F-Secure offers security solutions over cloud to SMEs

Finnish company F-Secure Corporation is looking at small and medium enterprises (SME) in India for its security software solutions as a service, a top official of its Indian subsidiary said.

He said the company would offer its security solutions on software as service (SaaS) model to SMEs based on cloud platform. It is also tying up with mobile phone retail chains to bundle its security solutions with the handsets.

"The overall computer security market in India is estimated at around $150 million of which the share of SaaS would be around $20 million," Amit Nath, country manager-India and SAARC, told IANS here.

He said SMEs generally do not have a person for specifically to look after its computer systems and SaaS is ideal for them as they will be paying based on their usage sans hardware investments.

According to Nath, the security solutions would be provided through F-Secure's data centres.

"In India, SMEs are now moving towards cloud based computing as it is less expensive and hassle free," he said.

As reaching out to the SMEs across the country is a challenge, F-Secure is appointing distributors across the country who in turn would have sub-dealers to sell the services.

"In India, we have been focussing on the telecom operators for our solutions and now we are looking at SMEs," Paul Palmer, vice president, Asia-Pacific, Customer Market and Operations, told IANS.

He said F-Secure is offering its solutions as cloud based SaaS in India, Germany, France, US and the UK.

"The pricing will be flexible and the SMEs need not invest in infrastructure. The offering will be scalable," he added.

Meanwhile, F-Secure is in talks with leading mobile phones retail chains to bundle its mobile security solutions with the handsets.

Not willing to share the retail chain's name, Nath said the mobile phone retail company owns around 350 outlets.