Name: Sophos Partner Academy: Securing the AI-Era Network
Uploaded: 2026-10-20T10:30:44.433Z
Duration: 58 min 36 s
Description: Sophos Partner Academy: Securing the AI-Era Network

Transcript for "Sophos Partner Academy: Securing the AI-Era Network": Good morning, everybody, and thank you for sparing the time today to, be with us. It's fantastic to have so many of our partners, join us across our Europe, Middle East, and Africa, region. And welcome to our Partner Academy, which today is all about securing the, AI Era network. We have several exciting announcements that we're going to be presenting, including new devices and much more. We believe they all represent an immediate opportunity, for our partners, this quarter and beyond. And all the information that you see today, will be available, after the presentation. So, we'll make sure that we get that out to you as soon as possible. And and Barbara will explain a little bit more in a second, but we have we've got we've got a lot of content today. There's a tremendous amount of, technology, development happening at Sophos. So we will be following up today's sessions with much deeper webinars so we can go into much more detail about the, the announcements that we're making today. Please, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to use the tools, that are available in this, Goldcast webcast, and we'll endeavor to answer many of those and highlight as many of those at the end of the call. We are in the process of updating all of our portals and websites with the information that you're seeing today, so please look out for that. With that in mind, it's my absolute pleasure to pass the call over to to Barbara, Barbara Haslam. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. And, welcome everybody from my side. I'm really pleased to be able to talk to you about the new innovations in the network area at Sophos. We've had a lot of launches, this year, and, you know, I think for those of you that thought we couldn't launch anything more, well, we're about to prove you wrong because there is a lot to discover in the network space. So I'm joined today by a number of different people, my colleagues from the product management area, Parth Mistry, who's working on the firewall side, Carl Ackerman, and Tom Roberts, who are working on NDR, and we've got really exciting enhancements for there. I do just want to point out that some of the information in this presentation is still subject to a communications embargo. That's basically the usual practice that we have with hardware. We're telling you about these things a little earlier than we have done in the past hardware launches simply because we want to give you the opportunity to get yourself prepared to make sure that you have everything set up on your side to be able to start selling as soon as we reach GA. I would, however, ask that you do not publish anything on social media or any other sort of public blogs and forums, until we get to the launch. So as Jason mentioned, there's a lot in this session. And the idea of this particular one is to give you a full launch overview to... With the highlights of each of the different products that's included in this launch. But, also, as mentioned, that there will be some deeper dive sessions, particularly on Sophos firewall and the new hardware and also on Sophos NDR. They will be post launch, so watch out for further information on those. But, hopefully, today, we're giving you the the most information that you need to get started. And, you know, there's quite a lot coming up, very, very soon, and we've got a lot of assets to provide you in the coming days and weeks. So I'll give you a launch overview. We'll then dive into all the different products that are touched by this launch, and we will leave some time at the end for q and a. When you type in your questions, and we will be answering some of your questions as we go through. But then at the end, we'll bring everybody on stage, and then we'll discuss some of those questions so that we can highlight those for the full audience. So let's dive into what this launch is all about. Securing the AI era network is to something that you can see as a continuation of the Sophos Fusion story. It is the network chapter of that story. And our promise in how you secure the AI era network is that your network needs to be engineered for performance, and solutions need to be connected for defense. It's really all about making sure that you have the capacity to control and inspect that network to make sure that there are no bottlenecks that are created. We now have very, very different circumstances in relation to the type of traffic that's going through the network. The demands on the network have been scaled up massively over sort of the recent year, I would say, plus. But, also, we need to have no products working in isolation. That is the Sophos fusion story. And for the network, it's very, very relevant because no one piece sees everything. And so by having things that are connected for defense, you're gonna get full visibility of the network. And customers should never have to choose between turning protection on and actually getting the performance they need. And we know that's a compromise that some customers occasionally make, and they shouldn't need to. AI is really raising the stakes of the network. And you will see, you know, throughout various media outlets and things, the role of the network in AI... In the AI era has really been elevated even further. On the one hand, you've got users with all their different tools. For those of you that remember back to the days when we used to talk about sizing by... Based upon users and which were power users, etcetera, I'm harking back to the, UTM days there. Really, every user is a power user these days because we're all doing multiple things at the same time because of all the AI enabled work that we're doing. AI, of course, is helping us to strengthen our solutions. So the security that we have is helped by AI. AI can scan through things, the parameters of things, and recognize things that humans simply can't do alone. So it's making humans stronger. But to a certain extent, you do need to be meeting that... Those machine speed attacks that are coming via AI with automated response, and that is the one way that you can meet that speed and keep pace. Because AI has accelerated attackers as well. And whereas before, if there was a vulnerability or if you haven't patched your firewall, it may have taken someone a little while to find that. With AI, even unskilled attackers can find those vulnerabilities very, very quickly. So you need to make sure that your customer's defenses are able to keep