MXLogic Eases Partners Into Pricing Changes
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"More important than the details of the bundles
themselves, given the recent channel turmoil with Google, is to show that we’re
taking a much more partner-friendly approach to introducing changes by engaging
with partners first," the MXLogic spokesperson said.
The alternative would be to announce the bundles
simultaneously to partners and customers, or to announce to the channel first
but without sufficient time to familiarize themselves with the new products,
which creates a "blindside" scenario that MXLogic partner South Seas Solutions
vice president of sales Paul Herbka says he's all too familiar with.
"That has happened to us before with other vendors,
honestly," Herbka says. "We want vendor partners who work with us, to
keep us abreast of changes and let us know so our customers aren't reading
about offerings or changes and asking us about them and we're blindsided!"
One of the biggest changes introduced with the three new
bundles is a cost reduction. The
Complete Security bundle is available for $7.70 per user per month; the E-mail
Security & Archiving bundle is $5.75 per user per month and the E-mail and
Web Security bundle is $2.82 per user per month.
When Google announced it was cutting prices on its Powered
by Postini e-mail and Web security services, it caused an uproar among Postini channel partners. But the issue wasn't as much about pricing as it was about the way
the changes were communicated to partners.
Presley says MXLogic's flexibility and advance notice gave him the
opportunity to explore and analyze how the pricing changes would affect him and
his customers.
"It's a really nominal fee to get a tremendous amount
of protection. We appreciated the opportunity
to examine how this would affect our margins first, and explore different
options as to what services we can or can't provide on top of these
offerings," he says.
Herbka predicts the new bundles will be popular with customers. The
bundles add more services and additional layers of protection that his
customers had been asking him for, and MXLogic allows him to migrate customers
to the new services at his own pace rather than forcing customers to upgrade if
they weren't ready, he says.
"I think most of our customers will switch, but some
will stay, at least until their next budgeting cycle," Herbka says, adding that lower cost is a huge motivator
both for encouraging current customers to upgrade as well as attracting new
business. But what he most appreciates is MXLogic's effort to communicate
openly and to remain flexible.
"They thought of the channel first, and that's huge for
us. They communicated with the channel
first, made sure we had all the information, and had all our questions answered
before they talked to the end users," he says.
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