GFI announces its partner program for the Middle East

In the lead up to GITEX 2006 and building on the existing small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) channel strategy responsible for amassing thousands of global partners and more than 160,000 customer installations worldwide, GFI Software, an international leader and developer of network security, content security and messaging software, has announced several enhancements to its Global Partner Program to be rolled out across the Middle East. The improved program will further help GFI partners resolve the security and messaging challenges faced within the SMB market.

"There has been a proliferation of small-to-medium-sized businesses throughout the Middle East as a result of the region's unprecedented economic growth and development over the last three years," said Simon Azzopardi, EMEA Managing Director. "This new generation of SMBs has been set up on IT platforms that increasingly demand security and messaging solutions designed for their needs. To meet these needs many software companies are introducing 'lite' software versions for SMBs that were originally intended for enterprise-level companies. In contrast to this approach, GFI has focused on building its solutions to solve the security and messaging issues specifically for the SMB market and price those solutions to meet limited IT budget resources. We have seen a dramatically rising demand for these solutions and have established our channel strategy to help our partners more effectively meet this demand."

Better channel sales margins eliminate competition between Partner categories
To lay the foundation for the new enhancements, GFI has improved and segmented the sales margins to differentiate between the pricing strategies used by its value added resellers (VARs). Aiding the facilitation of improved margins, VARs can now qualify for GFI's Gold, Silver and Bronze partnership levels, which are based on revenue attainment, sales and technical competencies and local presence.

Improving the Partner's ability to solve IT challenges
All partners, Gold, Silver and Bronze, are eligible for solution sales techniques training, product certification, free software evaluation, electronic sales collateral and the monthly GFI Reseller eNewsletter. In addition, partners qualifying at the Gold and Silver tiers receive added benefits such as technical certification, channel account management and qualified leads.

"One of the improved benefits of our channel program is the stronger focus on training," said Simon Azzopardi, MD EMEA, GFI. "Since the majority of our customers own just one or two products out of our portfolio of nine, we are going to teach our partners how to sell full solutions to solve a greater number of IT issues for the SMB market."

GFI's Middle East Channel Partner Program is being introduced to the region at GITEX 2006. In addition, GFI will provide sales and technical content to qualifying partners through the GFI reseller website during Q4 of 2006 and Q1 of 2007.