Astaro to review its channel partners

The company has just launched its latest product line, the Astaro Mail Gateway (AMG) which gives small to medium sized businesses email security.

It is also giving all its partners a free Astaro Certified Engineering training from November 12-14.

According to Bryan Stibbard, vice president of sales APJ, Astaro, it has just signed a deal to provide security to a supermarket chain in Australia and is also working with the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne.

“We will be reassessing our current partners and contracts in December. We may move some partners down a tier and we want to increase our resellers from 40 to 65 next year,” said Stibbard.

Astaro is also launching a ‘try before you buy’ campaign in December, which will give resellers and customers a 30 day trial period.

Its current distributors are Techplus and SoftGen.

“Resellers are telling us that VMWare and virtualisation are the hottest topics at the moment because of the great benefits you can get from it,” said Stibbard.

“We hear that in times of economic change, people are going to start holding onto their hardware for longer which means we have to do more with what they have got. Resellers are trying to work out how to put their ‘arms around their clients’. It’s all about consolidation.

“If a customer buys something from a reseller they are nervous about whether that reseller is still going to be around in a couple of years’ time, like Commander for example. Resellers are assessing their needs,” added Stibbard.

AMG features email encryption, spam and virus protection and remote exchange access.

Stibbard claims SMBs will benefit from the product because they can protect email traffic as effectively as large corporations.