Trend retains entire stable of distributors
Vendor grants stays of execution after 'continued SME success'
Security vendor Trend Micro has granted a stay of execution to its four distributors, despite continuing concerns that the firm is over-distributed in the UK.
The firm has also made three members of its UK sales team redundant, but claimed it is looking to build up its UK headcount to cope with demand.
Raimund Genes, president of European operations at Trend, told CRN the redundancies were a result of the vendor's continuing success in the SME space.
"When we launched in the UK it was our intention to focus on the enterprise side, but our fastest-growing segment was the SME space. Competitors such as Sophos, Symantec and McAfee don't have an SME-specific product, and are more like repackaged enterprise solutions, so we are in a strong position and need the skillsets to reflect this," he said.
Earlier this month, UK managing director Roger Levenhagen parted company with Trend, and the company's distribution strategy was called into question as it was rumoured to be considering axing one of its four distributors: e92plus, Computer 2000 (C2000), Sphinx and Unipalm.
But Genes said: "We always sign a one-year contract with our distributors, and this is renewed based on their business plan. I can confirm we have re-signed all our UK distribution partners."
Wendy Hoey, senior product manager for e-security at Unipalm, said: "We are growing our Trend business this year and bringing new staff on board."
Hoey added that, although she would prefer it if the firm had fewer distributors, all the distribution partners offer different technical product sets.
"C2000 doesn't offer the value-add of smaller partners. Unipalm's strength is that we can offer additional services," she said.
However, one reseller, who asked to remain anonymous, felt Trend has "one too many" distributors. "Any reseller knows that more distributors means more channel conflict. I think Trend needs a more manageable number of distributors," he said.