McAfee looks to reconnect with partners

Vendor concedes its channel reputation was in need of repair as it aims to become "the Apple of the security industry"

Security giant McAfee hopes to become the "Apple of security", according to the vendor's bosses.

Speaking at the company's EMEA Channel Press Summit in Marbella, EMEA president Gert-Jan Schenk spoke of a "transformational change process" happening in the company. Schenk conceded that McAfee's channel reputation had been in need of improvement when he joined the security giant in October 2010.

He said: "I think there was a lot of work to do, McAfee had to up its reputation and up its game with partners. The feedback we got from them was that they wanted to see more of us.

"This is the first partner summit in EMEA for six years, and for a partner-driven business, that is not a good thing. A lot of the feedback we have got over the past few days is good, though. There have been a lot of changes."

The acquisition of McAfee by CPU giant Intel; former CEO Dave DeWalt stepping down from his role; and the company's acquisition of NitroSecurity were among the key changes over the past year cited by Schenk in his speech.

People, partners and portfolio will be Schenk's top three focuses for the coming year. Using the Intel relationship to the channel's advantage and investing in enablement are key partner aims, with the public sector and telco verticals being a key focus for the vendor.

Jim Sartain, senior vice president of global quality assurance at McAfee, is focused on increasing the brand's consumer popularity, and thinks demonstrable quality acts as a marketing tool.

He said: "What I mean by quality is basically, would you recommend our products or services to other people? And how strongly would you recommend it? We see how well Apple is doing, and that is our goal. We want to be the Apple of the security industry in terms of customer loyalty.

"If you have customers who are promoters, the job for our channel gets a lot easier. It can be in a position of just taking orders, and adding value on top of that. We are making progress in this journey to do this."