SaaS business drives record revenues for Proofpoint

Proofpoint, provider of email security, email archiving and data loss prevention solutions, has reported that revenue for the second quarter of 2009 reached record levels, citing strong adoption among the enterprise of the company’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings.

The firm’s SaaS business more than doubled over Q2 2008, and is now the fastest growing part of its operations. Proofpoint says it also won key healthcare and financial services customers away from Google’s Postini SaaS email security service.

Olly Carter, channel director, EMEA at Proofpoint says the economic downturn has prompted the vendor to encourage its resellers to provide solutions that they can build value-added services such as data leakage audits of end-users and consultancy services.

He explains: “The reseller can carry out a 20-day audit of outbound email to assess the risk of data leakage to the organisation through this medium. In terms of value add, this puts the reseller in a positive light with the customer, provides an understanding of how Proofpoint can address the problems flagged, and moves the opportunity through the sales process in a shorter space of time.”

“There has been a considerable reduction in the amount of projects customers are capable of delivering,” Damian Acklam, CEO at Proofpoint partner Gradian Systems told Channel Pro. “Customers are also demanding more out of solutions they have already implemented. We’re seeing cost cutting and the use of smart technology across the board.
 
“We’ve also witnessed a swing from CapEx to RevEx – customer investment based solely on what is earned by the business. Understandably, this has decreased with the downturn.”