McAfee: Pushing multiple products will make partners richer

Bringing together three products at the same customer will yield eight times more revenue, says Intel-owned vendor

McAfee is stepping up channel engagement as it looks to spread the message that partners can generate eight times more revenue by selling three or more of its products together.

The Intel-owned security vendor is holding network security events in London and Manchester this week as it looks to increase communication with partners and customers.

A key message is convincing partners to knit together multiple McAfee products, some of which have been added through a recent acquisition spree that has taken in the likes of next-generation firewall vendor StoneSoft and security information and event management specialist Nitro Security.

Spencer Starkey, who joined McAfee as UK and Ireland regional channel director last summer, listed increasing interaction with partners as a key priority.

"The past seven months has been a good time for me to test the water to see how we are perceived by partners," he said. "I'm now moving into a year where I'll effect change and one of those changes will be more interaction with partners.

"Multiple technologies come together under the McAfee umbrella and we want to communicate how bringing together three or more products in one customer generates eight times as much revenue."

Starkey denied suggestions that McAfee was ramming products down partners' throats in a quest to get them to sell its full portfolio from the network right out to the end point.

"We're not asking partners to sell all of our products, we're just asking them to focus with us," he said.

And that's a goal that gels with the recent expansion of McAfee's Managed Services programme, Starkey said, which saw the vendor offer its appliances to MSPs on a pay-as-you-go model for the first time. The number of software products through the programme has also been expanded.

"This will make partners stickier with the customer," Starkey declared.