What the Doctor Ordered
Viruses pop up at the rate of about 300 every month, which is good news for the firms whose business it is to fight them off. Guy Clapperton gets scrubbed up to take a look at the antivirus industry
During my rather sad and anoraky youth, there was a science fiction programme on the telly called Blake?s 7. Like all such shows it included a lot of ideas that people not in the know would find pretty baffling, and most baffling of all was the fact that beyond the first couple of series, no one called Blake got a look-in.
Now that I?m past the first flushes of youth, I am watching the computer industry with interest. You see, there?s this product by the company formerly known as S&S and now called Doctor Solomon?s ? an antivirus programme. But where exactly is Doctor Solomon to be found? Not on the day-to-day management team of S&S, certainly, even if the company is now named after him. And the competition has latched on to this fact, even if it only refers to it in whispers. There is what might be called an antivirus war going on, and there always has been.
Dr Solomon is probably top dog in the antivirus market. Product marketing director Mike Hill claims the company has about 70 per cent market share, and he adds that his competitors accept that figure, privately. He cites some potentially alarming figures. There are approximately 300 new viruses discovered per month on some computer platform or other. The only way someone can be fully up to date in terms of virus protection is by receiving monthly update disks, although this takes no account of any viruses picked up in the meantime. There is reassurance as well: ?We exchange viruses?, he says of his competitors ? there are times when you get really tempted to quote someone out of context in this job. Seriously, this means that everyone who buys any antivirus software regularly has a good chance of being protected, regardless of who their supplier actually is.
Even so, there is evidence to suggest that the problem has been overhyped. Consider your own customers. How many of them, or your acquaintances, have actually suffered infection? No, forget those you?ve heard of second-hand ? we are talking about the ones you actually know. Then consider how many have lost money through other problems connected with their computer installation, and the scale of the virus problem starts to look distinctly smaller.
There is the small point of the cost to the customer. Granted, viruses are high-profile. They have an emotive name ? it?s not a malfunction, it?s not a bug, it?s a virus, dammit.
Phil Benge, marketing director of self-styled security company Reflex, points to figures from the Data Security Report which reveal that data fraud, data theft and software copyright infringement are way ahead in terms of costs to the user. Software virus attacks come last on the list. This is why Reflex with its Disknet product has opted to position itself as a total security system provider.
Even Hill accepts that there is more to life than detecting and curing viruses, but he suggests the main cause for concern in the corporates ought to be the cost of implementing an antivirus system incorrectly. ?An American survey recently showed that the cost of a virus to a US corporate is $8,000, while the cost of a false alarm is $22,000.? This is because a company convinced it has a virus will keep investigating the system until it has found it ? and if it isn?t there, a lot of hours will be spent in a fruitless search.
It is at stages such as this that Solomon steps in with the wisdom of, er, Solomon, and offers free help and points to download sites from which its software can be obtained. This is not as selfless as it sounds. ?We reckon that if they?re not customers of ours yet, they will be soon,? says Hill. Benge agrees: ?Fifty per cent of our customers have installed an antivirus [from a competitor] and found they still get infected.?
Benge is confident that his product is of the very best quality, which is a coincidence because so is Hill. McAfee was unable to comment in time for PC Dealer?s deadline, but it is not unreasonable to speculate that it has the same unshakeable faith in its own offerings.
The only company that has actually gone on the record as saying that it is not sufficiently competent to keep pace in this field is the one normally least noted for its corporate modesty ? Microsoft took a strategic decision not to develop its antivirus product for Windows 95. ?They decided they weren?t experts in the field,? says a representative, which sounds a bit like a surgeon giving up because, heck, he was only dabbling a bit in the first place.
MS now prefers to tie itself to other companies that can offer the sort of protection it believed it couldn?t. ?We had a meeting with them in Redmond only a few weeks ago and they said, we can?t keep up with you,? says Hill.
One of Microsoft?s problems may have been its lack of focus. Some 300 new viruses are detected each month, and only a monthly software update is really going to be sufficient to offer full protection. It might look as though the only way to do the job properly is to adopt the Solomon model and focus exclusively on antivirus; it is interesting, then, to observe the example of Symantec, which sells the Norton antivirus as well as a raft of other utilities.
