Privacy & Risks
When the business around you changes, you need to respond
In recent years – and especially in the past few months – IT has changed dramatically. While everything used to happen on premises in the secure perimeter of the office network, companies are now migrating more and more data, workloads and applications to a cloud environment.
In recent years – and especially in the past few months – IT has changed dramatically. While everything used to happen on premises in the secure perimeter of the office network, companies are now migrating more and more data, workloads and applications to a cloud environment. This transition and a changing demand from end customers are forcing the distribution and partner landscape to adapt as well. In such a changing environment, security is extremely important. And partners are needed more than ever.
René van Loenen, Benelux Channel Lead at Trend Micro
Shift to the cloud
The shift to the cloud had prompted us, as supplier of security solutions, to initiate a transition process. Because in this continuously evolving partner landscape, we are adjusting to that new world. It starts with an adapted portfolio that is increasingly being developed for cloud applications – just think of our security service platform Cloud ONE that we launched last year. But you also need channel partners who can build solutions and services around it. The time of box moving is long behind us and customers also expect this added value from a distributor. They expect support and advice for their cloud issues.
Besides that, prevention is no longer sufficient. As many businesses become fully digital, there is also an increasing market demand for Detection & Response solutions (on endpoint level with EDR or across the full spectrum of mail, servers, workloads, cloud and networks with XDR). Customers want insight into what is happening – which server has been hacked, via which mail – in order to respond as quickly as possible and be back ‘online’. Here too, Trend Micro has a leading role.
But what does the future bring?
As a vendor, we still see an important role for partners. After all, you can only grow by working with partners and strengthening the channel. Specialization will become more prominent in this. What is interesting is the fact that Trend Micro and our partners work complementary. We provide you with the building blocks, but it is the partners who build their services around them. Partners can also start conversations with customers. We give them – in addition to our own solutions of course – the necessary tools to facilitate that. There is a new platform for our partners, we developed a mobile app and we provide partners, for instance, with our Security Assessment Service to test at the customer (e.g. their Office365 environment) whether there are gaps and what can improve to be secure.
Other success factors
The human aspect is certainly a plus. That is why we attach so much importance to our local presence.
The future is cloud, because everyone wants to be able to work from anywhere and on any device. If it is secure. That makes our alliances with big cloud players crucial. This may seem contradictory to local partners at first glance, but more and more companies today use not one, but multiple cloud environments. In such a multicloud setting, it is convenient for the customer to know that, no matter what cloud they are using, their data and workloads are safe with Trend Micro.
Canalys recognition
We also continue to invest in Managed Service Provider (MPS) with a central platform for license management and the Security Operations Center as a Service (SOCaaS) offering to automize cross-customer and cross-product threat analysis. This portfolio is available through all our Trend Micro distributors and was recently, along with our significant investments in the partner program, specifically praised by Canalys.
It is one of the reasons why Trend Micro has been included in the Champion’s Quadrant of the Canalys Global Cybersecurity Leadership Matrix. I see this as a confirmation that we are doing well. For us, this is a fantastic incentive to work with our partners to make sure that our mutual customers can securely complete their digital transformation.