Company: Katharion
Headquarters: Los Angeles
Technology Sector: Security
Key Product: Katharion Small Business Edition
Year Founded: 2003
Number of Channel Partners: 500 worldwide
Ideal Channel Partner: SMB-focused solution providers
Why You Should Care: Working with channel partners and OEMs, Katharion offers managed services for spam and virus filtering, outbound e-mail filtering, e-mail backup and continuity services and e-mail hosting.
The Lowdown: Even in the down economy Katharion says it's doing well because no matter how much the stock market falls, spam remains a constant problem and continue to proliferate.
But what sets the company apart from many of its competitors is that there's no prerequisite number of seats a customer has to purchase, compared to some rivals that require customers buy a minimum of 100 seats, for example. With this flexibility any business from a three-employee doctor's office to a large ISP can be covered.
Currently, the company filters mail for more than 7,000 global customers in sectors that include financial services, small and medium enterprises, government, technology, healthcare, law, non-profit and education.
Most customers of the Los Angeles-based vendor -- no matter their size -- focus on inbound antispam managed services, but last year Katharion launched outbound filtering services as well.
"Right now it's a mix," said Jeff Patz, director of sales at Katharion. "Seventy percent of customers want inbound service and 30 percent want both in- and outbound services. We see outbound service as a growing area."
Katharion's network and software architecture were designed to handle heavy peak loads of SMTP traffic. The company claims its network has no single point of failure and provides a 99.999 percent uptime guarantee.
Those types of numbers have made resellers take notice. It's also a strong selling point that Katharion's managed services is a no muss, no fuss solution. Clients don't have to install or manage any software, and there's little-to-no maintenance involved.
Katharion's partner program consists of company resellers, private label, co-branding and referral partners. Patz said that co-branding is free, while the private label service is $100 dollars per year.
Referral partners who recommend Katharion to their customers get a commission but they're also able to log on to the interface to make adjustments -- The door doesn't shut on them just because they've gotten a check in the mail. Referral partners can also turn directly to Katharion for help without worry.
"Customers maintain tight relationships with their consultants," said Patz. "Our partners know we're not going to send in someone new if a problem comes up and they're not there to deal with it. They know we'll take care of someone's spam problem as fast as we can."
Patz also said that the company's flexible attitude has helped resellers win customers and encourages VARs to set up test trials for customers. When partners set up domains, customers don't get billed for 30 days.
"We find that giving a free trial is a great sales tool," Patz said. "For the most part, after a customer tries us they stick with the service."
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