VIPRE has consolidated its business portfolio into a single full-featured offering, at a rock bottom price for 250 seats and over. It’s part of a broad strategy to expand the traditionally sub-250 seat-focused vendor upmarket.

Today, security software vendor VIPRE is reshaping its business portfolio with the launch of VIPRE Advanced Security for Business. The new offering consolidates the multiple items in VIPRE’s portfolio into a single solution, which provides comprehensive protection for endpoints, email, and anti-phishing for as low as $12 per seat annually.

VIPRE is engaged in a major transformation, which in addition to the reshaping of its portfolio, saw it significantly restructure its partner program in early February. Even the emphasis on the VIPRE name itself is new. VIPRE is, in theory, a brand of ThreatTrack, but has in effect become the master brand.

“We are transitioning to product-first messaging, which is resulting in VIPRE becoming dominant, said Jason Greenwood, chief revenue officer for ThreatTrack. “Even older ThreatTrack products will be branded VIPRE over time.”

Greenwood emphasized that a simplified product line makes more sense for today’s market, on several levels.

“What we have seen in our space, especially around endpoint security, is a significant increase in complexity over time,” he said. “We have done this ourselves as well, and have had multiple endpoint products. What we have decided to do is really simplify it for the market, to provide one solution. That’s all they need. It frees them from having to pick and choose. We now offer one product, which is our best product. Today, the threat landscape is very complex and demands you have the best product. You can’t have mediocre coverage to try and save a few bucks in today’s environment.”

Customers benefit by the lower pricing. With a minimum purchase of 250 seats, VIPRE Advanced Security is priced at $12 annually per seat, compared to what VIPRE says is an industry average of $25 – $81 per seat, with the higher prices the result of multiple products.

“In addition to the comprehensive protection, we have invested tremendously in advanced malware detection, machine learning and heuristics to keep up with sophisticated modern threats,” Greenwood said. “This will make the difference going forward for our customers.”

So with less revenue coming in per customer, how does VIPRE plan not only to get the same revenues as before, but a lot more of them? The key here is they think the new offering will be more attractive to customers upmarket from their traditional sweet spot.

“As we sell entirely through the channel, our strategy is how do we best help our partners grow and get bigger deals,” Greenwood said. “To date, we have focused on the lower part of the SMB, at 250 seats and below. What we are adding here is the ability to go upmarket for partners. At this price point, the savings in those 250 plus deals makes sales more likely, and is appealing to partners. The simplification of the product line, and including all the features in the one package, is also something partners will like.”

This focus on opening up new markets dovetails with changes to the partner program announced last month, which increases rewards for new business.

“Combined with our new partner program, where partners can earn 50 per cent margin on new business, this becomes a very compelling proposition,” Greenwood said. “The program is now very simple: partners get a 25 per cent margin on new business and an additional 25 per cent for deal registration. They then get 25 per cent on renewal. They also aren’t required to get additional training to get these additional discounts.”

While VIPRE has a large partner channel, the push upmarket has them on the hunt for partners who are strong in the upper SMB and midmarket.

“We definitely have partners now that can sell bigger deals, but a key component of our growth strategy for this year is to add new partners who are strong in these areas,” Greenwood said. “That’s why we created the new partner program – to attract these new partners to the program.”