pace, and that's both in terms of the protection, but also the speed that is needed and ensuring that they have the performance to support that. The AI era network story is something that you can really turn into a broader conversation across the network that goes beyond just the firewall. When you're talking about the things that I'm gonna introduce shortly, you'll be able to talk about giving them more choice, a compelling reason to have that conversation that it's not just about the firewall, it's about secure access. It's about much more than that. Discussing that visibility that they have through Sophos Fusion and how the different network control points can each give a piece of visibility that creates a complete picture. Those are all things that this will help you with. People like stories. We know that stories sell, and the best storytellers are the best salespeople. So as long as we're working on that, I hope that I give you some inspiration today to take that story out to your customers. The AI era network, as I mentioned, consists of many, many different control points from a Sophos perspective, and each one is contributing its own piece to that, from the firewall to things like wireless and switch, which also provide really important context. We now have the network map, which feeds into the unified data lake. And, of course, that is information that's then available to other sources. We'll have Sophos NDI, Sophos workspace protection, and as you recently heard, Sophos AI defense, which is the new introduction, which is really all about having that visibility and governance over AI usage. That connects then, of course, with other solutions from the network to get the network context that it needs to be able to provide you with that visibility. Our launch includes a lot of different products, and these are all the things that we're gonna go through. There are gonna be four new XGS appliances. We've got Sophos firewall v 23. We've got a brand new Sophos NDR solution plus new NDR hardware. We have a brand new firewall licensing tier in Xtream plus. Part of Xtream plus is also Sophos workspace protection, where we're allowing you to take your conversation from the firewall and expand that out into the workers that are connecting via that network. And as I mentioned, all connected through Sophos Fusion as well. There are a few different dates for you to note. Obviously, today, we have our October 20 partner academy in the EMEA region. The first thing for you to note is that October 22 is the date when you'll receive a price list addendum. That price list addendum will include new hardware and new software products and, of course, the new extreme plus, bundle subscription. So those are some of the new things that you're going to see. The first time we will show our hardware anywhere will be in the EMEA region. It will be at Itzer in Nuremberg in Germany, just next week. And I'm hoping that to see many of you there, if you're gonna be joining us, it will be an opportunity to see the brand new hardware in a great showcase. So, we're very excited about that. V 23 has a soft release on November 3. Our market launch is on November 4. Now that's the day when we will actually do our PR, social media post. The website will be updated on all of the assets and various communications as well. Sophos NDR is coming on November 10. And another thing for you to note in your diaries, November 17 will be a virtual roundtable, which is Joe Levy, Dan Cole, who's our SVP for product management, and a guest analyst, where they will be discussing... It's a very similar format to what we had for Sophos Fusion. They will be discussing about securing the AI era network. So let's dive into our first topic. And for that, I'll hand over to Path to take you through v 23. Awesome. Thanks, Barbara. Really, power packed launch, I would say, is something for everyone and really living up to the securing AI era and connected for defense promise that we are putting together new hardware, new firewall version, new NDR, as well as the new bundle. So lot of things to really talk about. I'll dive into Sophos firewall version 23, which is our major feature release of 2026 and supporting the launch of, securing AI era network. So So as we really walk through this, the key thing... The key theme of this release is really bringing the AI defense, in the firewall. So that's where it is the visibility of the AI applications and AI websites that is being used in customer network and how exactly you can control, using AI defense into Sophos firewall. Not only that, we are also bringing AI assistant for firewall where as a partner or customer, you can really talk to your firewall rule tables in the natural language using Sophos Fusion. So that... That's AI assistant. And to really drive the AI automation, we are also bringing in the rest APIs. So till now, Sophos firewall APIs were custom XML API and needed a little bit learning curve if you really need to integrate Sophos firewall with other enterprise systems or any third party integrators or really build automation on top of that. With the rest APIs, you can use standard AI models to write automation because this is based on the open API three dot o specs. So great way to really integrate with other systems and do automate around that. The next one, with every release, we bring in something to really, add value to our secure by design promise. And with this release, other than many other features, we are also making the hotfix visible on the UI. We have been hearing many feedback from our partner community that whenever you bring competitors, products onto... I mean, they migrate to Sophos firewall, and it is very difficult for them to believe that the CVEs, the vulnerabilities, and the exploits, the zero day are being fixed in real time without really doing the firmware upgrade, and the power of that hotfix till now was not visible on the UI. With this release, you will be able to see the advisory link, CVE details, and exit time when that CVE is fixed in the firewall automatically using hotfix, in the Sophos firewall. Not only that, for education sector and for really doing single sign on using, Google IDP. So we are bringing in Google IDP single sign on, support in v 23 and also enhancing our synchronized security story for the customer who are actually using Sophos endpoint, Sophos firewall, and have moved to Microsoft enter ID. Now they'll be able to do sync user ID even with the Microsoft enter ID using v 23. There's a lot in this release that will help you manage your customer's firewall much better. So there is a new UX on firewall manage page. So if you're really catering to mid market start of enterprise segment