Our key channel initiatives are around partner enablement and training

With The SMB market continuing to be an important segment for HP, it remains
as one of the fastest growing sectors. In fact, the market has witnessed a
continuous growth for over 20 years and small businesses have evolved as one of
HP's largest segments, representing one-third of the company's global revenue

What is MicroWorld Winsock Layer (MWL) technology?

The MicroWorld-WinSock Layer (MWL) is a revolutionary concept in scanning
Internet traffic on a real-time basis. This new concept has changed the manner
in which content security threats are tackled in the knowledge world. MWL is
revolutionary because unlike the other technologies, currently available, MWL
tackles a threat before it reaches your applications. Other technologies deal
with threat after the application has already processed it.

Technically, MWL is placed above the WinSock layer and acts as a 'Transparent
Gatekeeper' on the WinSock layer of the operating system. All data packets
coming on different TCP/IP ports are assembled. It then decodes e-mail and Web
traffic, FTP and ICQ traffic along with all the attachments and passes them
through numerous filters, such as virus, content and attachment filters. These
filters check validity of the file's content and issue dynamic notifications.

MWL technology oversees all data flowing to-and-from the Internet, thereby
allowing it to process it without interfering with the applications. Dynamic
compression and decompression facilities of data flow, between the Internet and
your computer in order to maximize effective bandwidth usage are thus provided
by MWL.

What are the current trends in Conficker Worm? How eScan facilitate
protection against it?

Although the Conficker worm threat fizzled out in early 2009, our latest
study of the worm's trends threw up some alarming results. Even today, there are
roughly six million infections of the Conficker Worm worldwide and India stands
second in the list of top infected countries. Our study also revealed that the
level of awareness is still low amongst users on the necessity to continuously
update their OS with the latest security patches release by Microsoft.

eScan has been effective in preventing the spread of Conficker infections
right from 2008, the early days of Conficker worm. Endpoint Security has helped
eScan users to protect themselves from this worm as the Conficker Worm
predominantly spread itself through portable storage devices. We have also
provided steps to remove the Conficker Worm here in this link to help infected
users.

http://download1.mwti.net/download/wikifiles/articles/conficker.pdf

What are the advantages of eScan Linux version 3.0?

eScan for Linux Version 3.0 comes with an improved anti-virus engine that is
capable of quicker scanning and better detection of the latest threats. It can
read inside the data stream and virtually scans all types of files, including
zipped and archived files to detect threats. It allows the user to run preset
action like disinfect the file or delete the infected file or rename it or
prompt for action. It also provides the option to schedule for automatic
scanning and downloading of the updates.

How many partners do you have? How do they get benefit from eScan?

We have more than 3,000 active channel partners spread across India. One of
our key channel initiatives is around partner enablement and training. For
partners, who are signed into our program, we conduct regular training programs
on sales, pre-sales and support. This not only helps our partners in propagating
the right technology usage to customers, but also provide the first level of
support when necessary.

With such trainings, we aim at making our partners as solution providers as
we believe that our partners should be well versed in our technologies and
should be able to speak the same language as ours, when working with customer
opportunities. Partners should know the technical nuances of the domain and our
solutions that would help them implement or present the solutions successfully
to customers.

What is your marketshare?

As projected in the IDC report, the PC and laptop market is set to grow at
24.7 percent in the current financial year. We are targeting to garner
additional five percent share of this growing market.

How do you plan to penetrate into tier-2 and tier-3 cities?

Building on the success of our earlier channel programs, we plan to add at
least 750-800 authorized eScan resellers to our partner network through our
partner development programs in the tier-2 and 3 cities. In order to achieve our
objective, the key initiatives are partner enablement and training on our
existing solutions, identifying new partners in territories where we
traditionally do not have a strong presence.

What are your strategic expansion plans as well as revenue and growth
targets for FY 2011?

We will be launching new products for securing iPhones and Mac systems this
year to cater to the fast growing users of iPhone and Mac systems. In terms of
market focus, the upcountry markets will become a key focus for eScan. As we see
a shift in the security solution demand to move more towards the SMB segment
from SOHO and see a ratio of 30:70 respectively from the earlier 15:85 in terms
of revenues and sales. The consumer segment is expanding with new buyers, who
previously used either a free or pirated version of the AV solution. To
successfully target them, partners from the upcountry markets would become a key
part of our growth.

Muntazir abbas

muntazira@cybermedia.co.in