F-Secure has developed its business operations faster than other listed competitors over eight consecutive quarters.Indeed, in the third quarter, F-Secure's antivirus and intrusion prevention revenues increased by 44% to 15.2m euro. Fastest growth was witnessed by sales aimed at service providers and by consumer business operations. The company's net profit rose to three million euro, which was 19% of the revenue.
The company has implemented its strategy towards a philosophy of service-centric data security by launching its Security as a Service solutions to small businesses and corporate segments. In the consumer sector, the company has offered Security as a Service already for years in cooperation with service providers. The F-Secure Service Platform products take into consideration the differing business models and needs of service providers. Five different platforms exist for large companies, small companies, consumers, gateway usage and mobile phones. Partners include companies in the system management and outsourced services areas, Internet Service Providers as well as other types of service provider.
The achievement of healthy growth figures has been a great help to the company's leading technical position. According to independent comparative tests (source AV-Test.org) F-Secure has repeatedly beaten its most significant competitors in its speed of data security updates with times ranging from less than 2.5 hours to as much as ten hours. The speed of updates has great significance in the reliability of protection offered and speed is an important prerequisite to data security. Quickly made and efficiently delivered updates are another reason for high customer satisfaction.
Another example of F-Secure's technical leadership is the remarkable success of its products. In the second quarter, F-Secure published a new product aimed at corporate business, F-Secure Anti-Virus Client Security 6.0 which combines integrated antispyware, protection against adware, hackers, viruses, worms, keylogging, code changes and zero day attacks.
On the consumer side, the most important product launches in the third quarter were F-Secure Anti-Virus 2006 and F-Secure Internet Security 2006, which offer all-in-one data security solutions. These include anti virus, integrated antispyware, rootkit recognition, a personal firewall, spam filtering and parental control. These products have been well received by the trade press and have exceeded the ratings given to the corresponding products of 2005. Leading American IT trade publication, Infoworld tested a number of antispyware programs in its September 19-published edition. F-Secure Client Security 6.0 was the only product to receive the grade 'excellent' with the greatest number of possible points and significant differences from its corresponding product competitor.
Company President and CEO, Risto Siilasmaa said: "During the third quarter, we forged 13 partnership deals with service providers. At the moment we have altogether 74 business partners and we are the clear market leader in Europe. Our growth in North America in this segment has also been particularly strong. We are placing more emphasis on a strategy of growth over short term profits for which reason we are investing in new sales and marketing activities as well as notable new development efforts and new projects.
The company continues in its strong creation of partnerships in all service areas and the corporation has good prospects in being able to exploit data security as a service trends in its comprehensive and leading product range. F-Secure continues to strengthen its position among service providers in Europe, North America and Asia.
Author: Mark Woods, Corporate Communicator
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