While
the security threats are ubiquitous, they can be overcome. Security
vendors can secure a company’s data and minimize the possibilities
of cyber break-ins. As awareness of the need for IT security
increases with geometrical progression, the customers are demanding
security solutions. But what is more pertinent to note is that
they hardly seem to be aware of what exactly they want. This
leaves it up to the reseller to play a very significant role
in providing the right solutions. And, this merits a serious
security know-how in the channel.
The
IT security market in India is booming. This is a segment
that accounts for an ever-increasing portion of the IT
spend. From the end-user and home office right through
to the largest enterprises, security is hogging the limelight.
Security was the underlying reason for IT investments
in India in 2004 and this trend continues as enterprises
pay renewed attention to thwart the security threats.
Analysts from Frost and Sullivan say that growth of the
network security market in India will exceed the projected
growth rate of 32.4 per cent in 2004-05.
Unified threat management (UTM) is the latest catch phrase
in the realm of IT security. The research firm IDC, in
its Worldwide Threat Management Security Appliances 2005-2009
Forecast, reports that UTM appliances sales will grow
47.9 per cent over the next five years, and take a 47-per
cent share of the threat management appliance market.
Ajay
Kumar Country Manager, Aventail India
In
2004, UTM appliances sales were worth US$333.6 million,
which represents 13 per cent of the revenue of the security
appliances market.
“The Security market in India is seeing a paradigm shift
from point products, i.e. Firewall/VPN, URL Filtering,
etc. to UTM appliances which embed Firewall, IPS, URL
Filtering, VPN, Virus Screening, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Adware,
Bandwidth management. These would be available either
in a pre-installed Hardware Appliance or as a SoftAppliance,”
says Sonit Jain, CEO, GajShield Infotech Pvt. Ltd. “The
UTM approach will make it easier for organizations to
implement and manage various security functions and reduce
the TCO. Managed Security Services would also witness
an uptrend in the coming year,” adds Sonit Jain.
“The
security market in India can be broadly classified into
three segments – Secure Content Management, Threat Management
and Identity and Access Management,” says Surendra Singh,
Head, South-East Asia and India, Websense.
Two developments have made security a priority area for
SMBs. These are the ever-increasing range of threats and
the increasing use of the Internet. The ubiquitous use
of Internet makes companies ever more vulnerable to the
threats.
Added to this, the scene becomes more grim because mid-sized
companies often have little or no in-house security expertise,
while those trying to hack their website or sneak into
their networks are likely to be rather more sophisticated.
“From a market point of view, the BFSI segment is seeing
great adoption along with a strong demand from the IT/ITS
and the Service Provider
Kartik
Shahani Director–– Sales, McAfee, India and
SAARC
segment.
Additionally, spending from the SMB segment has been steadily
growing mainly focussed on integrated security appliances
and devices. The SMB sector is contributing around 21.9
per cent of the total enterprise revenues. The market
is expected to focus its spending on competitively priced
integrated appliances,” says Parag Arora, Business Development
Manager, Cisco Systems, India and SAARC.
In
India, the present state of IT security is characterized
by rapid growth. “We see the security market in India
growing rapidly. Identity and Access Management is becoming
more mainstream as it is seen as vital in areas such as
Internet banking, BPO management and Government initiatives,”
says Ross Wilson, Managing Director, South Asia and India,
RSA Security.
“Security market in India is basically an Anti-virus and
Firewall market. For all other vendors, it is an early
growing market,” says Ajay Kumar, Country Manager, Aventail
India.
In India, according to a recent study conducted by IDC
amongst the Indian mid-sized companies for Symantec, IT-enabled
Services (ITeS)/Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)/Call
Centres have reported the highest usage of security software
solutions and over 80 per cent had a security policy in
place.
Protection of hard disk, network integrity and emails
attachments are the three most important reasons stated
for the use of security solutions.
Surendra
Singh Head, South-East Asia and India, Websense
“India is poised for phenomenal growth. Organizations
are now seeing the need to centralize their data and their
security policies. India’s surging digital capacity and
the growing use of the Internet only proves this,” says
Ajay Verma, Director Channels & Alliances, Symantec Corporation.
“But at the same
time,
there are new threats. The threats are now highly evolved
and they are multilayered. 65 per cent of the email traffic
is now spam. Organizations are, therefore, looking at
securing their content in India and this implies the need
for security products.
“The growth of the Indian security solutions market exceeded
the expectations of last year. This momentum is expected
to continue as security war chests are expected to be
opened wide this year,” says Kartik Shahani, Director
– Sales, McAfee, India and SAARC.–“The IT and BPO industry
will be the biggest consumers of security solutions. The
continuing BPO boom and increasing stress on adherence
to information security guidelines and regulations, like
HIPAA and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by Western clients also
contributed to the growth of the security software solutions
market,” adds Kartik.