where you have, like, thousands of firewall rules in your Sophos firewall. The v 23 new UX on the firewall manage page will help you to really see all the configurations in the single table. You can select which columns you really want to see. You can resize the columns, do easy search and filtering on the table, so a lot easier to manage the larger rule set and enterprise level deployments there. Related to secure by design, but also to support DNS over HTTPS protocol with either Sophos DNS protection, which is now just one click. So rather than you registering Sophos firewall as a location in DNS protection, you just need to turn on a switch on a firewall, and firewall will talk to Sophos fusion and register the firewall for DNS protection. Very easy and quick, plus secure because of DNS over HTTPS. We are also including DNS sec to really save the deployments from cache poisoning, kind of attacks on DNS side. So a great security step up on DNS protection side as well. Another thing on the high availability side, so when we talk about mid market and the one you are rack bound series, more than 60% of our deployments are deployed in high availability or mode. With this release, we are improving the failure detection by up to 13 x. So till now, the cluster would detect the failover by maximum four seconds, which is now reduced to just three hundred milliseconds. So 13 x jumped there, much better failure detection. And we are also making firewall hardware aware in terms of high availability. So till now, if SSD goes, fail or if it is wearing out after, say, three, four, five years of deployments, now there won't be any need to, really wait till the cluster fails. So as soon as one device SSD fails, that failover will be triggered and the resiliency will be intact even in case of SSD or NPU like failures, the hardware failures. And the next, we will talk in detail is the new bundle that we are launching where we can connect firewall with SaaS c kind of for remote workers kind of deployment with workspace protection now included with the firewall bundle itself. More to come on that. But this is a release where we have something for everyone. And to our success, around thousand firewalls globally are already using the early access program for v 23, and we are seeing fabulous early feedback from these early deployments. And because there is new DNS where... That supports CT net kind of deployment scenario or MDNS support. We we didn't talk about it. There are, like, 30 plus new features in this release. We have not covered everything, but your Apple AirPlay or your IoT device really reaching into some different subnet, all those, scenarios and deployments is now supported with v 23. The new firewall managed UI, we are receiving really great feedback in the early access. If you haven't tried it yet and the GA is nearing in the start of November, but, yeah, please go put your hands on this early access to really experience all these features even before it is available as a GA there. Alright. Talking about firewall, we are also complementing the launch with great enhancements on the firewall management side from Sophos Fusion. So it would be a new user experience on the central management side where we will be showing the list of firewalls and the groups as a separate thing. There's a good fly out kind of, UX where you can see all the details, the firewall within the group, and the status of that. Plus, there has already been enhancement released to really make sure the firewall from fusion... The configuration is syncing at rapid pace without any task queue failures to the end firewall being managed from fusion. So there is a lot improvement in terms of the way you manage firewall from fusion as well as the way you see and manage the UX. This is something coming soon, but you are pretty excited in terms of all the requests that you have been doing and number of, large number of firewall set that you have been managing. It would be much easier with this new fusion design that we are coming up with pretty soon. We talked about, like, many features, and, as I said earlier, something for everyone. Just talking about these two very specific things. So we talked about hotfix visibility. So b 23 shows when exactly that hotfix is applied, which CVE the firewall is now protected with. And if you really need to dig into further details, the firewall UI itself gives the link to security advisory. So I think this is where, is the time where you can check the secure by design value prop with your customer where you can really ask your, customers or prospects that rather than tracking security advisory at vendors or OEM's website, can you be sure that when exactly those fixes were applied, whether it is midnight over weekend, you really need need not to take a downtime, upgrade the firmware, or do anything like that? And the visibility or the notification via email would be available right up front with this b 23. And that is the zero downtime security promise that Sophos firewall offers with, secure by design and hotfix visibility. High availability, we talked about it. So three hundred milliseconds failure detection would really help to reduce or eliminate the outage in the cluster with the high availability deployment. So this is where a good opportunity to position as a two appliance cluster to mission critical or resiliency requiring prospects or customers. So, yeah, that's a good question to ask yourself that can I start positioning in every firewall deal as you take this v 23 further? Right. With this, I hand it toward... Back to Barbara. Thanks, Barbara. Thank you, Pav. And, yeah, v 23 has got some very exciting, new, features, I think, that, many people have seen. We've been listening to our partners and customers and the feature requests that they've brought to us. I am now going to look through, something else that's very exciting, and that's new hardware. We know that you all love new hardware. We are introducing some new hardware. There are gonna be four new models that will enhance the existing portfolio. Now that's slightly different to how we usually do it in that, normally, we introduce models as direct successors of some of the existing models like we had with the desktop. We had our gen ones, and we brought a gen two. This is not a gen two. This is an enhancement to the existing portfolio. You will continue to sell the existing models for a long time yet. There are a few things within this that are really important. So the new models, as you may note, it's not that I just don't know the order of the numbers. They positioned according to the price positioning because the new models partially have four times the, inspection performance