An Ottawa e-mail security software company is abandoning direct sales for the channel to get the next generation of its applications to a wider audience.
Nemx Software, maker of a series of Microsoft Exchange plug-ins called Power Tools for Exchange, is hunting for VARs to sell its new
versions of the applications, called SecurExchange.
“With the launch of SecurExchange we realized to reach the target market for that audience we had to put it through value-added resellers,” said Larry Trenwith, the company’s acting vice-president of marketing.
The SecurExchange family is offered mainly at businesses that need to meet high e-mail protection standards set by government regulators through what Nemx calls intelligent filtering. Some products scan internal e-mail as well as outbound messages.
What makes SecurExchange special is the scanning technology in the products, said Trenwith. It includes Content Manager, which uses natural language processing, HTML parsing, grammar structure delimiters, anchored spam recognition.
But it has heavy competition, including Microsoft, which earlier this year moved to beef up Exchange security by buying Sybari and Giant Software.
The company has a two-level channel program: Authorized resellers, who only have to commit to a sales volume of at least $20,000 a year; and referral resellers, who don’t want to sell many licenses but want a fee for referring potential buyers. Nemx has a deal registration process to protect these resellers.
“We want to make it easy for them to get involved in this marketplace, because it’s growing,” said Trenwith. “We don’t want to put barriers in the way.”
So far it has signed up two partners in German and one in the U.S., he said. Nemx is looking to recruit as many as 40 resellers world-wide, of which perhaps eight might be Canadian.
Authorized resellers get a product discount that ranges between 35 and 45 per cent, depending on the amount of sales they commit to. They don’t have to purchase inventory.
Nemx provides tech support and sales training for the products to authorized resellers, said Trenwith, including direct aid on a partner’s initial sales.
According the company’s Web site, ideal partners not only have Exchange practices, but also have a security and messaging focus, have “significant” share in their market or an “exceptional” SMB sales team.
Partners will have another incentive: the developer wants to migrate Power Tools users to SecurExchange applications over the next 12 to 18 months.
The new family of products includes:
–SecurExchange Corporate Edition, which monitors inbound, outbound and internal e-mail. Alerts can be sent to administrators and employees. It also has an archiving function. It supports Exchange Server 2003, 2000 and 5.5;
–SecurExchange Perimeter, which only monitors inbound and outbound messages;
–SecurExchange IMF, for those who don’t have a full Exchange server environment but use Microsoft Intelligent Message Filter for blocking spam;
–SecurExchange AntiVirus;
–SecurExchange SBS, for those using Microsoft Small Business Server. It includes the antivirus and full scanning features;
–SecurExchange AutoContent, for customers who only want to add boilerplate messages to outbound e-mail, such as a corporate disclaimer or logo.
Pricing for all products except SecurExchange IMF is by licensing. SE Corporate edition, for example, is a one-time fee of $1,250 for a 50-user licence. Annual maintenence fees are additional.
