Nozomi’s independence promise is one partners should hold it to

George Todd, chief financial officer of Nozomi Networks, the operational technology (OT) and internet of things (IoT) security vendor, set out how he reads a business in an interview with Raconteur published on 22 September. Nobody should lead a finance function, he told the publication, until they have done the work of one, and the idea he says shaped how Nozomi built efficiency is that an industry norm is not a reason to accept it. He told Raconteur that “conventional wisdom is not always correct”, and that in many cases it is wrong outright.

It is advice worth reading twice, because Todd’s employer is part way through the kind of change where conventional wisdom does the most damage. Mitsubishi Electric, the Japanese electrical and factory-automation group, completed its purchase of Nozomi on 28 January 2026, according to Nozomi’s release that day. Mitsubishi Electric’s announcement of the deal on 9 September 2025 put the price at $883m (£666m) for the 93% of the company it did not already own; it already held 7%. The same document gives Nozomi revenue of $74.7m for 2024, a compound annual growth rate of 33%, a gross margin above 70% and 315 employees.

The promise was made in Nozomi’s release, issued as a joint announcement with Mitsubishi Electric. Nozomi would be “a wholly owned subsidiary, operating independently of Mitsubishi Electric”, Nozomi’s September 2025 release says, and it is explicit about the channel: “There will be no disruptions to current operations, roadmaps, or partnerships.” The January release repeats it, promising to preserve the company’s independent operations, its vendor-neutral roadmap and its existing go-to-market partnerships.

UK partners should take Todd at his word and apply his test to that promise. The conventional wisdom after any acquisition is that nothing changes for the channel. It is also the sentence that ages worst. When an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) buys a security vendor that sells through partners, vendor independence stops being a slogan and becomes the single variable that decides whether the partner program survives.

What Todd told Raconteur

Todd is an accountant by training. Nozomi’s leadership page lists him as a certified public accountant (CPA) with more than 17 years in financial leadership, previously chief accounting officer at Inflection and before that at Esurance and PwC, where he told Raconteur he spent 12 years. He told Raconteur that a good finance leader needs humility, clear communication and a sharp eye for talent, but that none of it counts until the person has been, in his phrase, a good finance doer, with complete command of the numbers. He credits his results on efficiency to a willingness to reject what the industry assumes. On AI, he told Raconteur that he does not expect it to replace people, though he expects the people who use it well to open a significant gap on those who do not. And on the acquisition, his position is close to the company line: Nozomi carries on operating as Nozomi, with a much larger parent behind it and, he says, a big opportunity to keep growing.

I agree with almost all of it. The place I part company is the last point, not because it is untrue in September 2026 but because a promise of independence is an opening balance, not a guarantee.

Why an OEM parent changes the arithmetic

Nozomi’s channel is real. Its partner page says more than 1,000 certified systems integrators and value-added resellers are ready to deploy its products, alongside a global network of distributors and certified managed security service providers, and its channel chief’s bio describes a partner-first strategy. The January release says the company passed $100m in annual revenue, grew headcount by 24% in 2025 and new and expanded partnerships with Schneider Electric, Hitachi Cyber and Nvidia among others.

Now read the same facts from Tokyo. Mitsubishi Electric said in its announcement that the deal is meant to strengthen what it calls its one-stop OT security offer. A parent that sells its own automation equipment and wants a one-stop offer has every commercial reason, over time, to point its own field sales at the accounts where Nozomi’s partners built the relationship, and to ask why a 315-person product business with a gross margin above 70% needs a reseller between it and the customer. Schneider Electric competes with Mitsubishi Electric in factory automation. A vendor-neutral roadmap that keeps a rival’s integration current is the kind of decision that looks obvious in year one and gets quietly reprioritized in year three. None of this needs bad faith. It needs only a budget round.

A quarterly test for any OEM-owned vendor

Todd’s discipline, applied to the vendor rather than by it, gives partners a way to test the promise every quarter.

• Reporting lines. Does the channel chief still report to the subsidiary’s chief executive, or to a parent sales organization? The org chart moves before the price list does.
• Deal registration. Count the registrations you lose to the parent’s direct team in accounts you opened. One is an accident. Three in a quarter is policy.
• Rival integrations. Pick the integration with the parent’s biggest competitor and check whether it gets a release note in the next 12 months.
• Program terms at renewal. Compare rebate tiers, market development funds and deal-registration margin year on year, not against what the release promised.
• Leadership tenure. Note who signed the independence promise and whether they are still in post 18 months after completion.
• Where the roadmap is announced. If the next major product appears in the parent’s newsroom rather than the subsidiary’s, the independence has already moved.

Todd’s point is that conventional wisdom can be completely wrong, and the conventional wisdom after an acquisition is that nothing changes. Hold Nozomi to its own words, and count the changes anyway. The vendor that welcomes the counting is the one still worth building a practice on.