Webroot opens up for VARs after breakdown in communication

Vendor contrite over handling of email market exit but points to greater margin opportunities ahead and investment in UK CAMs

Webroot claims partners can speed up sales cycles and increase margins by getting on board with its SecureAnywhere (WSA) mobile security product.

The vendor, which will begin building a new UK channel account management (CAM) team next month, has also offered contrition for its handling of its recent exit from the email security and archiving markets.

Justin Endres, Webroot's vice president of sales and operations, claimed that selling hosted mobile security could prove fruitful for the vendor's long-standing content security partner base.

"WSA is different, it is a SaaS-based technology; proof-of-concepts go from weeks or months to a matter of days," he said. "It has a very low barrier to entry. The product installs in less than three seconds, and the ROI and the sales cycles are very fast to keep margins high."

Endres explained that Webroot had identified today's three main threat factors as mobile, end point and web, and claimed its three-pronged portfolio gave it "a compelling offering".

"Email was not all that strategic," he added. "It really did not make sense for us to compete in an almost zero-margin game. Frankly, it was losing money for the organisation and was taking away a lot of our focus."

Speculate to communicate
The sales chief claimed most partners understood the reasoning behind the decision and were following Webroot down the mobile security path. But Endres expressed regret for the way in which the vendor relayed information to partners.

"Communication is the one area where we fell down. We just did not communicate with our partners all that well, and we have taken action to correct that," he said. "[Recently] we have done a much better job of sitting down and with them and [helping them] understand. We have been able to retain a lot of partners who are transitioning a lot of their focus to WSA."

Endres claimed regional sales of the new-look portfolio would ultimately be more than 90 per cent indirect in the UK, just as email sales were.

A number of functions have moved from Webroot's Bracknell office to its Dublin digs in the past year, but EMEA channel manager Richard Daly, who joined in January, claimed the vendor is still investing in its UK operations. Recruitment will begin next month on a new team of UK CAMs, who will have the task of ramping up channel sales and will be led by "a strategic hire", who joins in a couple of weeks.

"We need to concentrate our efforts on business development," said Daly.