Channel Chief
“We have shifted gears from pull to push model”
 Kartik Shahani, Regional Director, McAfee, speaks to Sharmee Roy about the company’s channel initiatives and its strategies for this year
Tell us something about your recently concluded partner forum and the various initiatives discussed there.
Every year we organize a partner forum where we share information and take feedback from our partners. Both existing partners and potential partners are invited to this forum. The idea is to show our technology, product roadmap, and the programs we have in store.
This year, the forum was divided into two parts. To the first, we invited our elite and premier partners. During this session, we informed them about the progress we made on the feedback we received last year, and then took feedback on how we could grow the market for McAfee. The second part was with our associate partners, and dealt with what kind of programs we should run, and how we could upgrade these partners to become premier and elite partners of McAfee. We also spoke about the training programs we will introduce.
As you know, over the past couple of years, we have made a lot of acquisitions, and these have led to the addition of new products and technologies. The forum proved to be a good platform to tell partners about the specific initiatives we have for our four business units namely systems and security, network, risk and compliance, and data protection.
Could you provide us the details about some the initiatives you have planned in 2009?
On the channel front, our recent acquisitions have helped us position ourselves as a comprehensive security company. The new products and technologies thus acquired have been well-integrated with our central console. We have also made sure that we have an open architecture for security platforms to ensure larger interplay with other technologies.
This means our solutions partners today have more opportunities and a larger share of their customers’ IT security spends.
Our objective is to get more partners to move up the value chain instead of doing just a one-time sale, to provide them with more opportunities for deep-selling, and to facilitate continuous customer engagement.
Please list five steps you have taken to increase channel engagement over the last one year.
Over the last 12 months, we have created a strong security alliance program and introduced a deal registration program. The important initiative introduced, last year, was to set up a lead management systems which we call the Inside Sales Representative (ISR) team.
The ISR team is a specialized lead generation team; they call up customers to find out what customers need. When we identify which customers are in need of which products, we go to the next level of doing sales qualification, then pass it on to our partners to close the deal. Through this initiative, we have shifted gears from the pull model to the push model and helped our partners enter new customer accounts.
Your security alliance program has been well appreciated by partners. Could you share details of the program?
It is a formal program whereby partners can do business with McAfee and take advantage of the level of their partnership. Associate partners get training, product details, and newsletters about what the market and McAfee are doing. Premier partners choose a particular region and act as regional players focusing on a specific product. In turn they get marketing support, training, deal registration and closure, and special pricing. Elite partners get all of this, plus additional support on large deals. The success of any program is based on how well it helps partners develop more and do profitable business. And that’s what we believe has been the case with the security alliance program.
You haven’t been aggressive on the consumer business so far. What are the plans on that front?
The consumer business was non-existent for us so far. It was only last year that we decided to focus on it. Currently, we have four lines of business under the consumer arm: retail, OEM, online and managed, and ISP led.
Under the retail business we have expanded the number of distributors, sub-distributors and partners. Today we have 250 partners, and have increased the number of stockists from three to eight. We have also tied up with Neoteric for B- and C-class cities, while Ingram Micro takes care of the metros. We also started working with LFRs like Croma. For the OEM business we have tie-ups with Acer, HCL and Dell.
Third, we help those who want to buy licenses online. We have a program called Employee Purchase Plan for organizations which want their employees to get the product at a special price.
We are currently working with ISPs to provide our products as a service. Going forward, McAfee is seriously looking at the cloud computing and SaaS offerings.
What are the market trends that will drive the security business?
Today, security is not about anti-virus, it is about having multi-tiers. When we say multi-tier we mean security at the network, gateway, end-point, service and cloud. The security layers should overlap in such a way, that if a threat passes through one layer it should be captured by another layer.
The solution also has to be scalable and should be capable of being integrated with other solutions in a single console, so that one can get an overall picture of the organization. Additionally, the solution should not be proprietary and closed, but open.
The consumer and SMB markets are growing and will continue to invest in security. The enterprise market is in the consolidation stage.
With the acquisition of Secure Computing, any plans to enter the UTM market?
Prior to the Secure Computing acquisition, we had a gap in the firewall category. With the acquisition this gap has been filled. It’s going to add a lot of value to the overall product portfolio that we take to the market.
The acquisition made us strong in all aspects—network, gateway and end-point. We are either number one or two in any space that we operate in, and now Secure Computing has given us access to a UTM product.
Today, if you look at the UTM space, there are already about 20-odd players. Besides, the growth of UTM devices has only gone down over the past couple of years, and we doubt we can be in the top league in this space right now. Considering all this, we would rather put our efforts into areas where we are strong rather than trying too hard to establish ourselves in a new area.
Which verticals do you focus on? Also, how do you differentiate yourself from the competition?
Government, telecom, BFSI, ITES. These are the verticals we primarily focus on and will continue to focus on this year. Our overall growth has been in the range of 40-50 [percent] year-on-year. We have the ability to implement any technology that we buy or build. It’s our biggest strength. If we see a technology, we are able to quickly acquire it, integrate it, and take it to the market. Over the last couple of years, we were the first in the market with many technologies. We have always been leading our competitors from anywhere between 11 to 24 months.
How are you helping your partners cope with the present scenario? Are you looking at finance options for your partners and customers?
In today’s situation, people are trying to conserve their resources. If we are able to provide a single view of security and have all the products integrated, our customers would require fewer people to manage things. This would also give them the advantage of approaching a single vendor and a single partner as against having to approach multiple vendors and multiple partners for all the issues to be addressed. By giving a complete end-to-end solution, we help our partners provide value to customers and make for a longer-standing business relationship.
Financing as an option is viable for customers only if they are looking to invest in a long-term solution for a period of time like 20 years. It would not make sense for customers to look for such options for a one-year deal where they would end up paying 12 percent more plus the cost of processing. So far, neither our customers nor partners have asked for a financing option, but if they do approach us we would be willing to consider the same. |