Customers want security managed: Getronics

Outsourcer Getronics Australia has signed with security vendor Clearswift to resell its Minesweeper content filtering and email management suite.

Collin Duff-Tytler, product manager for network management and security at Getronics, said the companies had been working together for some time but had moved to formalise the relationship.

The signing was customer-focused rather than product-focused.
'Clearswift is one of the building blocks in our security offering, which is part of our overall network and desktop outsourcing offering,' he said.

Network and desktop outsourcing was Getronics' main focus, Duff-Tytler said.
He said Clearswift and Getronics had relationships overseas, more specifically in the service provider's homeland, the Netherlands. Also, Getronics customers were very aware of Clearswift's products and had given the outsourcer consistently positive feedback on the vendor.

'What we've been doing is trying to build a best-of-breed security approach and very much looking at the bigger picture,' Duff-Tytler said.

He declined to comment on what Clearswift product revenues might be like in the first year, but said customer feedback had indicated that content filtering could be in demand this year, partly since intrusions such as spam were high in general awareness. 'We try to give our customers what they feel they need,' Duff-Tytler said.

Chy Chuawiwat, MD at Clearswift Asia-Pacific, said Getronics' status as a large outsourcer was part of what attracted Clearswift.

'They have a security [focus] and some of the people we know are working there, so it made sense to talk to them about security. They're a large player,' he said.

Chuawiwat said Clearswift tried to pick resellers that were both committed to security and to providing high service levels to customers, such as user training.

'We don't want the one-off buy -- we want people who can commit to what we are doing,' he said. 'We have actually got rid of resellers in the past.'

This year could shape up to be interesting, Chuawiwat added, as emphasis shifted from stopping people wasting bandwidth on things like porn towards preventing spam and a more proactive approach to the internet.

'People are saying: 'I've stopped all the bad stuff -- so how do I enable the good stuff?' Also, the market is much more mature now,' he said.