Just announcing the acquisition of the Third Brigade business, an Ottawa, Canada based privately-held security and compliance software company – Trend Micro is looking to target the consumer segment in India. The computer and internet security solution provider, Trend Micro is planning to conduct partner recruitment exercise in the six North Indian cities, such as Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Jaipur, Ludhiana and Chandigarh, in order to target the consumer segment.

Trend Micro is aiming to recruit close to 400 partners in various B and C-class cities. The company has as many as six AffinityOne Partners through which the company provides solutions to its enterprise customers, while the company has about 15 to 20 AffinityPlus partners that caters to both enterprise and SMB customers. The company is now looking for Affinity space partners to focus on the consumer vertical, and for that the company is planning to conduct partner recruitment exercise.  

Amit Nath, Country Manager, Trend Micro India, has told that the company is planning for a partner recruitment exercise in every region since it is looking to expand in the consumer segment aggressively. Additionally, the company will also conduct training sessions on the products while extending value proposition simultaneously for its partners.

Trend Micro is also planning to extend the same technology that it has been using in its enterprise and SMB class products to its Internet security product range planned for the end consumers. The company is planning for solutions for the threats coming through web, e-mail and file for the end consumers. The company is also planning to increase its services; one of its latest services includes Threat Management Services.
Nath has confirmed that the company is planning to expand its services in India. The services will include solutions for the security and virus problems at the network level and end-to-end security. The company is currently working with its AffinityOne partners to commence these services in India. The company is looking to appoint about eight to nine partners for these services.      

Currently, Trend Micro is running a Security Challenge program in various cities of India. The Security Challenge program is focused on the concepts, such as threat management services, data leakage, web security and cloud computing.

According to Nath, Trend Micro turned its focus on the consumer vertical in February 2009. The enterprise segment contributes about 50 percent, while the SMB contributes 45 percent to the company’s business in India. The consumer segment contributes 5 percent revenue, and the company is eying for 20 percent revenue contribution from consumer segment in next three years.   

Meanwhile, Trend Micro has recently announced that its agreement to acquire the Third Brigade business. The acquisition deal has been confirmed by SecureData Security, part of JSE-listed SecureData Holdings and the sole sub-Saharan distributor for Trend Micro. With acquisition of Third Brigade, Trend Micro is gearing up to accelerate its dynamic data centre security strategy and to critical security and compliance software and vulnerability response services to its customers.