Q1 Highlights – Tremendous Momentum Underway

Q1 was the best quarter in the company’s history. Thanks for making me look good in my first quarter in the new role. We achieved balanced growth across all theaters and all segments. In fact, several areas of the business came in ahead of plan, including – Network Security, Application and Change Control and Enterprise Security Manager (fueled by our NitroSecurity SIEM business.)

We’ve also received various industry accolades in Q1, that validate our momentum, including:

• SC Magazine — Best Global Security Company of the Year
• CRN  — Top 20 Coolest Cloud Security Vendors
• CRN — 5-Star Partner Program

The Database Security Market: A Greenfield Growth Opportunity

Mike Fey, our SVP of Advanced Technologies and Field Engineering, pointed out in our Tech Chat that database security will double to a $1.2B market by 2013. Combine that with the fact that more than 90% of all data breaches involve a database, and it is easy to see that together we have a massive opportunity to protect our mutual-customers. We want to help you build or strengthen your database security practice. To build a practice step 1 is to get Risk & Compliance certified by logging into our Partner Portal and going to our new Partner Learning Center. To strengthen your practice I highly recommend checking out our database security sales play, which you can access by logging into our Sales and Marketing Portal. And be on the look out for a database security ACE in July.

Key Priorities for Q2: Build Your Expertise, Amplify Your Value

Become a trusted advisor to your customers by building your expertise and amplifying your value through these resources:

• VSKO – Take advantage of these online sales resources to grow your product and sales expertise. Complete a Sales Play and learn how to sell more while demonstrating value.
• Accredited Channel Engineer Program (ACEs) – Our data shows that, together, we have won business deals about 90% of the time when ACE Proof-of-Concepts (POCs) have been completed. Over 200 POCs were completed or in progress by our partners in Q1.  Our goal is to continue to have partners deliver more POC’s without the help of a McAfee SE.
• Capture the SMB Opportunity – SMB represents a significant growth opportunity (nearly $7.5 billion by 2015).  To help motivate you to go after that SMB market, we are doubling the rewards points in our SMB program, under TSB, TSA, and STP suites.
• Win Great Prizes with the Rewards Extravaganza – Every deal you book in the Commercial and SMB segments makes you eligible for great prizes, including our grand prize drawings in Q3–$20,000 SMB Extravaganza and $25,000 for Commercial Extravaganza.

Finally, our Partner Summit will take place October 23-25 in Las Vegas. More details to follow, but please save the date, as I look forward to seeing you there in person.

Good selling!

As I outlined during the meeting, I’m excited about the opportunities in front of us in 2012, especially in Commercial and SMB, where our goal, together with you, is to drive double digit growth in each of these markets.

To capture these opportunities, we’re focused on transforming our engagements with you to strengthen relevancy and drive our mutual profitability. To achieve this transformation we’re focused on 3 key pillars:

• Invest – we will continue to make key investments in the channels: We have made a massive investment in partner enablement. Our new, more robust Partner Learning Center is paramount to our ability to evolve to a continuing education approach and allows us to reward you for broadening and deepening your McAfee knowledge.
• Grow – you are how we accelerate growth: We see explosive growth in the SMB market and want to encourage you to become SMB Specialized today.
• Optimize – we are committed to improving our partner engagement: The PARC (Partner Acceleration Resource Center) is a perfect example for how we are optimizing our engagement with you in the SMB space.

Learn more about how we’re driving these three key pillars with you by watching the Q1 Town Hall recording.

As we settle into Q1, here are some specific areas I believe can help us jumpstart our year together:

• Deal Registration & Protection
  Register your deals and expand your margins!
• Rewards Extravaganza
  We’ve made a significant investment for 2012 to reward your teams for accomplishments in both SMB and Commercial. Sign up and start cashing in.
• Make ACE (Accredited Channel Engineer) Count
  Your ACE team members are a key differentiator for your business. Through ACE you can develop hands-on technical skills and deliver proof-of-concepts that will help you demonstrate additional value to our mutual customers.
• Virtual Sales Kickoff – February 15
  Mark your calendar for this unique opportunity to hear about our growth strategies for 2012 via the Virtual Sales Kickoff 2012, our first continuing education learning module.