of the model that you would have expected to be its predecessor. We will go into that in a in a moment. We have very efficient, models that we've built. So for the throughput that you're getting, they're also not using a load more power or anything like that. Those are considerations that people need to make in the... This day and age. We know that energy costs are rising, and it is a particular metric that when you're talking about, you know, the the gigabits per second that you're getting for each watt of power that is used, that is a measure in a way that... Which you can compare competitive models. We have two different fast path designs within these models. I will go through that in a moment. So, obviously, we've got two models and two models. They each have different, fast path designs. And, of course, more modern technology. We have high speed connectivity across the board, 2.5 gig interfaces on every single model. And on some of them, we even have up to 25 gig fiber available on those models. So you're really... For your high performance networks that you need for the AI era, these models are very well equipped to handle that. And then a couple of things related to handling that I'll also go into, we have the concept of field replaceable SSDs. That is for RMAs only. And we also have an improved redundant power supply for some of the models, and I'll show you that in just a moment. So if you consider the lineup that we have today, we have, obviously, our three different, form factors. What's changing from November is that the desktop new models stay exactly the same. But with the one new models, we have the four additions. That's giving you different price points, different positioning, different performance points that you could choose. So as I mentioned, this is showing them in order of the price positioning. If you try to position the twenty three eighty as a replacement for a 2,300, you will notice that from the price that the customer expects to pay, it will be much higher. So just bear that in mind because, of course, price and performance are two things that are tied together. The other thing that we have in this new lineup is a brand new model at the top of the one new lineup, and that is the fifty five eighty. That's just giving you more choice. It's also an interesting opt... Option for people who say, I have limited rack space, but I need really good performance. So another thing that you can consider. We think that that model will be very attractive for quite a lot of customers. So I mentioned that we have the two different fast path designs. The twenty three eighty and the thirty three eighty come with a single CPU, and you should in no way see that as being suit... Inferior to having, you know, the the dual processor architecture that we've had on many of our other XGS models. It's a completely new concept, a completely new design that we have in that we have a single Intel CPU in these models, and we have some of the cores on that CPU that are reserved as a dedicated hardware fast path. So it's a way in which we can more efficiently create a hardware fast path without the requirement for an ExtremeFlow processor. When it comes to the forty five eighty and the fifty five eighty, we maintain the dual processor architecture. Obviously, they need to have a little bit higher performance. That doesn't mean to say that the other two don't have high performance. They do. But it's just two different designs so that we're really making sure that the performance requirements fit the proposed use case for these specific devices. On the top two models, we have one SSD that's field replaceable. On the the other two, they have two SSDs included, each that are field replaceable. So I mentioned about these not being direct successors, and I wanted to demonstrate that a little bit more. If we look at the twenty three eighty, if you look at the model number, you would think, well, that must be a replacement for the 2300. And the fact that it has four times the threat protection, 3.8 times the TLS inspection should demonstrate that it is not. So a twenty three eighty could potentially replace a 3,100, 3,300, in some cases, even more than that. When it comes to the thirty three eighty versus the 3,300, again, you'll see that that's a massive increase in performance that we've got. So a thirty three eighty could potentially replace a 4,300. Those are the probably the more likely replacements that you'll see. But within our systems, we've set up a number of different transition paths, so you have quite a few different options. With the other two models, they're they're a little bit closer to where you'd expect them to be based on the model numbers. But with this, the really important note is that the model number doesn't necessarily equal the migration path. Also, we want to make sure that we're giving you more choice. Hardware markets are very volatile right now. I know that you've all heard. We have a price increase, of course, coming that we previously announced that starts on the November 1. Components are much more expensive. There are some shortages in some area that, you know, this is a very, very volatile market that we're introducing new hardware in. And we want to make sure that you're looking beyond just that sort of like for like refresh that you've done maybe with all those x g to x g s refreshes. I'm really looking at what does my customer need in terms of... To match the performance that they have, the the performance that they require, but also the budget that they have. And this just gives you a broader choice. It could be that your 2,300 customer is well served with a 3,100, and that is a model that will continue to be available. In contrast to the older SG and XG appliances, if we, at some point, introduce or announce an end of sale for an XGS model, the end of life will not be until five years later, and we're not announcing anything with this launch. We are not announcing any life cycle milestones at all. So people are gonna have all of these models for a full firewall life cycle. That is something that you don't need to worry about. So sell all of the portfolio, for much, much longer to come. And I I think we're giving you a lot more choice. So those two, things that I mentioned that improve handling. So when... If you have an SSD that, as Parth mentioned, you know, sometimes an SSD after a while, it's it's kinda worn out, and, and so it needs to be replaced. Now in the past, you would have had to send the whole appliance in for RMA, which is sort of very awkward because you've gotta take it out of the wrap. It could be, you know, all the cables and everything. You won't need to do that anymore. You will be able