Security software vendor BullGuard is looking to boost its end-user awareness by launching a range of consumer products.
The firm hopes a high-street presence will boost the BullGuard brand, which in turn will help its VARs when approaching new business customers.
Paul Leaman, UK country manager at BullGuard, told CRN: “We are looking to raise the BullGuard brand and go into mainstream retail in 2007.
“We have been expanding our product range with three retail products: Internet Security, Online back-up and Steel Security, a gaming security product. We now have a broader range of products.”
Leaman added that raising end-user awareness will take time, but BullGuard’s high-street presence will help the cause.
Earlier in the year, BullGuard unveiled ambitious channel recruitment plans (CRN, 13 February). At the time the firm claimed to work with about 350 VARs in the UK, but it was looking to bump that figure up to 1,000 by June.
However, Leaman told CRN that the vendor has fallen short of its recruitment target.
“This year we focused on online sales,” he said. “We have about 400 UK VARs and need to expand this by another 200 in the next 12 months.”
Richard Hales, UK and Ireland country manager at rival vendor F-Secure, said: “We do not see a great deal of BullGuard in the UK, but it is a fair comment from it that a retail presence will boost its brand.
“We are all consumers. If we see something in a shop, it raises our awareness. BullGuard will see an effect from having a retail presence.”
Hales warned that a retail presence can also be potentially damaging because people can see the product in shops and then associate it as being a cheap option.
F-Secure spearheaded a similar end-user-awareness scheme when it worked with Barclays Bank to provide its 1.6 million online banking customers with a free two-year licence of F-Secure Anti-Virus.
reader comments