This coming year is full of great growth opportunities for us, however, we cannot achieve our full potential without solid execution and working TOGETHER!

Our Go-to-Market strategy and segmentation remains unchanged from 2011, so I encourage you to make a decision for McAfee, identify the areas you want to play in, engage our resources and programs, and become a trusted security advisor for our customers. Together, we can make our vision for 2012 a reality!

Good selling,

As I take a moment to pause and reflect on 2011 I can’t help but think what a year! The past 12 months were filled with momentous occasions and while I’d like to write about all of them, I know it isn’t practical, so let me highlight a few:

• Intel Completes Acquisition of McAfee — No one is better positioned to explain why Intel acquired McAfee than the orchestrator of the deal, Renee James, who did just that at our 2011 Partner Summit in Las Vegas.
• Largest Partner Profitability Investment in McAfee History — Looking for a signal that Intel is supportive of our channel? Look no further than our Enhanced Deal Registration, whereby we offer deal protection and up to 25% in additional margin, that’s on top of your standard channels discount.
• McAfee Makes CRN’s Top 25 Companies to Partner With List — With more than 200 companies jockeying to make this coveted list we were honored that you, our channel partners, selected us based on three critical partnering elements; customer demand, partner relevance and technology strength. Thank you!  
• McAfee Announces New Co-Presidents — I would be remiss if I let 2011 pass without thanking David DeWalt for his great leadership. But, as McAfee enters its next phase of growth, which will be driven by operational excellence, we couldn’t ask for better leaders and channel advocates, than Mike DeCesare and Todd Gebhart
• ACE (Accredited Channel Engineers) — ACE is our new, globally available pre-sales certification for individuals that takes internal SE training best practices and makes it available to our partners to drive the “technical win.”
• Accelerating SMB Revenue Opportunity with Channel Partners — Thanks to our single-source for all your SMB information, PARC (Partner Acceleration Resource Center): we can now offer you a way to differentiate with our SMB Specialization; a quick and easy way to find the right solution, with our Solution Advisor; we can deliver a stronger value proposition with our SMB Deal Registration; and we can help you reward your sales representatives with our SMB Extravaganza.

Looking Forward

The current pace of change is unlike anything I have ever experienced. We realize that foundational to our success is our ability to help you adapt and capitalize on the rapidly changing security market. This means we must also adapt and evolve our channel strategy from one that centers on building to one that focuses on investing in you, growing with you and optimizing for you. These three pillars form the foundation of our 2012 channel strategy to drive mutual profitability. If it isn’t focused on driving mutual profitability in 2012 we aren’t going to do it.

On behalf of the entire McAfee Worldwide Channels Organization I want to thank you for your hard work and continued partnership with McAfee. May you and your families have a wonderful holiday season and here’s to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012.

We made several announcements at this year’s McAfee SecurityAlliance Partner Summit all focused on driving partner profitability, in case you missed it, here’s the press release.

Looking for a comprehensive 2011 Partner Summit recap of what was unveiled – we’ve got you covered.

EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it. At FOCUS11 McAfee launchedePO DeepCommand, providing a new level of security management and DeepDefender, transforming how the industry approaches security.

ePO DeepCommand is available now. Here’s a demo, which includes information on the ePO DeepCommand reporting and discovery module.

Looking for third party insight and analysis from the 2011 Partner Summit here’s a few for you to read:

• Intel execs bullish on McAfee technology, channel expertise
• Intel, McAfee talk channel, innovation
• McAfee seeking ‘ACE’ partners to drive technical pre-sales efforts
• McAfee launches new channels initiatives
• McAfee boosts deal registration margin

On Oct. 27, we hosted our Quarterly Channel Partner Town Hall, if you missed it, here’s the replay.

Our next Town Hall will likely be January 19, 2012. Pencil it in and we will get an invite out in December with the confirmed date.

Want to know how data center customers are looking to improve their security? Then mark your calendar for Nov. 30, 2011 to attend the McAfee webcast, How can organizations improve their security, where Gabriel Consulting will share their Data Center Security Survey results.

The Tweet of the month comes from PaoloCDN, Paolo Del Nibletto: “Renee James said she was either crazy to spend $8B on a security co. or made the single most important acquisition this decade.”

As always I appreciate any feedback. Please comment below.