I
n which areas is McAfee investing?
- Most partners are using the McAfee Partner Programmes
such as Teething Plans, Incumbency and Deal Registration
with participation up by 150%. Partners need to be aware of
all of the available programmes to maintain profitability.
McAfee has four main focus areas – Next Generation
Firewalls (NGFW), Security Information and Event
Management (SIEM), Advanced Threat Detection
(ATD) and EndPoint. From First Distribution’s point
of view, our focus remains on Endpoint, although we are
seeing growth in our NGFW and SIEM operations as well.
Advanced Threat Detection is an exciting area for us to be
in – we’re looking closely at investing further in this area in
the near future.
- McAfee has now made hardware available under an
MSP-type model with monthly billing and a minimum of 12
months commitment.
- There is a New Partner On-Boarding Best Practice managed by Partner Care which takes partners through the
entire on-boarding process, including enablement around
all of McAfee’s technologies.
There is some confusion regarding the change in ownership and how this translates to branding and CI. Can
you clear this up for us?
McAfee now has Intel Security as its masterbrand. McAfee
is part of Intel Security, but not all of it.
The ‘Internet of Things’ is one of the industry buzzwords of the moment. What did you take-away from the
conference in this regard?
Our expectation is that with the ‘Internet of Things’ hundreds of billions of devices will have embedded security –
wearables for example. Babygrows (onesies) that will monitor babies’ breathing and ingestible medical devices that
will monitor blood pressure are just two examples of these.
I believe that all of these will need to be secured, and
industry research shows that by 2020 each person will have
on average 27 of these types of devices. This obviously
represents a big opportunity for the IT security industry.
- The Partner Portal has a wealth of marketing info including
Partner Recruitment Kits, ready-made mailers, etc. McAfee also has a series of partner campaigns for recruitment
called ‘Security Made Simple’. Additionally there is a kit for
resellers who have Windows XP customers. I believe that
there is a big opportunity here. And at the end of Q2 they
are bringing out a virtualisation and security kit aimed at
VMware resellers.
“
Security is not going away is it? In fact, if anything, its
importance to businesses seems to be growing…
Indeed. Security is now on the agenda of most boards of
companies – particularly following the recent data loss that
Target experienced which exposed credit card and personal
data on more than 110 million consumers, and the CEO
having to step down as a result. Legislation will be rolled out
in most countries by 2015 that will impose huge penalties
on companies for data loss resulting in privacy issues. Did
you know that an innocuous mobile application displaying
train timetables in the UK extracts personal data from your
phone including contact details, phone numbers, tracks
your location, etc.? This is commonplace and we have no
idea as to how exposed we are. Personally, I believe we
need a bigger focus on mobility in SA, particularly where
companies allow their users to access corporate networks
with mobile devices.
What were the main highlights from a partners’ perspective?
There was quite a lot going on from a partner’s perspective
– here’s a few of the main points:
- There is more value to customers and to partners in
embracing more of McAfee’s offerings, so the message to
partners is to upsell the portfolio and look to sell McAfee’s
suites of offerings to deliver more value at a better price
point.
McAfee, part of Intel Security, is a long-standing,
tried and trusted IT security company.
”
- As part of the Smart Marketing programme, you can register for the McAfee Smart Marketing Platform (http://mcafee.
zift123.com). This will allow partners to integrate their websites with McAfee to get automatic content updates, web
analytics, social media posts, monthly newsletters, email
campaigns, lead generation forms, etc.
Introducing Ian Russell, First Distribution’s
new McAfee Brand Manager
First Distribution has recently appointed Ian Russell as the
new brand manager for McAfee within the company. Ian
brings a wealth of experience to the role, having worked a
variety of areas from technical, to project management, to
sales and marketing. He has held positions at end-users,
resellers and now currently in distribution.
“McAfee, part of Intel Security, is a long-standing, tried
and trusted IT security company” says Ian. “The s