Trend Micro tweaks channel coverage for UK sales glory
Channel account managers now aligned by territory rather than by individual reseller
Trend Micro claims its move to a territory-based channel coverage model will help its partners clinch more deals on its newer technologies.
The vendor, which has just moved to a new HQ in Paddington, says realigning its channel-facing staff by territory rather than by individual reseller will boost channel sales of its more complex virtualised security, cloud and advanced persistent threat (APT) offerings.
James Munroe, channel sales manager UK & Ireland, said the vendor has become more consistent since the UK became its own business unit in 2012 following a restructuring but admitted partners needed more help with demand generation on its enterprise wares.
"In the past, we have let the channel do it [demand generation] themselves but certainly with some of our newer cloud technologies around Amazon Web Services and our VMware Deep Security, they are bigger solutions and bigger sales and we are working a lot more closely with the partners to close deals."
Trend Micro's UK channel director Tim Ayling recently left the firm to join a start-up vendor, meaning the entire UK business is now being overseen by direct-touch boss Simon Young. Ayling will not be replaced, but Trend is gearing up to increase its territory account management headcount from six to eight, Munroe added.
Munroe also highlighted Trend's APT offering, Deep Discovery - a competitor to FireEye - as an area of investment for the vendor, which is striving to move beyond its anti-virus roots.
Arrow's recent acquisition of Computerlinks has left Trend Micro with just one UK enterprise distributor but Munroe said there are no immediate plans to bolster the line-up.
"They each do about €25m-€30m for us and all of a sudden that's all going through Arrow so I think it will move us up a step," he said, adding that Arrow's VMware relationship also gels with Trend's strategy.
"There are no plans to appoint another distributor at the moment - I think it's going to be a case of wait and see."
Rob Gupta, managing director of Trend Micro partner Secon, said the account management rejig could "regenerate some life into new sales and upgrades" for partners.
"Trend has a really good portfolio," he said. "The issue they've always had is they have relied on Trend partners to take their messaging to customers and with all due respect - outside of us - I don't know how many people have been able to fly that flag."
He added: "When we just had a single channel account manager working with our customer base it was hard for them to get around all of our customers to cross-sell and upsell. Now they are territory based there will be more Trend people involved in our deals but spread more thinly, which is a good thing."