Divide and focus

Are enterprise Internet security concerns relevant to consumers, and vice-versa?

GK: Absolutely – the key engines for our flagship enterprise threat management product, and we have some of the biggest companies in the world as customers, is identical to those we use for consumers. The difference between consumer, small, medium, large and enterprise products is not the engine, it’s the out-of-box experience. The usability is very different, and people say that’s how it should be, but we are learning stuff in the consumer marketplace that will be relevant for the largest enterprise.

That’s a common trend in technology at the moment, isn’t it?

GK: Maybe but I’m not sure how many of my competitors are doing it. You’ll see product direction coming from us to leverage the best of each segment so the out-of-box experience is appropriate for that market. We are very focused on that.

We’ve seen a lot of focus recently from software vendors trying to improve renewal rates. How is CA tackling this issue?

GK: In our partner renewal portal, every partner has access to their renewals. If the partner lets that renewal expire, we say ‘hey, we need your help here’. If they still don’t take it up then we pass it to another partner. We are committed to our partners but can’t let customers go away.

Now that you have created a separate business unit for Internet security, how is the experience for partners that want to sell CA security and storage products? There’s obviously a lot of overlap there.

GK: We are all part of the overarching CA partner program but we have dedicated areas of focus. Over time, the drives in focusing these will improve the value proposition for our recovery management and Internet security partners. There are some partners who do both but they are very smart and, when we show them the benefit of focus, they will appreciate that we can provide more value. They might have to talk to another person at CA for recovery management but they’ll get equal value from that person. Rather than have one person as a contact point and offer mixed coverage, we would rather have two people with different focuses that can take the value proposition to the next level. The benefits far outweigh the consequence. We are providing more value to our Internet security partners today than at any time in our history; we will get to the same position in recovery management by having a dedicated focus. It will be better for our relationship with partners, better for their relationship with customers and, ultimately, fuel our marketshare growth. It’s no consequence that Symantec is the only other Internet security provider that also has a storage offering – everybody else has a dedicated focus.

So what impact has the reorganisation had on sales to date?

GK: Our business is growing faster than the industry and by definition that means we are taking marketshare. I have empirical data on a global basis that we are taking some marketshare away from Symantec and McAfee. It’s hard to say categorically how much but the compound annual growth rate in the business to business market is 10.1 per cent, according to IDC, and we are growing our business materially faster than that. One of the reasons, and we make no bones about this, is that our marketshare isn’t what it should be. We have a period, which I expect to last about a year, where we are almost in a honeymoon period but nonetheless we are growing faster than our competitors. There was a time not that long ago where many of those competitors were happily spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt among our partners that we were out of this business or weren’t interested in it. I think we are changing that, or have changed that, by way of what we have done.

What are the biggest trends in security at the moment?

GK: We see the convergence of virus and spyware into malware under a single discipline. Spyware has become much more concerning than ever before. Viruses are still a problem but the objective is to be disruptive by taking a network down, for example, and some 17-year-old kid in Romania feels very happy about that. The motivations of spyware are much more sinister; keyloggers are after your credit card, they want to compromise your identity, and that goes from consumers to the biggest enterprise. One trend is that the complexity of malware is growing at an exponential function. We are happy with that because we can provide comfort to our customers. The other trend, again from consumer to enterprise, is to provide protection in a manner that is as least onerous to me as a user as possible. We are making some real enhancements with new products and new versions to make protection almost invisible. If you get three customers in a room, you will get three different versions of what they want. We have to create a forum where it can be tailored by the partner or the user to how they want it. We are putting things through massive usability labs that we have never done before.

The new division is only a few months old but, if we went forward a couple of years, what progress would you like to see made?

GK: I think the size of the business will increase by more than 100 per cent, perhaps more than 200 per cent. I’d like to think we will become one of the most trusted vendors for our partners around the world. It’s very interesting that when vendors are doing well, they often don’t have a great channel strategy; when they’re doing terribly, they have a great channel strategy. We have been – and will be – unwavering in our commitment to the channel community. We’ll stumble occasionally but will continually strive to provide better value for existing partners and attract new ones to do business with us.