to access the SSD. You can see see here on the ones that have two SSDs. You can access the SSD. You can remove it. That doesn't impact your warranty. You're allowed to do that for an RMA. You will only have to send in the SSD. And, of course, if you've got advanced RMA, you're getting the replacement before. So it means that, hopefully, you will be up and running a little bit faster and with a bit less effort because you're not having to rip out the whole appliance. The other thing from the handling was what I mentioned with the new redundant power option that, slots into the device rather than being bolted on. That was obviously a very clunky thing that we had for some of the ones before. This is definitely an improvement in terms of handling. When it comes to one year sales, now we know that desktops make up the majority of the sales in terms of volume. We sell a lot of desktop appliances. One year sales make up the biggest chunk in terms of revenue. One year sales are when you can add other Sophos products. These are customers that have much more complex environments where they are more likely to have maybe their own SOC. They're more likely to be looking at security and have dedicated security personnel that are managing all of that. We have four times higher adoption of MDR with our one new customers than we do with desktop customers. Now when you consider that 45% of MDR customers are also firewall customers, that is a correlation that's quite interesting. But turn that on its head. We have hundreds of thousands of of firewall customers and just a small number of MDR customers. That's a huge firewall customer base to go after to sell MDR to. And when you're talking to people about the hardware refresh, talk to them about more than just replacing their hardware. Because strength and defenses today, you know, you you need to make sure that people are covering everything that they can. Security needs to be bulletproof right now. And the more software's products that you can sell, the better their defenses are, and particularly because of that, the fact that they're connected defenses. With XDR, it's a similar picture. We have 67% higher adoption. So 25% of all one new customers also have XDR. I think these are just two examples of interesting places where you can look across sell to be able to position the one u models as part of a broader picture. And it may not all happen at once. And, of course, that's that's quite normal. Not everybody has a budget... All of the budget all at once. But I think it's certainly that with your... When you refresh conversations, you could talk to those customers about what is the next step and ensure that you're doing that as well. You think of things like new... The newer products that we have, ITDR now as a stand alone product, AI defense as an add on if they've already got XDR, MDR, or EDR. So all of that just means that this... These are your cross sell machines. Make sure that you're using that. And if you've got a deal where you're selling nothing but a firewall and the subscription, you probably have a missed opportunity there. You can sell more with a one u than you can with a desktop. So that was our sprint through the hardware. Obviously, a lot more information to come. We're now gonna look at the new Sophos NDR. What we're bringing with the new NDR is additionally available for term only. That's an important, differentiation. So what we're bringing is a converged solution that takes the best of Sophos NDR and of Tejas NDR and brings that into a single solution. From Sophos, you're getting that AI and ML powered behavioral detection. And from Tejas, you're getting the deep packet inspection and the IDSIPS capabilities. What that gives us is a brand new standalone solution that you can sell. Whereas, previously, you had to be selling XDR or MDR, they are no longer requirements. Of course, you can still sell them if you want, but you don't have to. So a stand alone solution opens up all kinds of new possibilities. We are going to have dedicated NDR hardware. I'll talk about that in just a moment. There's also gonna be a new active inline response mode. Very important. When we've got an r at the end of NDR, then we wanna do something with that. And I'll talk about that also in just a moment because that's a real differentiator. We continue to offer the flexible deployment with the virtual, the third party hardware, and now with a new option with the NDR hardware. And, of course, as with all of our products, completely connected through Sophos Fusion. So we're giving you all of that to broaden that story. As I mentioned, talking about one point product may be where you start, but broadening that out is where you differentiate. So if we look at the two different perspectives, when you think of a traditional network, people often think of, you know, before with the firewall is controlling the perimeter looking at north south traffic. And you could see NDR as a thing looking at East West traffic. Now we know in reality that firewalls can also see east west traffic, but an NDR appliance or NDR as a solution can see some things that your firewall potentially can't see. Sophos firewall is really that machine for prevention and control that is looking at the traffic routed through it. It's also, obviously, through the connection to to Sophos endpoint. We know that we're giving that extra perspective that we wouldn't usually have within the network. An NDR, of course, is looking at that behavior that's happening across the network and is extremely good when it comes to unmanaged or sort of unknown assets, IoT, OT, all of those kind of things. So your customers have areas where they have a lot of devices that can't run an agent. That's where NDR can really come into its own. No single control point in the network can see every part of attack... Of an attack. And so through Sophos Fusion, bringing all of this together, the conversation is not, do I take a firewall or do I take NDR? The two are actually complementary solutions. You do need both. Active inline mode is where we really differentiate, and this is really putting the r in Sophos NDR. Active inline mode places Sophos NDR in the network path. And what that means is that when we're scanning the traffic and inspecting every packet that crosses the network, if we identify a malicious packet, that can be dropped before it reaches its destination. This is a really important differentiation in that many competitors will require you to buy extra products to do this. This is just an add on for your software's NDR hardware, deployment. So this is a really good way. And you could start out if you have... Buy your softness NDR, how you sell your softness