Northern European sales and marketing director John Wakeman maintains that the diversity of his range does not mean any lack of focus on any individual area. The company has the Symantec antivirus research centre (SARC), for one thing, a 25-person research facility totally dedicated to the one area. The advantage of offering the whole suite of products is in economies of scale, particularly with regard to learning curves on the part of the user.
?We have a broader channel to the market, a broader technical infrastructure,? says Wakeman. ?It means we can be quick to develop for new platforms, new operating systems, new network operating systems.? A common user interface completes the equation.
Symantec echoes Reflex? view of antivirus as only part of a solution to PC protection. Access controls and data recovery are equally important. ?One company offering all this with the same install procedures, the same channels to market and the same technical support line is a strong proposition.?
Having said all of which, Solomon?s impressive market share must be due in part to the fact that its reputation stands or falls on its customers? survival. And it doesn?t diversify, it ensures that its name is recognised for one thing only. There is probably a lesson there.
For all the competition?s conversion to diversification, they still go in and sell on the antivirus ticket. ?It?s probably something everyone is aware of, so it?s a very visual product,? says ?we?re-not-just- a-virus-company? Benge. ?We still use it because there is so much awareness.?
The task Reflex has set for itself, then, must be to de-market the virus protection element of its offering and remarket the other elements of its auditing and protection services while reassuring everyone that it is still competent in antivirus. Symantec does the same and it?s a swine of a concept to explain in simple terms.
How a company sells is another matter of some contention. Symantec has championed the retail market for antivirus as well as its other corporate outlets. Dr Solomon has joined it in spite of the low margins involved. ?We wanted to be in that market,? says Hill, perhaps a little disingenuously ? virus protection is after all the only area of computer software in which conscience rather than the pure profit motive can influence entry into a market. Home users, especially those connected to the internet, need protection from viruses as much as anyone else.
Others travel a different route. Reflex? concern is as much with the control of software as with the reduction of virus-related incidents, so it sells entirely on licences. Benge sounds almost proud when he declares that there is no such thing as a shrink-wrapped Disknet package anywhere in the world. ?It differentiates us to some degree because we are able to protect the dealer?s margin,? he says, although he happily concedes that this would be more difficult for larger companies.
There are two things resellers need to bear in mind about antivirus software. First, it can be a difficult sale. Viruses are things that happen to other people as far as many users are concerned, and like accidents and other things that happen to others, no one really wants to face the issue squarely enough to insure against it. Awareness is good, however, and most larger customers are clued-up enough to buy into some sort of protection.
The second thing is that at the lower end it doesn?t matter a damn anyway, because customers will take whatever is preloaded with their system. In the rarefied atmosphere of a computer magazine, and one that goes exclusively to resellers at that, it is easy to overestimate the importance of inter- and intra-company rivalries and fallings out. The fact is that the person typing away on the end of their system doesn?t care as long as it works. The window-dressing and boardroom manoeuvres are of academic interest at best as far as resellers are concerned.
Or is this the case? Mike Norris, Computacenter chief executive, thinks there is only a grain of truth in that view. Nobody cares about a product?s name as long as it works in theory, he agrees, but in practice, branding is vital and so is internal product evaluation.
?People do a lot of work comparing feature with feature,? he says, ?although whether this is a particularly good use of time is another question. In terms of functionality, the packages tend to leapfrog each other depending on who has just released something and who?s been writing viruses lately. They ought to be looking at who, historically, has a track record of keeping up.?
This means buying stuff because it?s likely to work, which is a bit revolutionary to computer buyers. Ultimately it is the only sensible approach, even if it does prejudice the purchaser against newer organisations.
In the meantime, the whispering campaigns go into overdrive ? nary a week goes by without someone casting aspersions over Alan Solomon?s withdrawal from Dr Solomon?s. (The prosaic truth is he works there two days a week and is a consultant to the company after selling it to the management last year).
What matters to the reseller is that the customer understands the need for constant updates ? that?s where the benefit is in terms of both product effectiveness and profit margin. A happy marriage between the two, for once.