We will work with the IT retail channel besides building on our OEM partners who will offer our solutions with their systems

On an aggressive mission to power 400 partners in 32 cities, Amit Nath
clarified that all recruits will be profiled before being added to Trend Micro's
recently launched Affinity Partner Program

It is surprising that at a time when most vendors are steering clear of
the retail business, you are plunging into it. Why?

We believe that the consumer market is growing rapidly in India. Globally,
our products were always present in the retail market and in the US. So we are
positive that we can replicate this success in India as we enter the consumer
business here.

How do you plan to go about this?

To begin with, we will work with large format retail outlets like Croma,
Reliance, Staples, etc. We will also work with the IT retail channel besides
building on our OEM partners who will offer our solutions as default programs
with their systems. Next on our agenda is working with Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) who offer broadband and can throw in security as well.

Trend Micro is looking at retail very strongly and we intend to go to 32
cities powering 400 partners. We have already appointed two sub-distributors
Raksha Technologies in Chennai and ACPL Systems in Delhi. We will have two more
in West and East shortly.

What will be the role of these sub-distributors?

We will groom our partners to be subject matter experts for Trend Micro, who
will understand the security business. They will have a network of small
partners and it is their job to fulfill the channel's needs and help them in
closing deals if needed.

They will not be just pushing boxes. These players have been in the security
business for a long time and they understand out product roadmap and strategies
for the country. They will have access to our online tools, technology
information and policies, which need to be funneled to their customers. From our
end, we will help them build scalable business models to reach smaller cities.

What are some of the new technologies that Trend Micro is working on
currently?

Desktops and laptops are susceptible to malware, which can come from various
sources. In 1988, when Trend Micro started business, there were only 1,700
unique malware samples. In 1998 this had gone up to 1,70,000 and currently there
are around five millions samples daily. It is estimated that the underground
business which indulges in the creation and spread of this malware is around $7
billion.

The traditional approach in the security business is to combat them through a
pattern file system, which means deployment of people to do this. If malware is
increasing daily it is not possible for any vendor to keep adding more people on
its rolls to deal with the issue. Also, sending pattern files to users will end
up choking their bandwidth and the size of the security agent on the client
machine will be so large that the performance of that machine will be affected.
Therefore, the pattern based security provisioning is dying.

This is why we have been propagating the concept of web repetition and cloud
computing. In the latter the agent is taken out of client machine and put in a
virtual cloud. In such a scenario, the client is not cluttered and its
performance is not affected, while all the updates take place on the agent,
which is on the cloud on a continual basis.

Vinita Bhatia

vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in