Jolera poised to transcend anonymous IT service success

TORONTO COMPANY

While security is the central plank of the suite, Jolera also offers other services, including a global service desk, cloud-based backup and recovery, network and performance monitoring, and antivirus and anti-malware management. These products are, in turn, offered as white-label products to resellers.

“Resellers select the products they want to represent and deal with the end user, providing a human face for the technology,” says Shan. “We make it easy for them to brand the products, so they can present our service as their service.”

As part of a typical network security contract, Jolera remains largely invisible, providing reports to resellers on security interventions or unusual threats.

Among clients that include and the company is currently partnering with IT security company

Barracuda’s core product is a hardware platform paired with subscription based network security services.

“Our value proposition was that we would provide Barracuda with security services, allowing them to concentrate on their core business, delivering best-in-class technology,” says Shan.

Each contract offers a unique service menu. For example, Jolera works with SERCO, which operates as DriveTest, a public corporation licensed by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario to operate 55 driver examination centres in the province. The company assisted SERCO in rolling out a new digital testing platform, monitoring equipment, and securely managing digital data on hundreds of thousands of road tests, written tests, and driver’s licence applications annually.

Jolera currently employs 250 people globally, primarily at its Toronto headquarters. It also fields offices across Canada, and in the U.S., U.K., Portugal and Brazil.

“However, our white label business model means that we remain anonymous when we’re doing our best work,” Shan says. “That’s a challenge. As a relatively small company, one of our struggles is that 98 per cent of our workforce is doing something technical and we need to devote more resources to promoting and establishing our brand before other channel-based IT solutions try to replicate our success. There’s a lot more global business that we want to grab.” Jolera chief executive Alex Shan says hackers are no longer “hitting the big guys.”