NDR hardware to your customer. They could start in monitor mode, and then they could purchase that add on at a later date to introduce this new active inline mode. So that's the way in which that they can expand their deployment over time if they want to just start out with NDR in that monitor only mode. The new NDR 5,500 appliance may look identical to a fifty five eighty XGS appliance. There are a few key differences. Many of the interfaces that are on the appliance are reserved for future use. Now this means that you have an external port that you connect to the Internet, and you have a management port. Also, for its traffic inspection, you use bypass modules. So these are our FlexiPort modules as you know them from the XGS world. So what happens is when you're ordering an NDR appliance, just as with XGS, you select your power cord according to your region, and you then have a choice between two different pairs of FlexiPort modules. And they will be shown as FTW, model options. That's failed to wire, for those of you that don't realize. So not to confuse anybody, it does mean FlexiPort modules or bypass modules. So you've got two different choices. You've got your one gig copper, two of those, or your 10 gig fiber, depending on the network and the requirements. The second power supply is already included with this appliance, giving you power redundancy from the get go. With Sophos NDR, you need to, first of all, buy a, software license that's required for all deployments. There is then the option to have Sophos hardware or third party compatible hardware. We've made making that also a lot easier for you to find compatible third party hardware. It's a little bit like we do for software deployments for the firewall. You know, we give you certain prerequisites, and then, it will be easier to find third party hardware as well. Or, of course, selling Sophos hardware. It would look much nicer in the rack if you had XGSs next to a Sophos NDR appliance, I'm sure. And then, of course, during the ordering process, you're selecting those bypass modules that you need so that you have the traffic inspection. The other add ons that are available for the Sophos hardware are the IDSIPS add on for the active inline mode and also support that you're going to need. So you're gonna need to purchase either enhanced support or enhanced plus support. Sophos NDR as a stand alone product opens up a lot of different opportunities. You know, you can win new customers. You might have customers that maybe, unfortunately, have an an NDR product from a different company and so don't need Sophos NDR. So that's just one of the examples. But you can also expand if you look at, you know, existing customers. For Sophos NDR customers, existing customers, they now have more choice, and you've got an upsell option. For soft... For TEGIS NDR customers. You know? It's it's it's not that they have to rip everything out and replace it. So we're really having consistency for existing customers. There's more information about that in the training module that will be available shortly. But also having NDR that you can cross sell into any of your other deals as well just gives you a lot more options. So, really, I would encourage you, when we do have the deeper dive session, do join that as well, making sure that you can look at NDR as another sales opportunity. Now I'm gonna talk about extreme plus very briefly. So when you consider that 80% or more of our customers globally own extreme protection for their firewall. Now that's partly to do with our promos and things like that. They're all extreme protection, and we finally have an upsell option for you. Extreme plus allows you to open up that conversation, as I mentioned, to go beyond the firewall and to always talk of... To talk about secure access for hybrid and remote workers. Extreme Plus is a term only subscription. The reason being that with workspace protection, we have a specific number of licenses depending on the XGS or virtual model that you have. And that model specific license allocation is not technically possible with the MSP flex billing model. That's obviously, you know, it's based upon usage. It doesn't work. Of course, you can still sell workspace protection with MSP flex, but you just need to sell it separately. The other thing just to note, if you're using master licensing, those workspace protection licenses within Xtream Plus, they allocate it to the tenant where the firewall is deployed. They can't be shared with other sub estates. You'll also hear more about that when you get the training. So Xtream plus is basically that that kind of the good, better, and best now and the option that you have. You have the workspace protection licenses. For the firewall reporting, whereas you have just thirty days data retention or up to thirty days in extreme protection, you have up to one year. And, obviously, we'll show you as well. We've calculated that based on the number of licenses, based upon typical traffic for that size of model. We also have the enhanced plus support upgrade that's included in this, particularly where we expect extreme plus to be positioned. And I think this fits really nicely with our one year appliances as well, the type of customer. They're more likely to have And you know that in active passive you need a enhanced plus on the active device to cover the passive device for advanced RMA and a few other things. So those are the benefits of Extreme Plus. Where are you gonna position that? Well, of course, new customers, just allowing you to not just start with a firewall to talk about remote and hybrid workers and how they are connecting. Try and position it from the offset. Expansion, of course, that you can look at people. Maybe maybe somebody has workspace protection. Maybe they want to add more. There are expansion opportunities here just to extend the security beyond the office. If somebody's got some other software solution, they could do that. So this is particularly interesting, you know, as an expansion motion. And, of course, probably the biggest one is gonna be that renewal point at which you can really look to upgrade extreme protection customers to extreme plus. If you've been talking about workspace protection, they haven't taken the plunge yet, then this will cover a number of things that they perhaps already require, and you've got that in a single bundle. We know it's easier to sell things when they're in a single SKU. We're now giving you that with Xtream plus. The final topic that I'm going to touch upon is Sophos workspace protection. So Sophos workspace protection, of course, is now part of Xtream plus, placing workspace protection solidly within our conversations