Trend Micro Expands Channel Partner Program

Trend Micro took the wraps off its new global partner program, featuring an added emphasis on enhancing the productivity and profitability of its 50,000 channel partners. The new program, slated to kick off in Q1 of Trend Micro's fiscal year 2015, combines the best parts of its regional and North American partner programs and is designed to help resellers more quickly capitalize on demand for its product portfolio and security solutions, according to the company.

“After a comprehensive evaluation of our programs, we’ve applied best practices from around the globe to establish a common structure for a single, more cohesive program that can help our partners drive sales like never before,” said Partha Panda, vice president of Global Channels and Strategic Alliances at Trend Micro, in a prepared statement. “We are confident that this new approach will allow them to more quickly identify and respond to business opportunities for our comprehensive security solutions. Most significantly, it will enable us to replicate successful initiatives across all regions to help partners grow their business and increase profitability.”

In tandem with the global channel partner program, Trend Micro will bundle its portfolio of security solutions, cloud, virtualization and converged infrastructure offerings with products and services from alliance partners such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT) and VMware (VMW) to increase help drive bigger sales. Details on the bundles will be available at a later date, according to the company.

As part of the program, Trend Micro simplifying its education program, which now will include two levels of training and certification. In addition, a new education portal has been designed to give partners a way to accelerate their enablement and capitalize on sales opportunities.

Additionally, partners will have access to a revamped Trend Micro Partner Portal, with improved deal registration, content syndication and social media network access, according to the company. The partner program is expected to give resellers more benefits, including more clearly defined partner segmentation, a four-tiered standardized reseller ranking and deal protection compensation for Gold and Platinum partners as well as deal registration for Bronze partners who have completed one or more specializations. Each reseller will have a dedicated channel account team to answer common questions and assist with performance guidelines to nurture end user relationships and increase profitability.

Select members of the global partner program will be invited to Trend Micro’s inaugural Global Partner Summit in October, where the company will undoubtedly reveal more information about the upcoming program. The vendor will also be providing more insight into the program through its Security Blog.