Good afternoon from Las Vegas. Just settling in for the closing session of McAfee’s Partner Summit here at Focus.

Thurber describes today’s DeepSafe announcements as “a gamechanger.” “It’s nothing less than an inflection point. Mark your calendars for October 18th, because today is a dawn in the new era of security.”

Reviewing the events of the last day and a half so far, including the social events and the big partner party at TAO last night.

“Yesterday was about opportunity and acceleration,” Thurber says. “This afternoon, the theme is around empowerment.” It’s the “how” after the “why and what” yesterday.

Security in mobile is “a massive growth opportunity,” Thurber says. Mobility, cloud and data centre are taking the TAM for McAfee from $13 billion last year to $23 bilion by 2015. “Think about how much opportunity we have to not just grow with the market, but to take market share going foward.” But to do that, McAfee has to help partners adapt, he says.

“We in this room are responsible for 80 per cent of McAfee’s revenues,” Thurber says — 30+ per cent from Elite partner alone.

“Programs, enablement and incentives have all grown year over year,” Thurber tells partners.

“We’re really focused on driving mutual profitability, and we’re going to do that by investing in you, gorwing with you, and optimizing for you. And the result of that is profit.”

Thurber says McAfee has just completed the largest investment in the channel in McAfee’s history, “confirmed Intel’s commitment to us, and Intel’s commitment to you.”

Detailing the deal registration changes made in August. You remember that, right?

Moving onto talking about ACE — the Acredited Channel Engineer program, which is now generally available around the world. “This is not easy,” requires case work, testing, and a proof of concept in the real world with a customer.

“By this time next year, I think every Elite partner should have at least one ACE on staff.”

ACE benefits include visibility with McAfee’s sales team, exclusive support and resources, and doubled benefits under the McAfee Rewards program.

Shifting to talk about post-sales and support — McAfee revenues have doubled from 2006 to 2010, and “we need to figure out how to scale our support organization.” Thurber says the company isn’t going to scale internally, so turning to channel through the McAfee Authorized Support Provider program.

Eight pilot partners have seen a 43 per cent incerease in bookings, Thurber says. The MASP program will be rolled out worldwide, to Elite partners first.

“Think about the competitive advantages this brings you.” Both increased margins and customer retention by getting closer to existing customers.

“I am a huge believer in innovation,” Thuber says, expects his staff to take chances, and to be wrong sometimes, because it’s the only way to make sure the chances being taken are bold enough.

Last year’s Intel R&D spend was $7 billion. “And by the way, as an aside, that’s more than Symantec’s entire revenues.”

Thurber talking about the partner opportunities around the DeepSafe products introduced earlier today, in particularly the managed service opportunities around the desktop with DeepCommand + eP — save customers energy money by shutting down their PCs based on policy.

“We’re going to have a very deliberate” go to market around the DeepSafe products, he says. Will work with partners jointly around DeepCommand to protect incumbency and to learn more about the product in the real world.

DeepDefender will ship later this year or early next year, “and initially we want to be involved in all of those deals” to understand how it works. Those restrictions will be loosened over the course of 2012, Thurber says.

On to channel program, talking about security as a service, dating back to the MXlogic acquisition.

Thurber introduces a SaaS Monthly specialization within the partner program. “I know just how important SaaS is to your business model, especially when you’re looking at SMB,” he says.

Sounds like the SaaS program will be US-only at first, working with two of the company’s distributors. Rollout in EMEA and APAC later. I’ll ask Thurber after this session when it will come to Canada.

Talking about segmentation within the channel — leading to the SMB specialization rollout earlier this year — more than 1,000 partners worldwide in the program so far.

“[SMB] is a great market, and it’s one you should all be looking at. There’s no clear leader, so the opportunitiy is tremendous.”

Thurber says McAfee has been working on ways to help partners sell at a solutions level — the Security Connected Framework, a playbook and guides and a variety of solutions for top opportunities like consumerization of IT.

“The biggest upside of teh growth opportunities is in alternative deliver models,” Thurber says — anaged security services a $17 billion opportunity growing at 17.5 per cent. “I have challenged our team to double our managed security business over the next 12 months.”

Thurber introduces Managed Services Provider Program — the first expansion of the program outside of resale. Two levels — Elite and Premier.

“The requirements are a bit higher than just traditional resale,” Thurber says — joint business plan, bookings minimum and training requirements to get into MSSP program.

Shifting now to the final topic — optimization: making it easier to do busines with McAfee.

Detailing the new, unified e-learing program, based on continuing education credits earned throughout the year. “It drove me crazy that we would be pulling your resources out of the field simply to repeart the certiications they already had.” Under new program, get trained on new aspects as they come out and away you go.

As part of shift in program every partner certification renewals for 2012 have been cleared through to 2013.

“Many surveys of channel partners say that engagement, relationship management, is truly crucial.”

Thurber’s engagement priorities: work on relationships with partners rather than transactions, get parnters inolved early — “no second calls without a partner” in most situations, and prioritize partners who are investing in McAfee. “We will prioritize those who have committed to us. We are committed to driving this into the sales DNA.”

“I think the number-one channel issue is communications,” he says. So much to communicate to parnters — to ease that, reinstating Global Town Hall Meetings with parnters and moving them from audio-only to video.

“I am committed to a complete overhaul of the McAfee partner portal before Partner Summit next year,” he says — communicating to parnters what they want to hear. “This will be in place by next October.”

“If you follow me on Twitter, I personally guarnatee that no message will be longer than 140 characters,” Thurber quips.

And with that, Thurber wraps up his session, and we’re wrapping up this liveblog. Thanks for joining us this afternoon!