Trend Micro partners Cloud on Demand

17 Sep 2013

Global security software vendor Trend Micro has appointed Cloud On Demand, a South African cloud vendor and hybrid cloud enablement partner, as its first XSP (cloud) partner in the southern African region.

Through its technology assets and its Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC), Cloud on Demand provides customers and resellers a platform, complementary applications and solutions to assist them in embracing the cloud. To this end the company will be coupling the Trend Micro security offerings into its product portfolio with the intention of providing security to customers that extends from anti-virus to the hypervisor, as well as into the cloud.

"With the Deep Security cloud and virtualisation security offerings from Trend Micro, a business no longer needs to approach the cloud with caution," stated Gregory Anderson, country manager of Trend Micro South Africa.

"The appointment of Cloud on Demand as an XSP (cloud) partner, places us in the enviable position to offer local customers access to the superior security solutions for their cloud environments, limiting their risk and ensuring their ongoing security, while at the same time addressing their compliance requirements."

A low-risk, secure and cost-effective mechanism

While in some instances some South African customers have, to date, been reticent to look at the cloud as a qualified business alternative to their IT assets and infrastructure, the Cloud on Demand model provides a low-risk, secure and cost-effective mechanism by which to put a business in the cloud.

According to Jonathan Kropf, CEO of Cloud on Demand, the partnership with Trend Micro will allow the company to be able to offer customers and resellers the Trend products and security solutions as part of its virtual data centre solution. The security products will also form part of its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering, which allows resellers to rent virtual infrastructure from the company and then sell this on to customers.

"As the first company to launch a virtual data centre in South Africa and as a channel-only cloud provider, we are delighted to be able to add the Trend Micro products to our portfolio and, in turn, the portfolio of our customers," stated Kropf.

"Our position as an XSP partner affords our customers the benefit of not having to purchase long-term licensing for the Trend Micro products; instead through our partner agreement with the vendor, they now need only purchase what they use. This allows their licensing costs to remain fairly elastic depending entirely on usage."

The partnership with Cloud on Demand is a perfect example of how the cloud is dictating how businesses need to adapt their go-to-market strategies to be more flexible, highlighting how vendors, like Trend Micro, are moving more and more to usage-based business models that aim to provide customers with value beyond simple licensing.

Today, Cloud on Demand offers its customers services and solutions that include: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), software solutions, email, back-up, IT service management, hosted desktop and cloud consulting. Its infrastructure is made up of wall-to-wall VMware virtualisation and cloud solutions, which, due to Trend Micro's partnership with the vendor on its agentless for virtualisation and cloud security offerings, provides further value to its partners, resellers and customers because of the inherent interoperability between the two vendors.

This can be evidenced through the ability of the Trend Micro solution stack's ability to be integrated with vCloud director, the company's control panel for resellers to access their virtual data centres.