Trend turns up heat on rivals
Vendor is aiming to target rivals' enterprise accounts in 2005
Anti-virus software and hardware vendor Trend Micro has revealed it will aggressively target rivals' enterprise accounts in 2005.
Speaking to CRN, Roger Levenhagen, UK managing director of Trend Micro, said his firm, which operates a 100 per cent indirect strategy, will try to encourage its enterprise partners to persuade firms to switch to Trend Micro products.
"The anti-virus market is very established in the sense that most firms have some product in place. It is a displacement market. In major accounts we are looking at the top companies in the UK and trying to find ways of moving more [Trend Micro] products, such as anti-spam and URL filtering.
"This will more than likely mean moving from another vendor," Levenhagen said.
The firm is also keen to secure broader market coverage in the mid-tier market and will look at taking on additional partners in this space, he added.
Trend Micro recently added broadliner Computer 2000 (C2000) to its distribution stable. It also works with e92plus, Sphinx and Unipalm.
Levenhagen said the C2000 partnership aims to gain traction in the 'small end-user' market: firms with 250 seats or fewer.
"That's the sweet spot that C2000 is able to service. We are confident the partnership will help us carve out a fair share of this market," he said.
Mukesh Gupta, managing director of e92plus, said Trend Micro is a key vendor partner. "We've been working with Trend Micro for five years. The fact that it has taken on C2000 is not a problem for us because it will cover a different area," he said.
Gupta believes Trend Micro's enterprise strategy will pay dividends, especially following its bundling agreement with Cisco.
"We are targeting specifically Cisco partners and enterprise customers and are confident of tapping SurfControl's dominance in that space. The enterprise is the right way forward for Trend. It now has more offerings tailored to that market," Gupta said.