McAfee invests big to strengthen its SMB presence

Post the Intel acquisition, McAfee is all set to launch an SMB product in the OND quarter of 2011 in India and Australia. "From a channel perspective, McAfee and Intel will be jointly working on bringing in a new wave of security technology solutions that will help our partners sell unique and differentiated products to meet the requirements of customers. This hybrid solution will enable partners and customers to deploy it in the form factor of software as a service or on-premise (client-server) architecture. We would promote it through our existing network of distributors and resellers," said Gavin Struthers, director, channel and alliances, Asia Pacific, McAfee.

The SMB products include features to provide complete protection to endpoints from viruses, malwares, spywares and harmful websites. "With this initiative, we are looking to consolidate and focus on empowering our existing partners rather than ramping up our numbers on this front. We are a 100% channel focused company and channel partners are extremely important to our business as we are an absolutely channel oriented company. All our business runs through channel partners and they form the core pillars of our growth," said Struthers. The company has 1,400 registered partners in India with a two tier model that consists of distributors who help to sell McAfee products to customers through resellers. Its partners have been demarcated into the elite, premier and associate categories.

Specifically on the consumer side, McAfee has been working with retail channel partners in India for over 3 years now and has an extremely robust and successful partner framework. Currently, the company has Ingram Micro as its exclusive national distributor and one sub distributor each in 11 cities-Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Pune, Guwahati, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad.

Going forward, the company plans to expand its footprint to 40 tier-2 and tier-3 cities. "We are planning to increase the number of sub-distributors to 22 this year. We have consolidated our managed partners and will focus on maximizing their business this year. We will be driving this initiative strongly in 2011," said Struthers.