By enhancing our programs we ensure consistency in our partner policies!

Ambarish Deshpande 
Director - Channel & Alliances & Mid-Market, South Asia
McAfee 

What kind of trends do you see in the Indian market?

Over the last decade, the increased usage of internet has led to a spurt in cyber crimes, with each attack evolving in sophistication, pervasiveness and frequency. Cybercrime has turned from an act of personal challenge and notoriety, to a targeted and lucrative enterprise, as well as a political and profit making tool. On the other hand, Consumerization of IT has enabled employees to bring their own technology to workplace. The nature of business requires employees to be connected 24x7, be it at home, restaurant or anywhere else; underlining the need for heightened security. These have been the key growth drivers for the security industry. 

As a natural corollary, the industry is steadily witnessing a shift in enterprise security adoption from a traditional antivirus approach to an integrated security solutions approach comprising of elements of anti spyware, anti malware, firewall, host-based intrusion prevention anti-malware, spyware, encryption and data loss prevention. The need of the hour is integrated and holistic security solutions that can manage the complexity of today's hybrid and sophisticated threats landscape with convenience and ease.

Share details of your offerings along with the possible market share of McAfee?

McAfee has a wide range of Enterprise and Consumer products. According to IDC report of 2011, the total enterprise security market in India is estimated to be $255 million. The security industry is fragmented with various players specializing across services and security solutions such as end-point security, firewall, web security etc.  According to IDC, McAfee is the fastest growing security vendor in India across all verticals. 

What is the Partner's role in positioning McAfee? What are the opportunities for channel partner?

McAfee India is a 100% channel focused company. All our business runs through channel partners and they form its core pillars. Our customers buy McAfee products through our channel partners and services like designing the architecture, product deployment and level 1 & 2 support is also managed by them. 

Channel Partners have very good opportunities in security market. They can provide consulting services to customers audit the customers' security posture, service them by providing them with trained resources for implementations & troubleshooting etc.

Channel profitability is one of our core beliefs reflected in the fact that our partners make healthy margins on our suite of products. Apart from just product margins, McAfee provides them with back-end rebates, upfront additional margins through programs like “Deal Registration”, “Bring McAfee to the Game” etc.  

Please elaborate on McAfee's Partner Advisory Council Meet

McAfee's Partner Advisory Council Meet is an annual symposium for a select group of partners with the opportunity to provide feedback and direction to our executives on programs, products, and industry trends. The Partner Advisory Council is designed to recognize McAfee's top performing partners in sales and technical excellence. This annual conference gives partners unparalleled networking and learning opportunities with peers, industry experts, and McAfee executives. Gavin Struthers, Director- Channel & Alliances, Asia Pacific, visited India in April, 2011 for this event.  

How is your service network spread across the country?

Post Sales Support is extremely critical for the success of any vendor. McAfee has support centres spread across the globe from where we support our customers through email and Web. Our partners provide initial on premise support to the customer. We also provide professional services and support to our customers as and when required at an additional cost.  

What are your future plans from a channel perspective?

McAfee has been growing above the industry growth rates for the last three years and will continue the trend in 2011. We have made key investments in verticals such as Government, Banking, Financial Services and Telecom in our enterprise business. We expect to capture significant market share in technologies like Web Security, Enterprise Mobility Management and Next Generation FW's and consolidate our position in like Intrusion Prevention, End Point Security and Vulnerability Management. We expect to be growing at at-least 40% YoY in 2011.

McAfee has three focused sales segments for India, namely enterprise, commercial and SMB. We have enhanced our partner program and have ensured consistency in our partner policies. There are 3 levels to McAfee's partner program:

Elite: Elite partners handle enterprise accounts. We have 5 Elite partners. 

Premier: Premier partners predominantly focus on commercial and enterprise accounts. We have 25 premier partners 

SMB: SMB partners focus purely on this segment and account for the rest of our partner base 

Some of the key initiatives for our partners in 2011 are as follows:

*  McAfee ACE (Accredited Channel Engineer) Training for our Managed Partners  

This is a two day hands-on training schedule focused on configuring and rolling out various McAfee products. This training helps partners become independent managers of our POC's and will also help them increase their service revenues.

*  McAfee SMB Program

This is yet another program rolled out through our distributors to encourage them to recruit new partners in “B” & “C” class cities of India and independently drive sales for customers below 250 users. This program incentivizes our unmanaged partners to work with our distributors and leverage their resources to sell to SMB customers. 

