The VARBusiness Interview: CA Courts SMB Customers

CA, like many of its enterprise rivals, is making a pitch to the SMB space. It is touting its set of Business Protection Suites for the SMB space as just the type of integrated solution that partners will find success with. At a recent SMB event at CA headquarters in Islandia, N.Y., VARBusiness managing editor/special projects Carolyn A. April discussed the SMB efforts with CA's George Kafkarkou, senior vice president for SMB and consumer channels, and David Luft, senior vice president of SMB product development.

VB: CA is best known as an enterprise company, so how have you approached the SMB market?
Luft: Historically, we have been very product-oriented at CA. Yet when we were getting set to go into the SMB space, we spent a ton of time on research around things like how you sell into this market, how you price for it, etc. One of the key takeaways from that research was the need for simplicity in how the products are bought, implemented, used and managed. For example, if you have four or five products and they each have different interfaces, it won't work for SMB customers. We had to find one look and feel. What we came up with is six suites that fall under the Business Protection moniker. They are completely integrated antivirus, antispyware, backup and recovery, systems migration and desktop-migration software.

Karkafkou: To get the equivalent functionality of these suites, you must buy point solutions today. There's a lack of integration with that, and it's more expensive. Our solution is tremendous out-of-box. It's one CD, one install, one location for administration and one number for support. It's a truly integrated experience, and our solution providers will benefit from that.

VB: How is CA defining the SMB customer?
Luft: We define it as 499 employees and below, with the sweet spot of 250 employees and below.

VB: What type of partner recruitment and enablement is going on to drive SMB sales?
Karkafkou: We are gaining many net-new partners for the SMB products. According to our focus groups, we found that the smaller the business customer, the smaller the solution provider they use. And those [smaller VARs] are new, incremental partners for CA. Two months ago, we started the SMB Specialists Partner Track. I think we have more than 1,000 partners signed up now, and most of them are new to CA. The program has a range of resources and benefits, marketing materials, co-branding opportunities with CA. Also, if you are Microsoft-certified on its Small Business Server product, we will give you a not-for-resell and a for-resell copy of the SMB Business Protection Suite. You get the for-resell copy for free, so it's pure margin for the solution provider.

Make no mistake, our partners know better than we do how to service the SMB market. If we did not listen to them, we would close up shop and not do this segment.