Westcon To Distribute SMX Email Security Service

Westcon Australia Signs As Head Distributor
For SMX ‘Cloud-Based’ Email Security Service

Westcon Group, one of Australia's largest IT distributors, has signed an exclusive distribution agreement for the innovative SMX anti-spam and anti-virus email filtering service.

Westcon Group's Australian managing director, Leigh Howard, says the agreement will see Westcon working with SMX to offer the solution to Westcon's 2,000 plus resellers throughout Australia.

“This is the first time that Westcon is distributing a cloud-based service,” Howard says.

“Strategically the time is right to start distributing SaaS services here in Australia. Logically email is a good place to start and SMX is a good fit for us and our resellers.”

Developed and launched in New Zealand in 2006, the SMX service pioneered the concept of cleaning emails of spam and viruses ‘in the cloud’ as a service rather than via a software product installed inside user networks.

Howard says a particular strength of the SMX service is the ease with which it can be sold by Westcon resellers – providing an ongoing revenue stream based on a per-seat price, rather than a single product sale.

SMX will assist resellers with a highly streamlined provisioning process which will enable resellers to have their customers up and running literally within hours.

Hosting will be carried out in Australia by SMX at their Melbourne data centre with a 24-hour helpdesk service providing user support as well as assistance with provisioning of customers by Westcon resellers. Westcon will provide a dedicated sales resource to train Westcon resellers and directly assist with provisioning new customers.

Howard says the business case for the SMX service is clear and compelling. Rather than owning and operating their own spam and virus filtering software in house, customers can subscribe on a per-seat basis to have it all done for them – before it hits their network, saving bandwidth, administrative hassles and other drains on productivity.

"This is a major step forward in ridding corporate networks of spam and viruses in a single stroke – with the savings in bandwidth and lost productivity more than covering the service charges. It's a great solution and we're delighted to secure the exclusive distribution rights for Australia," Howard said.

SMX managing director Jesse Ball says the exclusive distribution agreement with Westcon follows the opening of an SMX data centre in Melbourne late last year. The data centre will service all Australian customers with local email filtering being an important differentiator for the SMX service.

ENDS

© Scoop Media