“Looking at the growth and the momentum, the security
market can be defined as a rapidly growing and evolving
market,” says Shahani.
Ajay
Verma Director – Channels & Alliances, Symantec
Corporation
The stakes for McAfee in India are high. The company will
invest $80 million in India over the next four years in
a move to beef up operations in the country. This will
put the security company closer to its customers in the
Asia-Pacific.
In
order to expand its research and development centre in
Bangalore, which was started its Bangalore research centre
about four years ago, the security giant also plans to
hire more than 400 employees. The company hopes to have
about 1,000 employees in the city by the end of 2008.
The India office of McAfee is in the process of increasing
its assistance to local customers in deploying the company’s
products.
Not to be left behind in realizing the potential of India
is another security giant. Symantec also unveiled a new
research and development centre in Pune. The company also
plans to double its India operation employees headcount
to 3,400 over two years. Presently, Symantec has about
1,700 employees in the country.
That India is very crucial to the Symantec’s scheme of
things is evident from the fact that the country accounts
for about 40 per cent of the
company’s
employees. Two of the Cupertino, California-based security
giant’s recent acquisitions, BindView and Sygate, had
their development centres in Pune.
McAfee
has products in Perimeter Security, which includes Intrusion
Prevention Systems and Intrushield appliances. In the
gateway space, web and mail protection, webshield appliances,
Anti-Spam, Anti-Phishing Solutions are the offerings from
the company.
On the server space, Antivirus and Host-based Intrusion
Prevention AV, Anti-Spyware, Compliance Enforecment are
the major products, while the desktop arena consists of
AV, Anti-Spyware, HIPS, Compliance Enforcement.
McAfee products are basically on the Windows platform,
while some on certain version of Linux and Mac O.S. All
the company’s products report into a single console (ePO)
and this comes by default with most of the products. The
cross-pollination of the technology makes it sure that
the strengths of one product are incorporated in another.
“In a nutshell, McAfee is dedicated to providing products
and services that secures and supports companies IT infrastructure,
delivering end-to-end
Parag
Arora Business Development Manager, Cisco Systems,
India and SAARC
security
solutions that companies rely on today as well as those
that they will rely on tomorrow and this is one of our
major differentiator,” says Kartik.
Symantec whose popular Norton security software is used
on some 40-million computers around the world has a wide
range of security products.
Symantec is a provider of a wide range of content and
network security solutions catering to the needs of enterprises
and single customers. The company offers virus protection,
risk management, Internet content and email filtering,
remote management and mobile code detection technologies.
Symantec’s enterprise security segment provides security
software such as virus protection and filtering, firewalls
and VPNs, intrusion detection, security management, integrated
solutions and early warning solutions. The products mainly
operate on servers running on the Windows NT, Solaris,
Linux and UNIX platforms.
San Diego-based Websense is a global leader in Web Filtering,
and premier provider of Web Security Software. The company
provides multilayered web filtering and web security solutions
to increase productivity, optimize bandwidth and create
a more secure internet environment for employees and organizations.
The comapny’s prodtucts support the Linux platform.
Websense solutions are incorporated by enterprises with
employee strength of more than 10,000 employees with delegated
IT administration. Large multinationals with separate
IT administrators at each location implementing different
policies to tackle local requirements typically use Websense
solutions. This provides these multinationals spread over
various geographical locations the flexibility to deploy
customized Internet Usage policies to best suit the requirements
of the organization at the local level.
“In India, many large IT and ITeS offices with more than
10,000 employees and delegated administration, large banks
and other financial organizations, government offices
use Websense solutions. Almost all large organizations
implementing Web Content Management solutions prefer using
our solutions,” says Surendra Singh.
The Go-to-Market Strategy of Websense comprises of a 2-tier
channel distribution supported by marketing. 80 per cent
of the company’s revenue in India comes through channels.
“We are in the process of expanding our channel base and
we have also appointed system engineers who will help
partners provide after-sales and service support,” says
Surendra Singh. “We conduct several marketing programmes
throughout the year, and also conduct educational programmes
for the distributors who support the resellers in taking
products to customers. We are taking initiatives to create
awareness on the range of products we offer amongst both
Indian channel and consumers,” adds Singh.
Websense has currently 50 partners in India, and they
constitute a mix of local and national players. Some of
its largest partners in India are RAMCO, WIPRO, SIFY and
TAARAK India (P) Ltd. The company partnerships are designed
to foster a community of passionate and committed resellers
and technology providers dedicated to securing organizations
from web-based threats.
