Symantec has said that it is a vendor's responsibility to make security product SKUs simpler, to help resellers who are struggling to sell to businesses in the current economic climate.
The statements come alongside the launch of its Protection Suite Small Business Edition software, in which the firm stressed the clearer direction it was taking with its endpoint security solutions.
"The two SKU approach is a new one for us, and was motivated by feedback from our partners and our customers," said the product manager for Symantec's endpoint portfolio, Garry Tugwell-Smith, explaining the reasoning behind introducing the new small business SKU. "Although we've split the product into two focused solutions on different markets, we've made the reseller's job easier by moving away from the multi-tiered approach to one based around individual software suites."
The introduction of the new small business SKU represents a shift in the way that the company approaches enterprise level security solutions, with an emphasis on usage, so that no feature becomes redundant.
"The small to medium business version still comes with all the important features such as endpoint security for all computers on the premises, security for messages, antivirus and spam as well as back up and recovery. However, it doesn't come with features that are usually only found in much bigger organisations such as Linux-based servers, mobile protection and support for a wider range of mail clients – aspects that can complicate things for smaller businesses."
However, despite making the products simpler, he claims the company's partners have a key role to play. "Because a lot of these smaller firms don't have dedicated IT staff, it means that resellers have a much bigger role to play in these businesses.
"There are still some out there that use consumer solutions, and while they're more than adequate for stopping things like viruses and malware infecting their systems, they often aren't up to dealing with things like guests' computers accessing the network and server-based mail solutions," he continued. "This is where it is important for resellers to not just up-sell the product, but also clearly explain the benefits and differences, and continue to support them after the sale.
"The changes we've made to our SKUs are designed to help them do just that."
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