F-Secure determined to make noise in Oz

Finnish-based security vendor, F-Secure has been in the Australian market working through the channel for almost 10 years, but the vendor is now looking to make more noise in the local marketplace.

Jari Heinonen, vice president at F-Secure APAC said he sees great potential for F-Secure’s products within the Australian SME and consumer markets, offered through the channel to make security as easy as possible.

“We are also seeing a definite increase in the demand for hosted security services, particularly from ISPs”, said Heinonen. “IT security is becoming increasingly complex for end users to manage, which is a key issue that the security-as-a-Service model addresses. Essentially, it takes the onus off end users, placing the IT security burden on those most equipped to manage it.”

Traditionally marketed to Europe the vendor has seen significant growth in the APAC region over the past 12 months after opening regional headquarters and a research and development lab in Malaysia as well as offices in Hong Kong, Mumbai and Singapore.

The vendor has been looking closely at the Australian marketplace and wants to expand its local business, because it is one of the leading contributors of revenue in the region.

Heinonen said the vendor sees a need in the Australian SME sector, with many SMEs buying retail solutions and using non-managed environments because of the “easiness to go, shop and install the license themselves.”

“To bridge this gap we will work closely with distributors to increase our reseller base, but we aren’t looking for a huge number of resellers and we are trying to target specific customer within terms of what we have for solutions,” said Heinonen.

The Finnish security vendor will also focus on growing its presence in the region, with visability and awarness to partners.

“We want to make more investments into this region. You can remotely support partners and visit them frequently. However it becomes problematic when you don’t visit them and we don’t have an office here,” he said.

Heinonen said the vendor will be looking at opening up an office in Australia, a “little bit later this year”, and will be assessing the situation making a decision before the end of the year.

“It is possible to support Australia from other countries but its not the same. The needs of Australia is very different from other APAC countries and is closer to Europe in terms of pricing, competitors and general strategy,” he said.