The partner training programmes undertaken by the security
company are “Websense Certified Sales Professional” and
“Websense Certified Systems Engineer”. Apart from this,
various Channel Incentives Programmes are conducted on
a regular basis by Websense.
Cisco has become a force to reckon with in the security
space. Though routing and switching account for more than
60 per cent of the company’s revenue, security finds itself
in the list of company’s six Advanced Technologies and
garners approximately US$2 billion for the company’s coffers.
With 1,500 engineers earmarked for working solely on security
products, Cisco offers integrated security solutions which
include products and services in various categories, including
Anomaly Detection and Mitigation, Endpoint Security, Firewall,
Identity Management, Network Intrusion Detection & Prevention
Systems, Security Management, VPN, Application Optimization
and Security, Compliance Validation, Integrated Router/Switch
Security and Multifunction Security. “Cisco supports open
standards for most of its technologies. For security solutions, we
are very pervasive on the platform support. Today, we
have solutions like Secure monitoring/management and end-point
firewall which supports open platforms like Linux,” says
Parag Arora.
The company’s fundamental understanding of the network
and complete end-to-end approach to security gives it
the edge to create solutions that dramatically improve
the network’s ability to proactively identify, prevent
and adapt to threats. This approach is part of Cisco’s
vision of a Self-Defending network. “In order to achieve
this, Cisco is creating an ecosystem where enterprises
not only have an integrated approach to manage security
but also have the intelligence that makes each point of
the network
‘security aware’. Cisco’s Integrated Services router that
integrates security and wireless into a single box or
the ASA family of products that offers a combination of
traditional security technologies (e.g. Firewalls and
VPNs) with enhanced application level security (e.g. anti-spyware
and web-application inspection) on a single device is
a demonstration of this,” says Parag Arora.
Seattle-based Aventail is a name which dominates the SSL
VPN market, which is expected to reach $1 billion by 2008.
Since the later half of 1990s, SSL technology has gone
from strength to strength. Analysts are of the view that
SSL is on its way to making its presence felt in the VPN
market. SSL VPN technology simplifies remote access for
users and IT managers without soft-pedalling the security.
“We offer remote access solutions. Our products support
all platforms. Our technology itself is based on open
source OS,” says Ajay Kumar of Aventail.
Against its SSL VPN competitors, Aventail cites innovation
as its strength. “Product innovation that offers customer
more productivity, security, control and manageability
is our real strength.”
The SSL VPN space is dominated by two major players, including
Juniper and Aventail. Apart from these two security giants,
the market is infested with many companies who jockey
for position, focussing on different niches.
Aventail offers solutions in healthcare, manufacturing,
financial services and government sector. “We will be
mainly focussing on IT & ITeS, manufacturing and insurance,”
says Ajay Kumar. Its customers include Aetna, DuPont,
IBM, Office Depot, Sanyo, and TNT.
As network security is well on its way to becoming more
and more complex and sophisticated, more security vendors
are beginning to look at UTM as the way forward. UTM combines
multiple functions into a single device. One such vendor,
GajShield, which operates in the UTM space, is a channel-friendly
company, which considers India as the most happening place
in the security space.
This Mumbai-based UTM vendor offers UTM products, which
include ICSA-certified Firewall, IPS,VPN, URL Filtering,
Gateway Virus Screening, Anti-Spyware/Adware, Multiple
ISP. The company’s approach for the SME network is through
its GajShield SecureGate UTM Soft Appliance, which would
allow the customers not to compromise on security features,
and yet is affordable for them. For the medium and large
enterprises, the company provides UTM hardware appliances.
This approach helps to provide same kind of complete security
starting from the smallest of offices to large enterprises.
“The need of the market is to have a true UTM product
with all the features for the smallest of the offices
to the large ones,” says Sonit Jain.
It is now an established fact that IT security is a fast-growing
market that cuts across all the verticals. Anyone who
has an IT system is a customer. As the security threats
keeps changing at a lightening speed, vendors are left
with no option but to engage themselves in a constant
cycle of innovation to develop new products and upgraded
packages. So, there is a need for a channel-to-market
approach.
The security segment is being chased by a large number
of vendors. Though the market is dominated by established
vendors such as Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee, start-ups
are also making a beeline to enter the market with innovative
products at regular intervals. It is also true that these
start-ups are being devoured by the established giants
before they get really established. This cycle bears witness
to the growing ascendancy of the security industry.
With so many vendors targeting the security market, channel
partners are in demand. Every major vendor is in search
of partners that can open the doors to the new customers.
Security solutions offer the resellers and partners floodgates
of opportunities. If a week is a long time in politics,
it can seem an age in the IT industry. IT security threats
are here to stay. And in a world where technology obsolescence
is so fast, it is incumbent upon the resellers to come
to grips with the selling and implementation of security
solutions. They should develop the potential to explain
the intricacies of the solutions which is ever evolving.
It is something of an absolute must for the reseller channel
to fully understand the technology they will be supporting.
“Growth for the channel is in embracing new technologies.
These technologies will give the channel the growth in
bottom lines that they are dying for,” says Ajay Kumar.
Aventail whose growth was to the tune of over 300 per
cent in 2005 over the previous is all set to make its
presence felt in 2006. The company is in the process of
appointing a distributor. It also plans to increase the
number of its partners and make product releases in the
near future.
McAfee which has about 300 partners has adopted a go-to-market
approach which is based on the two routes – one through
leveraging of partners and their relationships in the
market and the other by providing the best in technology.
“The channel has and will continue to play a very important
role in the new Symantec and we will strongly encourage
all of our customers to leverage the value the channel
has to offer,” says Ajay Verma. “We will continue to have
a direct sales force that is focussed on developing relationships
and driving demand within our largest enterprise accounts,
as well as evangelize adoption of some of the newer solutions
that help manage complex infrastructure. We also expect
our channel partners to continue playing a key role with
these large enterprise customers.”
Symantec is a channel-centric company and this is reflected
in the company’s APJ channel model. Symantec’s focus in
terms of market verticals is in the realm of telecom,
BFSI, manufacturing, government and software services
sector.
Less than a year after closing one of the largest integration
efforts in the software industry, Symantec has introduced
the new Symantec Partner Programme. “As Symantec continues
to grow and deliver market-leading technology to our mutual
customers, we recognized the need to streamline our partner
programmes and create a single, unified programme uniting
existing Symantec and VERITAS partners,” says Ajay Verma.
The company views partners as an extension of the sales
team and many partners provided feedback along the way.
“Our new programme recognizes four membership levels:
Registered, Silver, Gold and Platinum, and four partner
types: Channel Partner, Services and Consulting Partner,
Technology & Platform Partner, and Global Strategic Partner.”
Says Ajay Verma, “In addition to the new programme structure
and incentives, Symantec has committed a five-fold increase
in its partner-focussed technology infrastructure investment.”
As Symantec owns each and every part of the security-related
technology and hence has the ability to integrate it.
“Having a strong presence in the Indian market, Symantec
has a reasonably good customer base and we are seeing
a large demand for Integrated Appliances from the market
and are pushing the appliances aggressively,” says Ajay
Verma.
Cisco’s go-to-market strategy is through Channel Partners.
The channel strategy ties in with Cisco’s overall business
strategy focussing on maintaining leadership. The company
has presence in over 100 cities through 1,500 resellers,
9 System Integrators and 2 Distributors in India.
“Cisco’s channel programme ensures that its channel partners
are adequately skilled; trained, compensated, have the
right relationships to ensure that complementary products
are in place to offer a more complete solution to the
customer.”
The Cisco Channel Partner Programme integrates the technology
focus of each Cisco Partner through Specialization, flexible
individual career certification requirements, customer
satisfaction targets, and pre- and post-sales support
capabilities. There are four partner certification levels:
Gold Certification, Silver Certification, Premier Select
Certification and Premier Certification. “We help partners
differentiate themselves from the competition and reach
out to customers with Cisco credibility. Each level of
certification will give our partners more resources and
more recognition to tap new markets and create new business
opportunities,” says Parag Arora.
Cisco Incentive programmes include Incentive programme
for partner profitability, Opportunity Incentive Programme
(OIP), Value Incentive Programme (VIP), Premier Express
Programme and Pulse Programme.
Other schemes/programmes include typical channel rewards/incentive
programmes. Each of these schemes has been successful
with the stated objectives being satisfactorily met.
Unlike most companies, GajShield is focussed on delivering
to our channel partners both “technology and demand”.
“Our objective is to do whatever it takes to help our
reseller win the critical deals. GajShield provides comprehensive
sales and technical certification along with the necessary
tools and demand generation services that enable our Channel
partners to generate revenue quickly and confidently,”
says Sonit Jain.
GajShield has more than 30 reseller partners across the
country. The UTM vendor also has Value-Added Distributor
in Mexico, Algeria, Tunisia and Italy. The company has
two levels of partner programme: Sales Partner and Gold
Partner.
As threats will be more sophisticated in the current year,
this can mean new business for security companies. Traditionally,
security giants have focussed on selling their products
to the enterprises with big IT budgets. But as SMBs become
the targets of security attacks, they will be targeted
by the security companies. “The growth momentum would
be fuelled by the SME networks who would want the following
from the UTM: Security, Reliability, High Availability/Backup
and Lower TCO,” says Sonit Jain.
