Like most of the other anti-spyware vendors, Tenebril is hoping to turn its experience in the consumer space to tackle the enterprise market, a space that the traditional enterprise security vendors are only now turning their attention to.
The company will have its public relations coming-out party today, but it’s hardly been in stealth mode. With a staff of seven, Tenebril built a US retail distribution channel that saw it take in sales of $6m last year, enough to hit profitability, according to Salim.
Now, with $6.5m in venture capital, from a round closed in December, the company has bulked up its staff to 30, drawing on several former Zone employees who left following the company’s integration with Check Point Technologies.
Like its rivals, Tenebril thinks its product, SpyCatcher, has better technology. Unlike the others, Tenebril’s new management thinks it can apply experience gained at Zone, to the spyware space.
The strategy is very similar to Zone Labs, Salim said. Zone built its consumer base, brand and expertise serving the consumer market for personal firewalls, then brought out an enterprise offering with scalability, management and reporting.
We’re planning our enterprise product for the June-July timeframe, Salim said. Tenebril’s new head of marketing Fred Felman, also a Zone alum, added that the product will scale to tens of thousands of users, unlike its existing single-server offering.
Success is by no means assured. Almost every security vendor is bringing out an anti-spyyware product this year, and many of them have longer track records and large installed bases in the enterprise space.
Enterprise buyers will have to decide whether they want another client to install and manage, and a new management console, or whether they will just buy their anti-spyware from their existing antivirus vendor.
It’s not dissimilar to what we were facing at Zone Labs. Symantec is going to be in there, Microsoft has some plans, and McAfee has something there, Salim said.
At first the Tenebril looks like it will rely upon the fact that it has a more mature offering, with hundreds of thousands of current users, and that it is focused purely on the spyware problem, rather than treating it as an evolution of the virus problem.
Symantec etc is viewing it as an extension of the virus problem, and I don’t think that’s the right approach, Salim said. I’m happy to say that it [Symantec’s new product] is one of the worst anti-spyware products on the market.
Microsoft is a different story, however, Salim said. Microsoft bought spyware specialist Giant Software in December, and the beta of its single-desktop offering has already become quite well-regarded.
Many enterprises will be reluctant to buy security software from Microsoft, however, Salim said. In the consumer market it may be different, but in the enterprise there is often still a separation of church and state, Salim said.
