Major initiative follows giant, worldwide leap in channel
sales
SYDNEY -- Sophos Anti-Virus, Europe's leading developer of
corporate virus protection, is launching the Sophos Partner Program as part of its
global channel strategy.
The initiative, which includes the company's growing channel of
VARs and SIs in Australia, is designed to strengthen Sophos's
channel position. Worldwide channel sales of Sophos Anti-Virus
having grown by 185 per cent in the last year, chiefly by
attracting new resellers and delivering comprehensive support for
all partners.
Sophos now has reseller partners in all Australian States, but
is looking to increase this coverage throughout the balance of
2000. According to Richard Baldry, Sophos Australia's Managing
Director, the target is to have 75-80 per cent of all sales made
through this channel within the next 12 months.
"We are looking for resellers wanting to represent quality
anti-virus software, and who want to be involved in dealing with
customers in networked environments," he says.
The Sophos Partner Program
offers the following benefits:
- Training and sales tools to enable resellers to advise
customers on sound anti-virus practice
- A certification scheme where accredited partners gain higher
margins, marketing assistance and qualified lead generation
- Incentive schemes to reward individual sales performance.
Sophos also supports partner sales efforts by managing all aspects
of software subscriptions directly, advising partners of customers'
license expiry and automatically emails newly available virus
identities to end users.
"We have a growing commitment to our partners, with channel
sales now making up 50 per cent of the company's worldwide
turnover," Baldry says. "This initiative underlines our enthusiasm
to work with our partners and provides a solid platform to support
their success.
"Ultimately, Sophos is committed to providing first-class
anti-virus protection and support: working with quality partners
helps us achieve this aim."
All Sophos channel partners will have access to a new channels
Web site, where they will be able to secure information and
technical support in a limited business-to-business
environment.
Sophos Anti-Virus is a unique solution to the virus problem,
providing true cross-platform protection in a single, fully
integrated product. The network-centric design provides a host of
benefits for the protection of servers, workstations and
portables.
Sophos's ground-breaking architecture maximises protection,
while minimising performance and administrative overheads.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.