Arriving in force on their way north this week were Tracey, Mark and James from Trend Micro. An initial straw-poll revealed that the AMITPRO audience comprised roughly a 40/40/20 mixture of existing Trend resellers, Sophos Parntners and ‘other’ AV vendors respectively. James began by discussing the new ‘threat landscape’ and showing how Trend are adapting to the constant changes in the industry, while Tracey followed with an overview of the partner opportunities and promotions currently available to new and existing resellers. For those who missed out, a full slide deck can be downloaded HERE.

Two of the most notable differences between Trend and the competition are the reseller-friendly Remote Management and the all-inclusive nature of the ‘Worry-free’ package which includes e-mail and web reputation filtering and URL filtering on top of the usual  features. Both of these were demoed by Mark, who also explained some of the technical intricacies of the cloud-based ‘Smart Protection Network’.

Next up, we had Lorna Riddle from DBAM Systems introducing their EP range of WAN optimisation appliances. DBAM are a relative newcomer into the market, but are building up momentum in the channel by working through distributors like Bell Micro and Tekdata. While it was clear that the range is primarily aimed at the enterprise, they do offer a small business sized appliance (EP60), which retails for £995.

After introducing the full range of products (including a virtual appliance), Lorna ran through a few real-world scenarios. Calling upon previous experience, she explained the various acceleration and traffic-shaping features in the appliances, and related the features to common examples often found in multi-site networks.

Thanks to all of our speakers for making the journey up to Birmingham, and watch this space for slides from the DBAM Presentation!

** UPDATE 21/12/2009 ** The full DBAM Presentation can be downloaded from HERE.