Q&A: Mark Hassall, Director for Microsoft Forefront Security Partner Marketing, discusses how a new study and enhancements to its partner programs are helping industry partners become more successful providing effective, streamlined security options for customers.

Security is a topic that is always top of mind for businesses, and an issue that doesn’t lend itself to one-size-fits all solutions. Finding smart, cost-effective ways to ensure that corporate data is kept secure, and applications designed to do business with partners and customers are effective, private and safe are key to many company’s success. As such, companies often turn to specialist security partners for assistance to find the right way to address issues.

The Microsoft Forefront family of security products has been designed to provide an integrated, comprehensive and simplified way to address the myriad security issues for businesses. Microsoft has worked with industry partners to help bring these solutions to customers, and works closely to ensure the product line addresses key security concerns for customers, from the deepest levels of security for applications to the network edge.

Along with evolving its product line, Microsoft has also been working to develop its business relationship with these industry partners that are so critical to the success of its security products. In July of 2007, Microsoft announced a US$50 million investment in support for its security business based on the Forefront line of security solutions – including enhancements to its partner programs. The investment is part of Microsoft’s effort to respond to the changing security environment where customers are finding it difficult to efficiently deploy and manage a multiplicity of security solutions.

Today, Microsoft announced a series of initiatives designed to further aid channel partners in designing effective, profitable business models while working with their customers to stay on top of the ever-changing security landscape.

The new incentives provide partners enrolled in the Security Software Advisor (SSA) program and the Security Solutions Competency an opportunity to supplement their revenue and earn an additional 10 percent in advisor fees. The company also released a new study it commissioned with leading research firm IDC. The study looked at 349 resellers in the United States and the United Kingdom and found that Microsoft security partners are often more profitable than partners that sell other vendors security products.

To learn more about these new investments to partner programs and the study, PressPass spoke with Microsoft Forefront Security Partner Marketing Director Mark Hassall.

PressPass: It’s been six months since you announced a set of new initiatives to respond to partner needs in the rapidly evolving security industry. What has the response been from the partner community?

Hassall:. To date, we’ve been pleased with the response. We have over 6,000 partners enrolled in the Security Software Advisor program, which allows partners to earn up to 30 percent in advisor fees when they help drive deployment of Forefront-based security solutions. And we have over 1,000 partners in the Security Solutions Competency, which is now the fastest growing competency in the Microsoft portfolio. We are committed to continued investment in our security partner programs with partner profitability as the focus. And now, with the IDC study, we can quantify this value to our partners.

PressPass: Tell us a bit about the IDC survey.

Hassall: Microsoft commissioned the survey to better understand how we can structure our partner programs and product offerings to provide the best opportunity for our industry partners. The new IDC study demonstrates that resellers and integrators can be more profitable selling Microsoft Forefront and security products compared to other vendors’ security products. The study finds that Microsoft partners that have earned the Microsoft Security Solutions Competency and/or that qualify for the Microsoft Security Software Advisor program outperform other benchmarked companies that offer security solutions on 12 of 15 of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) surveyed. Key performance metrics include:

The report found that these results can be attributed to a number of factors, including services opportunities, availability of qualified technical resources, process efficiencies and deeper relationships with customers.

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