McAfee chief eyes $1bn SME business

Dave DeWalt tells CRN of his plans to grow SME and mid-market business with the help of partners

de Walt: We need to invest in our channel partnerships, alliances and go-to-market model

McAfee’s chief executive is pinning his hopes for continued double-digit growth on the SME and mid-market.

Talking to CRN in London today, Dave DeWalt said he wanted to grow sales from the 10-1,000-seat market past the $1bn mark "within a few years" - matching the scale of its much larger corporate and consumer businesses.

“We have a $1bn consumer business and a more than $1bn enterprise business, whereas the small and mid-market is much smaller at just a few hundred million,” he said. “Our goal is to really grow that, and to do so we need to invest in our channel partnerships, alliances and go-to-market model.”

McAfee has recorded 15 straight quarters of double-digit growth, but DeWalt admitted the firm must lavish more attention on the lower end of the business market to ensure that streak continues.

He claimed McAfee now boasts a viable SME portfolio, having recently acquired several SME-centric outfits, including cloud-based outfit MX Logic.

A major investment into telemarketing, telesales and telesupport has also been made to support partners targeting SMEs, he said.

In EMEA, McAfee recently brought telesupport in-house and its new call centre in Cork has been operational for 30 days.

“The reason we are building a major operation in Cork is to drive more leads and create more opportunities for our channel,” DeWalt said. “I have learned over the last few quarters that this recipe works very well. In America, we did the same thing in Texas, where we built a large tele-operation. – this has had an amazing effect on the channel.”