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Trend Micro, StarLink shift focus to sub-Saharan Africa

By , Portals editor
Africa , 29 Nov 2016

Trend Micro, StarLink shift focus to sub-Saharan Africa

Trend Micro Southern Africa has extended its META-wide distributor agreement with IT compliance and next-generation threat driven solutions provider StarLink to include sub-Saharan Africa. The move is an extension of Trend Micro's strategy to re-energise its channel across the region.

Darryn O'Brien, Country Manager at Trend Micro Southern Africa, affirms that the company only operates through a two-tiered distribution and reseller model.

According to O'Brien 'energising the channel' means the company will focus on partnerships with both new and established players in the market as it seeks to align its channel with its evolution from being a traditional anti-virus provider to its new role as a cloud and network defence provider.

"This includes new partnerships with niche security distributors (such as Obscure Technologies) and with distributors that have a wide geographic footprint (such as StarLink)."

StarLink is a value-added IT security distributor with on-the-ground presence in 11 countries across the EMEA region, with South Africa representing a priority market because of its strong installed base of Trend Micro that is focused predominantly on endpoint security.

Avinash Advani, Senior Vice President for Strategic Alliances & International Markets at StarLink, says, "our existing relationship with Trend Micro makes the extension of the agreement into Southern Africa an obvious move. Trend Micro has a phenomenal portfolio of products, which fits into our existing range, and we like to ensure we offer full coverage of all vendors across all geographies. Trend Micro is one of the few vendors that offers a platform capability with their portfolio, allowing for a completely end-to-end solution that appeals to our channel partners."

According to O'Brien Trend Micro's suite of products integrates tightly into Trend Micro's Control Manager platform which offers users "a single pane of glass" to manage all of their Trend Micro solutions. "The visibility and control of your network, endpoint and datacentre from this platform allows customer and partners to make quicker and better informed decisions when responding to and reacting to alerts and vulnerabilities."

Advani says the threat landscape in sub-Saharan Africa ranges from ransomware to nation-state attacks, and organisations are currently investing heavily in security solutions. "This means the timing is right from a market perspective."

He believes the partnership provides the channel with a number of opportunities, built on Trend Micro's platform capabilities.

While South Africa remains a focus point, the company's three primary markets in sub-Saharan Africa are Nigeria, Kenya and Mauritius.

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