-world and making sure that, as cybersecurity trends and attacks change, our content is ready to meet the challenge. They tirelessly work to make you look good, as the awareness program is often the face from IT toward all end users.
Support
Just as developers have the advantage of working on a single product, so too, does product technical support. With many large vendors, simply getting the help you need for the product you need can be a frustrating, seemingly futile endeavor. Compare that to calling a single number and getting routed to a tech support person who can immediately start to answer your question.
At KnowBe4, our tech support staff are product specialists who are seasoned experts with the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. It’s all about providing robust support, rapid responses and getting it right the first time. Would you rather spend 10-minutes getting routed through different phone trees or filling out answers to voluminous online questionnaires or spend your first 10 minutes getting to the help you need?
In fact, great customer service is one of the things for which we continually receive praise. Whether it’s receiving five Customers’ Choice distinctions in the 2021 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ for Security Awareness Computer-Based Training market or being honored by Glassdoor as one of the Best Places to Work in 2021, one thing is clear, our customers and our people are at the forefront of our passion. KnowBe4 has some of the lowest turnover of any IT security vendor. Valuable employee knowledge and experience stays with us, and that helps to drive a superior product and unmatched technical support for our customers.