McAfee expects that managed service providers (MSPs) will continue to grow strongly this year, according to APAC channels and alliances senior director, Craig Nielsen, who said this was due to both customers and partners realising the benefits of cost savings and operational efficiency.
“Having a program that allows partners to build managed security offerings around McAfee technology, and deliver this to their customers with monthly billing models of our MSP program, will support this growth and make it easy for our partners to further differentiate their offerings,” he said.
When asked about the uptake of managed services by Australian customers in 2012, Nielsen characterises it as being “strong” and expects this shift to continue for the coming months.
“The security threat landscape is continually changing and we expect that to be the case moving forward,” he said.
As for which market will be a high growth area for McAfee, Nielsen said it will be SMBs.
“We see SMB focussed resellers continuing to provide SMBs with higher levels of protection for their digital assets and information,” he said.
Based on the current trends McAfee is seeing in the local market, customers are likely to consolidate the security technology they use in 2013.
“By reducing the number of niche vendors in their security portfolio, they can reduce costs and increase operational efficiency,” Nielsen said.
Patrick Budmar covers consumer and enterprise technology breaking news for IDG Communications. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_budmar.