Trend Micro introduces hosted security service for small business 8 February, 2010 By Mark Cox

"The primary target is small businesses who have less than 10 employees," said Dal Gemmell, senior manager of Small Business Product Market Managing at Trend Micro. "Many of these will not have a server, and if they do, they do not want to put additional software on it. Many of these are also increasingly mobile."

Many of these companies presently buy consumer solutions, Gemmell said.

"They get active security bundled with computers, which is not ideal for businesses because it's not clear if they are updated, and because they have to renew and configure individually."

The new Services are part of the Trend Micro Worry-Free family, which has had non-hosted offerings such as Worry Free Business Standard and Advanc ed. Standard is similar to the services offering, but the security management component is on an on premise server at the customer site. Advanced also includes messaging security. The common infrastructure for all is the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network, which uses a number of patent-pending technologies and combines Internet-based technologies with lighter-weight, client-based methods.

This service is hosted by Trend Micro, so it is not a partner managed services option, and cannot be rebranded by the partner. But Gemmell says it will still appeal to many of them.

"A lot of the partners serving these small businesses don't have the infrastructure to host it even if they wanted to," he said. But there are still features which increase partner margins.

"It sets up and installs in three easy steps, which greatly reduces the cost of sale and support for partners," Gemmell said. "They can install it quickly onto multiple PCs and not have to set up each one, and they can do this from a remote location."

The subscription pricing also increases partner incremental revenues.

"It's not more up front and less at renewal. They will earn same on the second year as on the first."

Partners also have the ability to attach services revenue on this, like a security monitoring service. Gemmell said that he recently spoke with a partner who is trying to get as many of his customers on Worry-Free as possible because it lets him become very proactive about identifying issues, sometimes before the customer even knows about it.

"It lets the customer know there is a second set of eyes watching their network," Gemmell said.

Per user pricing varies by seat count and price decreases with volume. Pricing starts at MSRP $USD 31.48 per user for a 1-year subscription for companies with 2-25 machines.