WHAT SOFTCAT’S SERVICES PARTNER OF THE YEAR AWARD SAYS ABOUT HARBOR

At this year’s Softcat Partner Forum, Harbor was named Services Partner of the Year. 

We’re proud of the recognition – but more than that, it’s a proof point of how a specialist recovery partner can plug into a major reseller partner, strengthen their resilience story, and help customers recover with confidence. Softcat is a great example of that model in action across our wider partner network. 

A partnership that’s grown up together 

Harbor’s relationship with Softcat goes back years, from early backup projects through to today’s full cyber recovery and resilience services. 

In practice, we show up as one team: 

• Softcat owns the broader customer relationship and solution strategy. 

• Harbor brings deep recovery and resilience expertise into those engagements, from design through to delivery and ongoing service. 

The result is a joined-up experience for customers, with all of us accountable for the same recovery outcomes. 

It’s the same standard we apply with every partner – treat their customers as our own, and their reputation as something we’re responsible for protecting. 

“Harbor felt like part of my team” 

When Softcat teams talk about Harbor, they rarely start with tools or product names. They talk about how it feels to work together. 

“With McBride and with many other customer engagements, Harbor felt like part of my team. When a recovery or resilience brief is complex, they simplify tough challenges, represent Softcat brilliantly in front of customers, and act as a genuine extension of our specialists. Their vendor-agnostic approach means customers get the right answer, not a pre-set one, and Lighthouse lifts the conversation from backups to board-level outcomes we can stand behind.”

Matthew Rudd, Senior Team Leader – DCC North UK&I, Softcat  

That’s exactly the experience we aim to create in any engagement: 

• Be a natural extension of the partner’s team on complex resilience briefs. 

• Show up well in front of their most important customers. 

• Simplify the complex, so everyone leaves the room clearer and more confident about risk. 

Outcomes first, numbers second 

Joint business with Softcat has grown significantly – but for both organisations, the real test is outcomes, not just revenue. 

“This award recognises delivery quality as much as results. Harbor shows up for our teams and customers, bring strong technical leadership, and keep promises. Our joint business has doubled year on year, underpinned by excellent customer confidence and outcomes.”

Charlotte Parsons, Partner Management Team Lead, Softcat  

That’s what we want any partner to be able to say about Harbor: 

• We keep promises. 

• We de-risk critical services that are hard to build and run in-house. 

• Their teams would choose to work with us again. 

Those are the markers we look for across all our channel relationships. 

From backup to board-level resilience 

Across our partner ecosystem, Harbor’s role is to help move the conversation on from “Do we have backups?” to “Can we prove we can recover what matters, when it matters?”. 

A few things underpin that: 

• Recovery specialism
  Harbor is built around backup, DR and cyber recovery services. A high proportion of our people are technical specialists, working to a repeatable lifecycle from discovery and design through to testing and continuous improvement. 

• Vendor-independent approach
  We work with multiple technologies and platforms. That gives partners flexibility to build the right blend for each customer, rather than force-fitting everything into a single stack. 

• Harbor Lighthouse
  Our discovery and assessment framework maps critical systems, tests recovery readiness and produces a clear roadmap to strengthen resilience over time. For partners, Lighthouse helps lift the discussion from infrastructure to outcomes that boards and regulators understand. 

Softcat’s CTO describes the impact in simple terms: 

“Services Partner of the Year goes to a team that consistently makes customers safer and more resilient. Harbor’s vendor-agnostic stance and proven recovery expertise give our clients clarity and confidence at critical moments. They are a trusted partner across our business.”

Mark Forster, CTO, Softcat  

Softcat is a visible example of how this lands. The same approach supports other partners who are looking to turn resilience strategies into something measurable and auditable for their customers. 

Doing right by data, together 

Harbor exists to do right by data and give organisations peace of mind in a secure, data-smart world. Awards aren’t the goal. They’re a signal that our values are showing up in the right places. 

For channel partners, working with Harbor means: 

• A specialist recovery team they can trust in their most critical customer engagements. 

• A partner who runs to the red line in an incident, and does the quieter work of testing and improvement in peacetime. 

• A way to strengthen their resilience portfolio without having to build and maintain every capability themselves. 

For Harbor, Softcat’s Services Partner of the Year award is a thank you to the many people there who have championed us and a story we’re proud to share with existing and future partners across the channel. 

Cyber risk is rising, regulations are tightening, and the cost of downtime isn’t going down. But with the right partnerships, we can help more organisations recover with purpose – and keep doing right by data when it matters most.