PrintIT Reseller - issue 66

PRINT IT RESELLER.UK EMAIL SECURITY 33 Xift is different. It’s stripped back to just the features that businesses really need – security, continuity and archive PITR: You said Xift is different – can you explain how? PG: The channel needs a new solution. The email security market is mature and has become stagnant. There is a lot of legacy technology that isn’t delivering value for money and hasn’t changed to reflect the move businesses are making to Office 365. Vendors have been increasing prices rather than delivering value for money. Every time a customer renews its contract, they’re introduced to new add-ons and greater cost. The result is bloatware and expensive products that don’t deliver value. Archive prices, in particular should be falling in line with reductions in cloud storage costs, but they haven’t. And what most frustrates customers is that they are being held hostage by exorbitant archive- extraction costs and feel locked-in. Partners selling email security products have been suffering. They lose margin when contracts are re-signed so get trapped in a cycle of being forced to upsell new features in order to maintain revenue. Really, their customers just want to reduce email security costs. Xift is different. It’s stripped back to just the features that businesses really need – security, continuity and archive. Xift has been designed around and built in the cloud from day one. We leverage all that the cloud has to offer in terms of processing, storage, resilience and scalability. That meant that we have been able to focus on the software rather than the infrastructure. We have no technical debt and this means that we have been able to offer more for less from day one. We’re here to disrupt the market with a seriously affordable product at less than half the price of the competition. We’re offering consistent margin for the lifetime of the customer and a solution fit for the new world of email. Our pricing is aggressive to help displace incumbent solutions, or to include as an add-on with every email mailbox sold. We offer, anti-spam, anti- virus, unlimited archiving and business continuity at roughly a third of the price of our nearest competitor. But we are not stopping there, we are building new core functionality at no additional cost. We have one or two roadmap items that will need to be chargeable, but the majority of what we are developing will be at no further cost. That means our resellers can give their customers more for no increase in their monthly bill. The second and probably most important difference is that we don’t have any import charges or export charges from our platform. Some of our competitors make it virtually impossible for customers to leave their platform, charging exorbitant migration fees to get data out should you want to leave. We have always believed and always will that your data belongs to you and we will not hold it to ransom should you want to leave us for any reason. Extracting your data from Xift is easy and free. PITR: With regards to the UK channel, what have you been focusing on over the past year or so? PG: Xift is 100% channel-focussed, delivering a consistent, predictable and high-margin security service. We have a very close relationship with Westcoast, the UK’s largest distributor for Microsoft Office 365 and we have been working closely with them and their partners to introduce Xift into the UK market. PITR: What type of companies are you looking to work more with in the near future? PG: We have always wanted to work with companies like us. Forward-thinking companies who understand the need for resilience and security and want to help their customers leverage key data assets in a more beneficial way. Archives have been traditionally benign storage pools, kept because there is a regulatory, compliance or legal necessity to do so. Xift wants to change that. We believe that data archives contain the corporate memory, the entire learning of a business, its clients, employees, suppliers, communications plans etc. We’re building a platform that allows businesses of all sizes to draw insight and make use of their corporate memory to make better decisions whilst protecting them from the growing cyber threat. PITR: What do you have planned for the rest of the year and beyond? PG: Well we have a very exciting year ahead planned. Imminently, we’re releasing our new legal and compliance functionality, integration with more of the O365 suite, new dashboards and a new UI. Beyond that I can’t say too much yet other than that we are looking at leveraging new and emerging technologies to give users much more control, insight and security around all of their cloud assets in Office 365. It’s fair to say we have only just started our ambitious plans to turn the traditional email security market on its head within three years! https://xift.com