PGP Turns A Corner On Channel Recruitment

Company:

Headquarters: Menlo Park, Calif.

Technology Sector: Security

Key Product: PGP Whole Disk Encryption Workgroup Edition

Year Founded: 2002

Number of Channel Partners: 1,000 worldwide, including 650 in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: SMB-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: PGP isn't new to the channel but has recently revamped its channel programs to help solution providers better address specific market segments with its encryption offerings.

The Lowdown: PGP, which specializes in e-mail and data encryption software, is neither a channel novice nor focused solely on small-to-medium-sized businesses, but the security company has of late been bolstering its capabilities in both areas.

"We turned a big corner this year, in that PGP now does about 90 percent of its business indirectly. That's not been the case before," said Lee Finck, PGP's vice president of channel strategy. "It's been a lot of refinement, not so much anything new. Nothing massively new has been invented in the channel in the last 20 years, to be honest with you, but the best companies find magic in the execution. We've added a value assessment to our registration program so that partners can [look to] specific categories of opportunity."

PGP has two new channel programs: RevenueReady, which offers product, sales and technical training to VARs through the vendor's Whiteboard Training Program, and PGP MarketRead, an on-demand portal and toolset that allows partners to create co-branded PGP marketing materials and lead-generation campaigns. The resources include white papers and compliance briefs as well as lead-generation modules dealing with e-mail and file encryption and also mobile data protection.

"We're also creating a high services drag with product sale. Of our top-tier partners, our gold and silver levels, our average service drag is 25 percent, and partners who can do that enjoy high gross profit levels," Finck said. "We've made really significant investments in terms of remote learning modules, as well. We're trying to show the partner where the target is and how to drag services with them, to create that value proposition."

For SMB sales, PGP in April debuted PGP Whole Disk Encryption Workgroup Edition, designed for environments of 10 to 150 users with coverage of laptops, desktops and USB devices. The product goes for $99 a seat.

"We have products for all different platforms and markets, but for [small business] we take a look at the places where data is leaking," said Tim Matthews, PGP's director of product marketing. "The biggest areas these days are USB sticks, and, believe it or not, CDs and DVDs that get lost in the mail."

PGP's reinvigorated channel push continues on the distribution side, as well, where it's partnered with Avnet to help drive its VAR recruitment efforts.

"We look for partners that can sell and explain what our platform is and articulate that to accounts of all sizes," Finck said. "But secondly, we look at adjacent spaces. Avnet has a very strong base of storage solution providers, for example, and that's not an area where PGP has done much work in the past. We also have a strategic partnership with IBM that's allowed us access to their business partners, who are now seeing PGP SKUs on price lists. There are quite a few areas for us to look."