around firewalls. The most common use cases that we've seen so far for workspace protection are obviously to do with contractors and BYOD, giving the access that people need and blocking the access that they shouldn't have. We've got hybrid workers, zTNA, working in combination with a protected browser for that controlled SaaS access. And, also, the protected browser for that controlled SaaS access, and also the shadow AI, scenario, which, of course, has changed slightly now with the introduction of Sophos AI defense. There is another feature that's coming for workspace protection and some other products, and that's synchronized web policies. And those bottom two are the ones that I'm gonna talk about now. Synchronized web policies will allow you to create a profile within Sophos Fusion that you can then use for policies in Sophos endpoint, in the protected browser that's part of workspace protection, and on the firewall. And we are planning to add that to further products in the future. So for example, DNS protection. Also, in a future release, it will eventually be possible to import your Sophos firewall web policies into Sophos Fusion to use those across the board. So it's really about having consistency across multiple products, but not having to set these policies up in every single product individually. Consistency is super important. There's also a new generative AI web category that can be used across these products. And, of course, this will all feed into AI defense as well. So we're bringing more things together. This is a really nice Sophos Fusion story. And when you're talking about web policies and synchronized security, this is a great example of that in action. Now Sophos AI Defense is something that I hope many of you joined the recent, Partner Academy session. Sophos AI Defense gives us a brand new solution as an add on to EDR, XDR, or MDR. And what you can see that, as is the visibility over everything AI. It is your number one product when it comes to AI control, visibility, and enforcement. The enforcement, however, is coming from different sources. So, obviously, you know, the add on to EDR and XDR that you can see here, they are providing and feeding information into Sophos AI defense so that it can give you this single view. Sophos Firewall integrates directly with Sophos AI Defense, also giving you the network traffic information that is required to give the network perspective to Sophos AI Defense that it wouldn't otherwise have. And, also, in a future release, Sophos workspace protection will integrate directly with Sophos AI defense. Also been able to give that shadow AI activity, the things that we're getting through the browser integration that we can do, that will all feel... Feed into AI defense. And, of course, the AI risk is rooted to Sophos MDR for detection and investigation workflows. So, again, another perfect example of why selling multiple products is better than selling one product, but giving you another story that really brings all of those softwares fusion solutions together that you can talk about how AI defense helps to give you that single pane of glass when it comes to AI governance and governance and control, but also how the other product's connecting. And that is the important piece, the different products that are each feeding it. If you have software's AI defense and you don't have a firewall, then there might be some visibility that's missing. Add that in, and we know that a lot of firewall customers already have, maybe EDR or XDR or MDR, as we've seen. So this is another opportunity for adding that solution as well. We don't wanna look at any one of our solutions in isolation because there's a lot more that you can do, as I say, and a lot more that you can sell if you're selling multiple products and you're positioning that as a solution. It also differentiates us. So in summary, there are a lot of dates for you to remember. I realize that. And I put them again on here at a glance. So there are a few notes on here. They're not relevant for the EMEA region, but I just want you to bear that in mind. I'll call out a few things. Extreme plus is term only because it's technically not possible with MSP Flex with those workspace wide counts. The twenty three eighty and the thirty three eighty will be available as hardware as a service. None of the new hardware models will be eligible for promo... Promotional discounts. So that is just something to bear in mind. They're not included in any of the promos. The forty five eighty and fifty five eighty and also the NDR 5,500 built upon the same platform, basically, they will have limited stock at GA. And, also, for you to bear in mind that the, forty five eighty, fifty five eighty, if not, they will not be available for hardware as a service. We only do that up to certain models at the moment. And the new softwares MDR is term only initially. MSP availability to be cons... To be confirmed at a later date. We have the right PMs on the call, to discuss that later. So what do you need to do now? Well, make sure, as I mentioned, that you're prioritizing your one new sales. Those are your cross sell machines. That is where you're gonna have the biggest impact. People are looking for the next compelling event. We've had our x g to x gs refresh. We've had our s g to x gs refresh. The next thing is new hardware is your next compelling event, and that's supported by v 23, the new NDR. Need I go on? We have a lot of things that are happening right now. We've given you more things to be able to expand deal, to be able to renew, to be able to upsell, and to be able to cross sell. And bringing that all together with exciting products like Sophos AI Defense just strengthens that even further. And I think towards the end of this week, you should receive the training link so you can take the training. You'll go through modules on each one of those, and they will add to the information that you've received today. You need to be protecting more of your customer's business. You want your share of wallet, as people say nicely, but this is also something that can really help you to grow yours. And on that, I would ask my colleagues to come on the stage. Thanks, Baba. We definitely promised a lot of content, didn't we? And, just to. sort of, just to remind everyone, we will be sharing... I know there's lots of lots of tables and dates and things, and we will be showing that after the call. So, hopefully, that makes it easier for everything. Barbara, just a quick question for you before we just get into some of the questions. What... When will the pricing be available just to clarify, on the on the new devices and On solutions? the on the twenty second, the price