Lumension to work on closed-door events with select partners

Mumbai

June 2, 2008

Lumension Security has hit upon an innovative model to make inroads into the
crowded security market. Rather than working on attracting more channel
partners, it is working with select solution providers (SPs) for briefing the
latter's key customers on the benefits of having a unified security management
solutions.

Currently the vendor has 60 channel partners, who are a mix of systems
integrators and SPs. It will select the top performing partners and will map the
profile of clients that these partners have. Based on the most prospective
customers from this list, Lumension will co-fund the closed-door interactions,
wherein the end-customers will be given demonstrations about its solutions and
its concept of white-list security policies.

Shamshad Ahmed, Regional Director-India and SAARC, Lumension Security said,
“We want to work with the key partners, because this kind of close engagement
will give us good understanding of kind of client fulfillments our resellers can
manage. Lumension as a brand is not very well known, so the only way we can get
more customers to deploy our solutions is by working closely with them and
educating them about the benefits our products offer, vis a vis that of
competitors. This is the best medium for transferring knowledge straight to our
end-customers.”

Initially, the vendor will focus on enterprise customers in the metros and
B-class cities. The profile of these clients would roughly be companies with 500
to 1,000 users.

Lumension will apply the 80:20 rule while deciding on the partners with whom
it will roll out these meetings. It will work with those 20 percent of its
channel who contribute 80 percent to its overall business.

Till date, Lumension has held two such closed-door sessions with customers,
which have been successful. It hopes to have around eight similar sessions by
the end of 2008.

But there is one hitch in what theoretically comes across, as good customer
interaction model is the lack of faith that partners have in vendors in sharing
details about their customers. Said one partner anonymously, “There have been
instances when we have shared details of our clients to our vendors. The vendors
then speak directly to the client, negotiate the price and deliverables and we
are forced to work by these guidelines. If we refuse then the vendor will simply
pass the lead surreptitiously to another SP.”

Admitting these instances are prevalent in the industry, Ahmed said that to
safeguard its channel interest, Lumension would lock in leads sent in by channel
partners. But the time frame for this lock-in is not stated.

According to a May 2007 report published by the National Vulnerability
Database, 24 new vulnerabilities are identified every day, more than half of
which are considered dangerous enough to warrant immediate remediation by IT
departments. Gartner estimates that by 2007-end, 75 percent of enterprises will
be infected with financially motivated, targeted malware that evaded traditional
perimeter and host defenses.

Lumension's products help CIOs move away from reactive threat management
solutions to a proactive security risk management one with its white-list
concept.

“We've the industry's only fully-integrated, proactive, unified
protection and control suite of products that can be centrally managed and
administered from a single web interface,” said Ahmed.