SafeNet's New Technology Enables SIs And SPs To Implement The Business Models

Considering the changing customer demand due to the impact of market
slowdown, Gupta insists on implementing solution that are cost efficient and
ensures higher ROI. excerpts from the interview

Brief us about SafeNets solution offerings.

SafeNet provides solutions that cater to the needs of small as well as medium
businesses while scaling up the performance and volume needs of large
enterprises. SafeNet's Sentinel Software Rights Management technology is used by
start-ups as well as the medium sized business all the way up to multi-billion
dollar enterprises. The architectural strength of SafeNet's Sentinel Software
Rights Management technology is to scale up and cater to the needs of variety of
customer segments.

Organizations investing in Sentinel SRM technology can be assured of the long
term RoI of their investment. They don't have to invest their efforts in finding
new solutions or implementing new solutions as the investment that they made in
the SafeNet SRM technology will continue catering to their needs.

During the recession period, what all changes have you observed in the
customer's demand.

Economic downturn has brought forth challenges for organizations
necessitating conservation of cash. That has made them look for ways to look for
efficiencies — including how they spend on the software/systems that they need.
Amongst many other things they would like to:

• Pay for 'concurrent' licenses rather than buying 'seat' licenses to ensure
  higher utilization factor
• 'pay as per usage' rather than paying upfront
• get the assured access to the latest version of the software and not
  having to go through the complex cycles of software upgrades and deployments
  at their sites — something that is enabled through 'SaaS' model

SafeNet's Sentinel SRM technology enables system integrators and system
providers to implement the business models in order to meet their customer
demands.

Do you see SaaS gaining acceptance in the market? What are the challenges
involved at the deployment level?

I am confident of SaaS emerging as a widely accepted model in the market. As
is the case with any technology and product, there is an adaptation life-cycle
that the market has to go through. At the moment there are competing needs on
the minds of customer base. On one hand, there are needs to manage the cash
flow, avoiding expense on software deployment and upgrade cycles, access to
latest versions etc. while on the other hand there is anxiety about access to
application and data on 24x7 basis, performance in an interconnected
environment, security of corporate data residing on offsite servers (residing at
SaaS providers' end) and compliance to regulatory framework.

Tell us about your current distribution model?

SafeNet's Software Rights Management products are available directly from
SafeNet as well as through our solution partners and distribution partners. We
continue to look for expansion of the distribution model, going forward with the
intent to expand our reach in the market as well as facilitating the options to
our customer base that they are comfortable with.

What are the major challenges that you see in the network security area?

Networks are no long constrained to the physical boundaries of
organizations. It is the need of the day to evolve strategies for protecting the
data rather than protecting the network, the latter has turned out to be one
part of the former.

Amrita Tejasvi

amritat@cybermedia.co.in