Mitsui signs as Japanese distributor of SMX cloud-based email security service

Mitsui Group has signed as a reseller and distributor of New Zealand’s SMX cloud-based email security solution.

SMX’s vice president of global sales, Tiaan Blaauw, says Mitsui’s specialist IT security division, Mitsui Bussan Secure Directions Inc (MBSD), will distribute and resell the SMX Cloud Email Security Suite to large corporate customers including ISPs (Internet Service Providers) across Japan.

“We anticipate that Mitsui will be a key partner for us in the Japanese market,” Blaauw says. “Mitsui Bussan Secure Directions is the email security market leader in Japan and has been a consistent innovator in bringing new security products and services to the Japanese market.

“Acting as an SMX distributor, MBSD will sell SMX into its well established reseller network. MBSD will also sell SMX directly to its large corporate customers. The agreement also allows SMX to continue to contract directly with the reseller community in Japan.”

Junji Tanabe, general manager of Mitsui Bussan Secure Directions, says the selection of SMX is strategic for MBSD as large Japanese companies, including large Internet Service Providers, consider the cost benefits of moving their email security to the cloud.

“We selected SMX as our cloud email security solution after a rigorous evaluation process,” Tanabe says. “SMX has very high email filtering accuracy and is already proven in the Japanese market. SMX is very fast and easy to implement. And SMX is very scalable so we can handle an unlimited number of customers by simply adding additional racks in the datacenter.

“Most important for Japan, SMX filters email in Japan rather than requiring email to be filtered in an offshore datacenter. This is a very important security consideration for Japanese companies,” Tanabe says.

SMX’s country manager in Japan, James Porteous, says the effects of the tsunami in Japan – when, despite massive business disruption, no local data centers went down – has stimulated a shift in Japanese acceptance of the cloud computing model.

He says the "in country"mail filtering which SMX offers continues to be a major factor in the growth of SMX in Japan market. Local hosting and local support, he says, were important factors in SMX’s reseller deal last year with Japanese internet hosting company Ride, immediately adding 40,000 users at 7,000 Ride customers around Japan and adding significantly to SMX’s momentum in the Japanese market.

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