“We expect to be growing at 40% y-o-y in 2011”

How important is India
in McAfee's overall scheme of things?

We have been operating in
India for over 12 years and have a strong foothold in the region. Our
Bengaluru development center which was started in 2000 is a key
location from href="http://www.dqweek.com/McAfee-enhances-Security-Management-Solution">McAfee's
global R&D standpoint. We work with over
1,400 channel partners in India and have a strong customer base
ranging across consumer segment, enterprise segment and support
requirements of companies.

How is the need for
anti-virus solution in Indian enterprises emerging?

Anti-virus is a well
understood and accepted concept in India. However this is only half
the battle won as most users do not understand that anti-virus is no
longer good enough to protect or block them from the latest malware
attacks. Today, there is a paradigm shift in endpoint security which
has transcended beyond anti-virus on account of the new-age hybrid
and sophisticated threats that slip through the cracks of traditional
anti-virus software. Over the last decade, the increased usage of
Internet has led to a
spurt in cybercrimes, which have turned from an act of personal
challenge and notoriety, to a targeted and lucrative enterprise. 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; 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 anti-virus
approach to an integrated security solutions approach comprising
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.

What are your views on
the security business in India?

According to IDC report,
the total enterprise security market in India is forecasted to be
$255 mn in 2011. The security industry is fragmented with various
players specializing across services and security solutions such as
endpoint security, firewall, web security etc. According to IDC,
McAfee is the fastest growing security vendor in India.

What is the current
awareness level for security products? What is the demand that you
have witnessed for security solutions?

Majority of organizations
across sectors such as government, telecom, ITeS and BFSI are looking
at revamping their security posture. Apart from major deployments in
the network security segment, we are witnessing a demand uptick for
data loss prevention, risk and compliance, firewall and web security
technologies across leading Indian enterprises.

What are the challenges
you face in the current scenario from both the enterprise and
consumer standpoint?

We are increasingly
witnessing more and more sophistication in the threat landscape with
the emergence of attacks such as Stuxnet and Night Dragon. Secondly
there is an explosion of new technologies such as mobile devices and
Web 2.0 that makes us more productive but also more vulnerable to
cyber threats. Add to this, there are a limited number of trained
resources to manage threats across enterprises. Although we see an
improved security posture at enterprise level, we believe that there
is a lot more maturity required to use security as a business
enabler. The need of the hour is to have co-related interlocked
defense in depth, which helps organizations to be proactively secure
and also be compliant. This will drive efficiency and control in
cost, as enterprises move towards an optimized state. From a
consumer standpoint, awareness about Internet security is the biggest
challenge. Security is as much a people's issue as it is a
technology issue. Consumers are unaware that it is also their
responsibility to protect their data. Consumers usually assume that
the service provider or the PC vendor would take care of these
aspects of data security which is not the case. Being an industry
leader, McAfee has undertaken many initiatives to create awareness
amongst all our customer segments and will continue doing so.

What are the latest
technology upgrades from McAfee stable you would like to focus on?

During April-June 2011, we
have launched the following solutions:

Enterprise products:
(including Enterprise Mobility Management)

• In April 2011, we
  launched the latest release of McAfee Network Security Platform that
  includes enhanced botnet control through reputation intelligence,
  virtual network inspection and a traffic analysis port for network
  monitoring, forensics and other advanced analysis engines. Our network
  security solution extends interoperability with third-party products
  and supports virtual data center environments.

• In May 2011, McAfee
  announced the Cloud Security Platform. This new platform secures all
  content and data traffic—including email, web and identity
  traffic—moving between an organization and the Cloud. The platform
  delivers security through highly integrated, modular solutions that
  protect both inbound and outbound traffic moving between the enterprise
  and the public cloud.

• In June 2011, we also
  launched the McAfee Security Management solution, providing automated
  and real-time security and risk analysis to proactively identify,
  assess, manage and report on enterprise security. This solution
  delivers complete integration between the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator
  (McAfee ePO) platform, McAfee Risk Advisor, and McAfee endpoint
  products to enable organizations to gain complete visibility of
  security and risk events across any on-premise or hosted desktop,
  network, or server.

Consumer products:

• In June 2011, we
  announced an extension of our mobile device portfolio for consumers
  with McAfee Mobile Security. The software, available for both
  smartphones and tablets, combines three leading McAfee mobile security
  products: WaveSecure, VirusScan Mobile and SiteAdvisor for Android.

• In June 2011, McAfee
  announced the launch of McAfee Family Protection, a parental control
  program that protects children of all ages from online risks while
  allowing them the freedom to safely explore the Internet.

What makes McAfee
unique compared to other brands? Can you share examples of your
differentiators?

The entire range of our
offerings-both enterprise and consumer products-take advantage of
McAfee's unique Global Threat Intelligence to provide an
unprecedented level of protection. This includes security knowhow
from McAfee's researchers, threat honey pots and the installed base
of McAfee products to make computer security on every computer
protected by McAfee smarter and safer, at no additional cost. With
this technology, there is no other security provider today who can
match the power of the collective threat intelligence resources we
tap into.

McAfee is also the only
vendor which plays across all threat vectors like intrusion
prevention, firewall, risk and compliance, content security and
endpoint security. Unlike our competitors who are focusing either on
perimeter security or end point security, we cover the complete gamut
of security technology and that brings a huge benefit to our
customers. McAfee has the largest base of deployments across the
globe which gives us big advantage over our competitors. Apart from
having a strong R&D team and products across all vectors, one of
our key differentiators is our proprietary McAfee ePolicy
Orchestrator (ePO). Since, McAfee's ePO unifies management of
endpoints, networks, data and compliance solutions and centralizes
control, gives CIOs a single view of all the security solutions
deployed in an organization.

How was McAfee India's
performance in the last fiscal and what are your expectations this
year? What are your future plans from a channel perspective?

McAfee has been growing
above the industry growth rates for the last 3 years and will
continue the trend in 2011. We have made key investments in
verticals-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 FWs and consolidate our position in
technologies like intrusion prevention, endpoint security and
vulnerability management. We expect to be growing at least 40% y-o-y
in 2011.

McAfee has 3 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

On the consumer's side,
our go-to-market strategy is focused on retail. From a partner's
standpoint, we have 9 sub-distributors spread across key cities such
as New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Pune and
Ahmedabad. Currently, we have almost 1,400 resellers in India that
support both enterprise and consumer sales.