Dubai, UAE, 29 Nov 2016
Trend Micro Southern Africa has extended its META-wide distributor agreement with IT compliance and next-generation threat-driven solutions provider StarLink to include sub-Saharan Africa. The move is an extension of Trend Micro's strategy to re-energise its channel across the region.
StarLink is acclaimed as the largest and fastest growing "true" value-added IT security distributor across the EMEA region, with on-the-ground presence in 11 countries.
Avinash Advani, Senior Vice-President for Strategic Alliances & International Markets at StarLink, says there are multiple reasons for the partnership. "Our existing relationship with Trend Micro makes the extension of the agreement into southern Africa an obvious move. Trend Micro has a phenomenal portfolio of products, which fits into our existing range, and we like to ensure we offer full coverage of all vendors across all geographies. Trend Micro is one of the few vendors that offers a platform capability with their portfolio, allowing for a completely end-to-end solution that appeals to our channel partners."
In addition, Advani says, the threat landscape in sub-Saharan Africa ranges from ransomware to nation-state attacks, and organisations are currently investing heavily in security solutions. "This means the timing is right from a market perspective."
Advani believes the partnership provides the channel with a number of opportunities, built on Trend Micro's platform capabilities.
Darryn O'Brien, Country Manager at Trend Micro Southern Africa, says: "StarLink brings a value to the channel that traditional distributors don't normally bring. They have a pipeline generation engine that helps partners get qualified leads, do extensive marketing, provide technical capabilities from pre-sales to post-sales and training and support, across every product."
Advani says that as companies travel the threat journey, StarLink supports its channel partners until they are capable of doing it themselves, through a StarLink channel programme dubbed: "The Path To Channel Autonomy".
StarLink has had a presence in SA for almost four years, selling its innovative security framework, and is recognised as a "trusted security advisor" to over 1 000 enterprises and government customers that use one or more of StarLink's best-of-breed and market-leading technologies, sold through its channel network of over 250 partners.
The StarLink Solution Lifecycle helps channel partners differentiate offerings, and assists customers to identify key risks and define priorities for addressing IT security gaps relating to compliance and next-generation threat protection.
He says the South African market is a priority for StarLink, as it boasts a strong installed base of Trend Micro that is focused predominantly on endpoint security as it offers strong opportunities for upselling into the Trend Micro platform.
"Beyond that, our three primary markets in sub-Saharan Africa are Nigeria, Kenya and Mauritius and we are also working in other markets," Advani ends.
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