McAfee Announces Initiatives to Help Drive Partner Profitability
Channel Programs Focus on Invest, Grow, and Optimize
LAS VEGAS, FOCUS 11 — October 19, 2011 — At the McAfee SecurityAlliance Partner Summit, McAfee announced several channel initiatives to drive partner profitability. Nearly 700 worldwide partners attended the two day partner summit and learned how McAfee is evolving its channel strategy to focus on investing in partners, growing together and optimizing for partners.
“Together with our partners we are going to lead the transformation of the computing experience to one that is more mobile, seamless, and secure,” said Alex Thurber, senior vice president of worldwide channels at McAfee. “We are evolving our channel strategy to fuel this transformation by helping our channel partners innovate and differentiate themselves. There has never been a better time to partner with McAfee.”
The three pillars that build the foundation and support for McAfee’s channel strategy to drive mutual profitability include:
- Investing in partners – offering channel partners the programs, tools, training, and resources that drive mutual profitability. A prime example of McAfee’s investing commitment is the McAfee Accredited Channel Engineer (ACE) program. This is McAfee’s highest pre-sales certification and is a key differentiator in the marketplace. The ACE certification enables partners to take a greater leadership role with sales opportunities by providing firms with the knowledge, tools, and skill set to independently drive the technical pre-sales activities, close more deals faster and better leverage cross-sell and services opportunities.
Another new investment is the McAfee Authorized Support Provider (MASP) program which has been in a limited pilot around the world and is now generally available. The MASP program allows partners to increase margin potential by supporting customers directly. The program offers comprehensive training and access to proprietary tools and third-level support engineers to enable partners to develop an expertise in delivering McAfee first- and second-level support.
- Growing together – identifying new markets and opportunities for partner growth. In response to the tremendous growth potential of alternative delivery models, the McAfee SecurityAlliance partner program is expanding beyond the reseller ecosystem to include a new McAfee Managed Service Partner (MSP) Program. This program is designed to meet the unique needs of managed service provider partners who will have the ability to sell, deploy and support their own branded solution as well as enjoy monthly recurring revenue via automatic monthly renewals.
The ability to offer monthly services will also continue to fuel McAfee’s momentum in the SMB market. Less than six months ago, McAfee announced several SMB focused channel initiatives including the SMB Specialization featuring the SMB Accelerated Deal Registration program that offers deal protection, 25% margin enhancement and an accelerated approval process of four hours. This program already has approximately 1,000 SMB Specialized partners.
- Optimize for partners – making it easier for partners to do business with McAfee. A key part of this optimization is partner enablement. McAfee is committed to providing partners with an exceptional enablement program designed to help develop sales and technical resources to further gain knowledge of McAfee products and to grow skills based on the role within the organization.
To reward partners for their continued investment in training, McAfee will employ a new continuing education approach. This approach gives partners more choices and flexibility for how they want to maintain their certification. Certified individuals will begin to receive credits for approved learning activities and those credits can be applied towards the following year’s certification requirements. In support of continuing education, McAfee is deploying a new learning management system. Both the new certification approach and the learning system will be available in January 2012.
About McAfee
McAfee, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), is the world's largest dedicated security technology company. McAfee delivers proactive and proven solutions and services that help secure systems, networks, and mobile devices around the world, allowing users to safely connect to the Internet, browse and shop the Web more securely. Backed by its unrivaled Global Threat Intelligence, McAfee creates innovative products that empower home users, businesses, the public sector and service providers by enabling them to prove compliance with regulations, protect data, prevent disruptions, identify vulnerabilities, and continuously monitor and improve their security. McAfee is relentlessly focused on constantly finding new ways to keep our customers safe. http://www.mcafee.com
Note: McAfee is a registered trademark of McAfee, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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