McAfee rings the changes
Vendor signs distribution deal with Bell Microproducts Europe
McAfee has signed Bell Microproducts Europe as its fourth distributor and launched a pan-European incentive programme for channel partners.
Ideal, the UK arm of Bell, already has an agreement with McAfee to sell its anti-virus products. This new agreement will cover the enterprise range and will be fulfilled mainly by Bell's other UK division, OpenPSL, said Duncan Hume, division manager for security at Bell.
Bell and its OpenPSL division will now have access to McAfee's enterprise products, including Entercept and Intrushield.
"The most important thing for us to do first is educate our sales people, which will happen later this month. They will then go and find the appropriate resellers," Hume said.
To encourage its distributors to recruit more resellers McAfee has launched an incentive scheme. Employees at McAfee distributors will be rewarded with vouchers for each reseller they convince to join the McAfee Security Alliance Programme.
For each reseller recruited a sales person or team at each distributor will receive vouchers worth €20. As well as Bell, McAfee is currently distributed in the UK by Ingram Micro, Computer 2000 and Azlan.
Wayne Carter, regional channel director at McAfee, said the aim of the programme is to reward the channel and ultimately get the company's brand re-established.
Resellers also get incentives when they sell certain products.
"We need to remind customers about McAfee on the one hand, and change their perceptions on another," Carter said. "McAfee isn't just an anti-virus product, but a provider of pure-play security solutions. We need to promote awareness of these newer technology capabilities."
The first priority is to promote McAfee's WebShield and SpamKiller 3000 appliances, he added.
"As new products are launched, we can drop them into the incentive programme," Carter said. "This agility allows us to adapt our programme as and when our resellers need changes."