Email the Editor    Email a Friend    Print this Page 

Jack Sebbag

McAfee Canada GM

Jack Sebbag, for one, is happy with McAfee’s transition away from Network Associates. It stopped him from constantly explaining to customers and partners that the company was once known as McAfee.

But, changing its name back to its original moniker wasn’t enough. McAfee also divested itself of some non-security technologies, most notably Sniffer. According to Sebbag, McAfee wanted to be viewed in the marketplace as a true security company. And, by doing so it would distance itself from a multitude of anti-virus competitors.

Recently, Sebbag sat down with CDN to discuss how he is trying to strengthen its channel among other topics.

CDN: What are you doing specifically in Canada to strengthen your channel?

Jack Sebbag: McAfee Canada has always been a partner-driven organization. We put together a lot of channel initiatives such as the deal registration program where we pay extra margins when partners bring us deals. By having a tier certification process, giving more margins to those companies who have a large number of SEs and sales reps that are certified has been well received.

CDN: One of the criticisms of the channel here in Canada is that they are too general and not really specialized, especially in security. Are you seeing the same thing?

J.S.: That is a great topic. A lot of the major resellers (such as) Nexinnovations and Compugen are doing well from a revenue perspective, but the folks we are seeing grow their security expertise are having or are able to gain larger market share. That is too bad, because the larger resellers have potential to do better in this market place. The banks and the large insurance companies want to deal with the big resellers but they do not have the expertise and skill sets. They need to specialize. They cannot be generalists.

share: