Distributor Soft Solutions has signed a deal with Sunbelt Software to distribute its security products, Vipre and Ninja, in New Zealand. Soft Solutions has been selling these solutions on an ad hoc basis for some time and has decided to make the arrangement more formal. The decision coincided with Sunbelt Software’s desire to build a global channel, whereby sales of its security products would be made entirely through the channel everywhere but in North America.

Soft Solutions will be aggressively recruiting resellers for the newly-signed vendor, whose applications are well known within the OEM community. Indeed, Sunbelt Software licenses its software developer’s kit and other services to companies such as Marshal8e6, Mi5 (now Symantec) and Clearswift, to name a few.

With these credentials, Sunbelt Software’s John-Erich Mantius, Director of International Sales, believes the company has a compelling offering for resellers. He explained that the products are “built from the ground up” without using legacy software and are nothing like the “bloatware” produced by the larger security companies. This is achieved by using the same code base for the anti-virus and anti-spam offerings, which makes it lighter and less intrusive than other security products, as proven by CertLabs in its Antivirus Performance Test, Mantius explained. It is also easy to deploy and manage, and Mantius said it has a very attractive price point and reseller margins.

“The channel should be sharing in the value of the product,” explained Mantius, when referring to the double-digit margins available to resellers. “I can’t over-emphasise the channel margins,” he reiterated.

Paul Leslie, Business Development Manager of Soft Solutions, said that for resellers the Sunbelt product is “a value proposition: the cost of purchase and the cost of ownership are low”. Indeed, he said that for the same price as renewing the licence on a competitor’s software, you could replace that old software with a Sunbelt product.