*  Our channel Motto - “Do More with Less” 

We have consolidated our managed partners and will focus on maximizing their business this year. It's important that we focus on partners and help them increase their revenue and profitability from McAfee business. We will be driving this initiative strongly in 2011.

On the consumer side, our go to market strategy is focused on the Retail, Partner (OEM, ISPs, Telcos and Financial Institutions). From a partner standpoint, we have nine sub-distributors spread across key cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Pune and Ahmedabad. Currently, we have almost 1400 resellers in India that support both enterprise and consumer sales.

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Vishal Bindra 
Director & C.E.O. 
ACPL Systems Pvt. Ltd.

ACPL and McAfee

ACPL has been a leading player in the security market for twenty years and understands the nuances of the industry extremely well. Leveraging our industry expertise, we have deployed McAfee security solutions in many Indian enterprises across different sectors. We have been working with McAfee for the past three years providing McAfee E mail Security, McAfee Endpoint Security, McAfee Web Security, McAfee IPS, McAfee DLP and McAfee Network Security. Out of this entire range, McAfee Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and McAfee Endpoint Security are two of the best-selling products of the company.  

Biz Benefits

McAfee provides ACPL Systems with healthy margins across all its solutions. We are also entitled to higher benefits and margins in case we are able to introduce McAfee products in a scenario wherein an enterprise is already using competitor products. McAfee has a point redemption program which enables us to redeem goodies worth the points we earn after selling McAfee products. The goodies include phones, watches, prepaid gift cards, etc. Today, ACPL has been able to garner satisfied and recurring customers due to the excellence in the technical and the after sales-support provided by McAfee. McAfee has supported us to service our customers supremely well in this regard.

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Tarun Seth
Managing Director 
MicroClinic, New Delhi

McAfee and MicroClinic

MicroClinic partnered with McAfee in 1993, marking the beginning of a strong relationship. Over the years, MicroClinic has emerged as a trusted partner to McAfee with deep industry and strong product understanding. Out of McAfee's entire portfolio, MicroClinic sells products such as McAfee Email Security Service, McAfee Endpoint Encryption, McAfee Anti- Spam and McAfee Endpoint Protection.  McAfee Endpoint Security is our hottest selling product line as it ensures secure, seamless access to business applications and corporate data. This is particularly relevant in the context of the mobile workforce across organizations today.  Primarily, 90 per cent of our revenues are generated from McAfee Endpoint Security. 

Biz Benefits

As a premier partner, we receive a healthy share of profit margin commensurate with our large volumes. MicroClinic receives margins in the range of 6-20 per cent, depending upon the size of the deal. Being a premier partner, our incentive structure is slightly different than an elite or associate partner. The sales and the technical support teams receive incentives on the volume of sales and demonstrations. We also earn monetary benefit for each and every certification achieved.

McAfee's Partner Advisory Council Meet

The McAfee Partner Advisory Council was a wonderful opportunity to exchange ideas and get deeper insights into McAfee's distribution model.  Through this forum, McAfee looks at tweaking their regional channel plans and makes them more aligned to the Indian channel context.  

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Nityanand Shetty
Managing Director 
Essen Vision

McAfee and Essen Vision

In the capacity of McAfee's mid-market partner, Essen Vision sells the following products: 

McAfee Endpoint Encryption, McAfee Data Leakage Protection system, McAfee Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), McAfee Web Gateway, Vulnerability Management and McAfee E-Policy Orchestrator (ePO). Since the start of our partnership with McAfee in 1997, the company has continued to provide sustained technical support and partner empowerment initiatives. This has helped us garner good profit margins. Today, Essen Vision has positioned itself as a valuable partner that can address the holistic information security requirements of enterprises rather than selling mere point solutions.   

Biz Benefits 

McAfee also has many ongoing channel reward programs which have been extremely beneficial from our standpoint. Some of these are: McAfee “Deal Reg” - We make 5-15 per cent additional margin on all the fresh opportunities provided to McAfee. “Bring McAfee to the Game” - Here, we receive $100 incentive for bringing a valid competitive conversion opportunity above 250 nodes to McAfee. And McAfee Rewards Points - Every user licence we sell entitles us for points which can be accumulated and claimed as rewards.

ePO 

The McAfee E-Policy Orchestrator (ePO) is one of our best-selling products and its success can be attributed to the fact that the product addresses a significant pain point of CIOs of managing multiple product lines. Since McAfee's single ePO unifies management of endpoints, networks, data and compliance solutions and centralizes control, it adds great value to end-customers. 

Syeda Beenish
beenish@varindia.com