As the market acceptance for smart devices is exponentially moving up, smartphones and tablets are not only end user products but also needed to considerably enhance productivity ion the enterprise and SME segment.
Ensuring security of these devices is a big challenge and this is a key focus area for eScan. Anil Gupta, AVP – India Sales, eScan speaks with Zia Askari from ChannelDrive.in about the company’s current strategy and its future plans to address the changing needs of Indian market.
What are the key focus areas for eScan today?
Our prime focus is to offer world-class products to our customers that provide a secured computing experience across Enterprise to SOHO segment users. Also, being a channel centric brand, our channel partners remain our priority.
Hence, we also focus to ensure their profitability. Moreover, this year, we have aggressive marketing plans along with more focus on regional marketing along with our partners to increase reach to resellers.
Apart from that, with increasing penetration of mobility, the security for mobile devices is a major concern for enterprises to individual users today. The number of smartphone users is going to be more than 200 million by 2016 according to leading research estimates.
Thus eScan Mobile Security for Android phones, iPhones & iPads and Tablet Security for Android have already been made ready to reach the users. We have planned our strategies in order to aggressively penetrate into the market and have our market share increased by additional 15-20% from SOHO, SMB and Corporate Edition including MailScan for all Operating System.
How does the company look at channel community?
In the last couple of years, our sole focus was on creating awareness amongst channel partners across the country. Having reached to more than 5500 partners, we want to increase our bases further as well as engage with existing partners to achieve mutual growth.
Our focus this year is again on creating strong partner engagement with SP partners for our SME and Enterprise growth. Whereas we have now started reaching to both the mid to large SI/SP partners and their customers in joint calls and increasing awareness through co-marketing activities like road shows, POCs etc.
Where are the growth opportunities for the company today?
The current scenario in Anti-Virus market in India among home users/ Retail is on growth path at a rate of 20% (approx.). The use of licensed and paid AV is increasing day by day. The distribution pattern or the reach to end customers is still largely through small resellers and IT dealers, even though the online stores are selling at reduced costs, still the consumer looks at service and buys from his trusted partner. Even though large number of people uses free AV this is coming down as now with increased threats the free AV’s cannot protect real time as compared to paid AV’s.
With continuous advancements in the IT landscape, the need to protect networks and all related digital devices from evolving cyber security threats has led to an increase in the demand of IT security software. Hence, in year 2015-2016, we can expect an escalated growth curve in the IT security industry.
What are some of the trends that are reshaping Security segment?
Anti-virus market in India is witnessing constant growth and this will continue in 2015 as well. According to a research by e-Marketer, by 2016, India will have the second largest online user-base with 283.8 million users, after China. Factors such as data usage on mobile devices, broadband penetration and rise of smart devices will fuel this growth. As far as the emerging trends are concerned, mobile computing, big data, virtualization, cloud services, and social networking continue to be the emerging IT trends of 2015. The biggest driver of growth will be mobility that includes Smartphones and Tablets. We already have our Mobile & Tablet Security software for Android and Mobile Security for iPhones & iPads too. Considering the features we have for these products, we are already experiencing a respectable feedback from the industry and end-users.
What kind of innovation is coming from eScan to the market?
Currently eScan is chalking out the future plans with the following perspectives:
Fortifying Smart Cities: We are focusing on the concerns related to Privacy, Network/ Data Security and detection/prevention of inconsistencies to ensure 24×7 availability for all kinds of digital services that make smart cities. Proper security to this digital world can ensure an ideal smart city for next generation.
ICT (Information and Computing Technologies) & IoT (Internet of Things): ICT (Information and Computing Technologies) and IoT (Internet of Things) are an integral part of Smart Cities and we have extended the security umbrella to IoT with Security Intelligence Analytics and ensuring the Network/Data integrity at all times.
