McAfee has expanded its managed service provider (MSP) programme to help partners to meet the changing market demand of customers increasingly looking to adopt security as a managed service.
The security solutions vendor says for the first time, McAfee appliances will be offered to managed service providers in a compelling, pay-as-you-go based model.
It says this helps McAfee MSPs deliver a much broader and compelling range of managed security services on a more shared risk basis.
The McAfee MSP programme will now include access to McAfee Next Generation Firewall, McAfee Enterprise Security Manager, McAfee Network Security Platform, and McAfee Advanced Threat Defence. Additionally, McAfee is expanding the number of software products available via its MSP programme to include its portfolio of authentication solutions.
In an interview with ITWeb, Cristiano Voschion, McAfee's channel development director for EMEA, noted that security is becoming too complex nowadays and by making use of managed services providers, organisations will be able to focus on their core business.
Voschion added that security compliance is also becoming cumbersome for organisations, hence MSPs make sense.
He also noted that the South African managed services market is maturing and McAfee is making use of the channel to sell its products.
"The industry is experiencing a significant shift towards customers relying on managed services as the delivery vehicle for security solutions, and an increased ask of the channel to deliver these services," said Voschion.
McAfee believes that channel partners that deliver managed security services play a vital role in helping customers free up IT resources that would otherwise be consumed by maintaining their increasingly complex security environments.
Organisations are also looking to MSPs to help reduce their upfront and/or capex expenses in relation to IT security, the vendor says, adding that many MSPs are now delivering managed security services on an on-demand or subscription basis to help meet these objectives.
McAfee says it's responding to these market changes by expanding its MSP programme to embrace the growing need of MSPs to have access to a broader range of technologies and also commercial models that do not result in them taking 100% of the risk.
According to InfoTech Research Group, managed and hosted service deployments are expected to increase by 35% within two years.
Today's IT organisations need to do more with less and are constantly having to balance what they do in house versus what is outsourced, says McAfee.
"Security deployment models are shifting and the demand for managed services deployments amongst enterprises continue to expand for all types of security technologies," says Gavin Struthers, senior VP of worldwide channels at McAfee.
"This demand is being driven by customer needs and corresponding channel partner expectations. McAfee continues to evolve our MSP programme to address the security deployment trends to meet the needs of our customers and channel partners. The introduction of these technologies to our MSP programme will allow our partners to expand their portfolio and differentiate themselves while generating additional revenue opportunities."
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