Trend Micro to target Consumer Space aggressively in 2009

India is ranked No. 4 in terms of Internet users in the world. Web threats are growing too in a huge way. What sort of protection does Trend Micro provide to its customers so that they have integrated security from attacks?
Trend Micro provides Smart Protection Network (SPN), which is a part of every Trend Micro product and service is truly astounding. SPN delivers security that is smarter than conventional approaches by blocking the latest threats before they reach you.

Smart Protection Network combines unique Internet-based (or “in-the-cloud”) technologies and lighter-weight clients to immediately and automatically protect your information wherever you connect – from home, within your company’s network or on the go. Being Internet-based, it also frees the device connected to the Internet of its memory space.

The Trend Micro Smart Protection Network provides real-time “better together” protection against all types of threats – from malicious files, spam, phishing, and Web threats, to denial of service attacks, web vulnerabilities and even data loss. Combinations of activities are correlated to determine if they are malicious. That is because a single activity of a Web threat may appear harmless, but when several activities are detected together, they may present a malicious result. Over 5 billion queries and 1.2 terabytes of data are processed every day. More than 1,000 Trend Micro threat experts keep watch over your enterprise, around the clock, from data centers in multiple locations around the globe.

How do you plan to target the ever-growing consumer market?
Trend Micro has an end-to-end offering for all segments – right from consumers who can buy award-winning products like Trend Internet Security 2009 to a comprehensive Enterprise Product like Neat Suite Premier which offers a complete protection across endpoint, network, messaging.

Trend is going aggressive on the consumer segment from this year and has appointed Delhi-based ACPL and Chennai-based Raksha as sub-distributors to sell its consumer products. Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 could also be bought online as well as in computer retail stores across 32 cities across the country.

Trend Micro is educating consumers on the need for Internet security by investing in radio jingles which are being played on air currently.

Do your have any new product launches in the pipeline?
Trend Micro has launched its consumer flagship product in India – Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 (TIS). TIS keep consumers’ data and personal information secure from online threats by delivering smart security solutions that can respond and adapt to users’ needs. The products are powered by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network, a cloud-client security infrastructure that correlates Web and email threat data by using reputation technologies that compare threats against in-the-cloud threat databases.

What is your distribution structure?
Trend Micro distribution is 2-tier model, consisting of Tech Pacific and WEP. Traditionally, our entire channel ecosystem has called “Affinity Partner Programme”, which was started last year.

Under this programme, we have divided our channel ecosystems into three broader categories: Affinity Partners (with 200–350 partners), Affinity plus partners (30–40) and Affinity one partners (4–5). However, we have categorized our consumers’ distribution model into three layers.

Ingram Micro has been selected as our national distributor, and two sub-distributors have also been appointed for northern and southern regions, Delhi-based ACPL and Chennai-based Raksha Technologies for consumer business.

Our target is to appoint more than 400 value-added resellers (VARs) into 32 cities by the end of this year. We will shortly announce sub-distributors for western and eastern India by March this year.

What are your major plans for the year 2009?
The last 20 years have seen us always redefining industry – right from the time when we first launched the first server-based e-mail protection to the largest Web Reputation database and now the latest Smart Protection Network.

We will continue to be a very strong focussed in understanding the secure content management landscape and the threats that impact our industry and customers and work towards solutions that will help towards moving to a world which is free to share/exchange digital information.

Trend Micro also continues to invest in pure partner ecosystems since we are a 100% channel focus company and all our steps in India will be in line with the same – we have a channel model where we evaluate partners on various parameters like competency, commitment, coverage, creditworthiness and credibility.

Trend Micro in 2009 in India will continue to focus on recruiting more partners, working hand in hand to develop the same and will continue expansion in the top 32 cities in India.

On the product side, there will be a continuous push on new technology like Smart Protection Network for our customers and also concrete moves towards Data Leakages Solutions. We also continue to see adoption of Software as a Service in various SMB organizations and Trend Micro would also focus on the same in 2009.

Trend will continue to focus heavily towards building a scalable and customer/partner friendly technical support model, which looks after our rapidly-expanding customer base.

What is your go-to-market strategy to boost business?
The consumer market in India is growing rapidly, and Trend Micro is very bullish in reaching out to the consumer market and partnering with the consumers in protecting their mobile devices. There is a need for rapid education for consumers and SMBs when it comes to security. They need to rapidly understand that the old conventional approach to security is no longer valid – since malware samples are increasing at a frantic pace – the pattern based approach will no longer work and they need to move to a cloud-based architecture and a whole integrated approach – this is the new paradigm shift they will have to imbibe.

India is still a young country and while we have 81 million Internet users and about 10 million broadband connections, more and more people will be using the Internet both personally and professionally – there is a lot of scope for better and integrated protection for a lot of SMB and SOHO customers with new features that could have a bearing on the way they do business.

What are the verticals that are driving the growth for you?
We have had a consistent presence in most of the verticals, but we continue to see growth coming from Manufacturing, Retail, Telecom, Government and PSUs.

How will you achieve the desired market share?
Trend SPN, as already elaborated, is a very powerful message for all customers – we believe this is a concrete story that will provide the right push in this market–– as a market leader who is constantly redefining this industry – SPN has received the right response from the customers, partners and analysts and this will help us achieve our goals we have set.

Continued investment in channels remains our topmost priority and we continue to handhold, engage, train and reward our partners and grow the ecosystem in India.

What are the growth opportunities for you?
In a recent survey done by IDC with CIOs, one emerging concern is around Data Leakage and while this is a vast area Trend Micro continues to look at this, keep educating and investing in our partners to be able to give our customers a robust and scalable solution. Our Leakproof solution aims at providing data leakage protections across multiple threat vectors like Internet, ftp, IM, print, e-mail, etc. Trend Micro has an end-to-end offering for all segments – right from consumers who can buy award-winning products like Trend Internet Security 2009 to a comprehensive Enterprise Product like Neat Suite Premier which offers a complete protection across endpoint, network, messaging.

All products from Trend use the latest Trend Micro Smart Protection Network that delivers security that is smarter than conventional approaches. It blocks latest threats before they reach you. Leveraged across Trend Micro’s solutions and services, Smart Protection Network combines unique in-the-cloud technologies and lightweight client architecture to immediately and automatically protect your information wherever you connect.

How are you going to tap the Indian market?
We have a robust distribution and channel structure built over the last five years – the channel community has consistently been with us and we remain focussed as a 100% channel-driven company–– we continue to work with our customers and channels is our way to get to them.

What are the challenges before you and how do you plan to overcome them?
The economic slowdown is a reality, and we will continue to listen to the voice of customers and be able to understand their real needs and come up with solutions that are relevant to customers while making sure RoI is clear to customers and partners. Trend, by virtue of award-winning products and industry-shaping Smart Protection Technology, will be able to move forward and grow the market aggressively.