list addendum is coming that includes the new XGS hardware models. It includes. the new Xtream plus license for a term. The term addendum also includes the new Sophos NDR and the new hardware. Great stuff. So. everything that's... Everything that was missing from the previous price list is now gonna be in that addendum. Yeah. Great stuff. And, Paw, just... And, Paw, maybe both of you, if you could... I mean, you can see the q and a. Is there any particular questions that you want to, I know you've answered quite a few of them. Any you want to particularly raise? Yeah. I I think I would talk through a couple. Right? So one thing that is been highlighted is clarity on AI defense, whether that is a separate solution available or it is kind of clubbed with only NDR. And I answered that, but, yeah, just for clarity of everyone. So for the AI defense is a solution that is enabling AI visibility and control base and orchestrating AI policy control from Sophos Fusion. And it is actually integrating with each and every product of the Sophos, be it firewall, endpoint, workspace protection, NDR, DNS protection. So every product, the AI visibility and control piece is driven through AI defense as a solution. So just to clarify that. But just to note, Parth also, Sophos AI defense today is available as an add on to EDR, XDR, and MDR. So it's not available as a standalone solution right now. So just to make sure that that's, that's clear to... And, obviously, a lot of our customers. have those solutions anyway. So, but as I mentioned, it really... It gets stronger the more more products you have because it gives it more traffic sources as well. Right. The other thing is a little bit clarity Well. on extreme plus as a new bundle because that is the first time or one of its kind where we are integrating firewall extreme protection as well as the workspace protection, which is a user based licensing. So confusion around if a customer already has certain workspace protection license, and then on the firewall, if they upgrade to Extreme Plus, so the workspace protection license that they get as a part of Extreme Plus would be in the same pool of their existing workspace protection license and can be used. So just to clarify that, yeah, it will be the similar licensing usage as a standard workspace protection. And depending on the need, they can even add on to another set of workspace protection license the way they take up the remote workers protection and enterprise browser thing. The other question maybe, I want to highlight is on the hardware architecture side. As this new device, the twenty three eighty thirty three eighty, and we talked about a separate hardware acceleration architecture here as a part of extreme architecture, where it is not a dedicated separate CPU, but we are using the same host CPU and certain core result for doing hardware acceleration. So as a story, it is nothing different. It is not a virtual thing or it is not a non hardware kind of acceleration. It is dedicated CPU codes working to accelerate specific traffic and the fast path, and, hence, we are seeing up to four x throughput improvement when we see that. So it is the same piece of extreme architecture that we have been talking about. But on these two models, to simplify the architecture and the power requirement, right, we have changed this a little bit so that we will resume a core and use that as a dedicated hardware acceleration there. So that... That's the slight differentiation there. I think I covered most of the question Yeah. I could see. think the one thing that maybe would be good to reiterate is, obviously, because we have, we have our two NDR PMs on the call here, Carl or Tom, could one of you please reiterate, if I want active inline dispense... That defense or active inline response to to get that response action for NDR. What do I need to have in terms of what do I need to buy to have that? So so to deploy in line, you need to have the Sophos NDR 5,500 and the add on license. Bypass card. So if you turn on the... You wanna purchase IPS, IDS later, the appliance is all set. You won't have to swap that card out. The other thing to note is that if you deploy on VMware or Hyper V, you can get the detection capability in sniffer mode, for IPSIDS, with the product as well. And I guess one last clarity, that that we hear come up is what about third party hardware? What... What's enabled on third party hardware? And third party hardware supports the Sophos machine learning and analytics capability. It does not support the IPSIDS add on. So if you want to be able to block and drop packets and take response actions, it's an NDR 5,500 that comes with the bypass card and the IPSIDS add on license. And that's a great reason for our partners to position the softwares appliance, with softwares India. I mean, if we're on it as a as a standalone solution, I think that's that's the strength. If you... It's giving you another revenue stream as well. I think having this hardware, software, plus the add ons, I think that's a great enhancement to our overall network story. I guess we had a couple more come in about data sheets. They're gonna be available soon, Barbara. Most of those will be available from the November 4 from the launch. We are, gonna be down to the wire with this particular launch. There's a lot of assets to update. Most of those things will be published, by the November 4, many on the November 4. Great stuff. Thank thank you to our partners that are giving us lots of great feedback. We appreciate, we we appreciate that. Have we got through most of the questions, Paul? Barbara, are you... Anything else? Yeah. And, I think we we have covered most of the things we really wanted to discuss in live, so all good. Yeah. Okay. But let me just wrap up. First, I'd like to say thank you to Carl and Tom who have dialed in from The States. So we really appreciate, whatever earthly hour you woke up this morning. So very, very, thankful for that. Thanks, Parth and Barbara, of course, for going through the content. As I mentioned before, we will be sharing the presentation, with you. Please reach out to your distribution representative or Sophos representative if you need more information. And, you know, as as Barbara mentioned, we've got lots of training available and lots of information. So please reach out for that. If you can't find anything, drop us an email, and we'll get that, over to you. But we're very excited about, the opportunity for this quarter and and beyond as as I mentioned, before. So on that note, thank you again. We are always appreciative of you taking your time to, jump on these calls, and, have a very good quarter. Thank you very much. Thank you. you.