Trend Micro continues to evolve its strategy to address cybersecurity issues. The approach based on specific solutions, followed by the editor since its creation 33 years ago, is no longer sufficient to face the evolution of threats. It is now positioning itself as a cybersecurity platform aimed at providing a complete view of the environment. “The big change came from our XDR Vision One platform, which correlates the information reported from the different solutions to provide our customers and partners with visibility to be able to act”recalls Martina Mulas, Southern Europe Channel Manager at Trend Micro.
Such an evolution implies strongly developing and aligning the skills of the partners. “Our partners must be experts in cybersecurity, capable of deploying our solutions and above all of responding in detail to customer issues. It is essential that they can evolve as quickly as us on the needs », emphasizes Martina Mulas. Thus, a new Vision One training was proposed to validate the XDR competence of the partners. It was passed successfully by all those who set up the offer (Expert Line, Yourax, SFR, IMS, Tibco, Aramys, etc.).
This increase in skills is also reflected in the climbing of levels in the partner program. Expert Line and Yourax are the first two to achieve the highest Platinum certification. It covers all of the publisher’s solutions and involves making more than €1 million in purchases of Trend Micro solutions per year. CVC IT and Spie have joined the 19 Gold partners (300 K€ of purchases per year). Finally SFR, SaycurIT and Equipages integrate the 20 Silver level partners (100k€ of purchases per year) and are already progressing to acquire Gold accreditation.
Trend Micro also identified 330 managed service provider (MSP) partner partners at the end of the third quarter, a figure up 30% year-on-year. The editor closely supports them in setting up detection and response offers, either by integrating the solution into their own SOC or by relying on Trend Micro technologies and teams. Technical certification was offered to them free of charge this year, passed by more than half of them.
Another major axis is the development of the presence in the regions to strengthen the proximity with partners and customers. The publisher has divided the territory into 7 major regions (IDF, North, North-East, North-West, Center, South-East, South-West), with the presence in each of a sales representative, an engineer before -sales and a Channel Manager. “A major investment that is bearing fruit since the regions are once again recording double-digit growth this year”says Martina Mulas.
Trend Micro does not communicate its turnover by country but announces a 30% increase in its new customers in Europe at the end of the third quarter. In addition, average customer spending (new contracts and renewals) was up 5.% for large companies and 14.7% for SMEs.
Trend Micro has also significantly upgraded its partner portal in 2021, improving the “Education” section and putting new tools online. They include in particular a new assessment tool dedicated to the Vision One Risk Insight offer or “Partner Success”, a series of free assessments that can be used as a white label to assess the level of security of endpoints and Office 365 messaging clients.
In 2022, Trend Micro intends to continue to advance the channel’s internal expertise, while encouraging its partners to develop cutting-edge specializations around cybersoc and the cloud. “We are also going to work a lot this year to move our customers towards SaaS by providing them with optimal protection”announces Martina Mulas.