In many portions of the cybersecurity market, MDR (managed detection and response) providers increasingly compete with traditional MSSPs (managed security services providers).
But that's not the case for FireEye, CEO Kevin Mandia asserts. "We are not really a replacement for an MSSP with our managed detection and response," he said during the company's earnings call on Wednesday, February 6, 2019. "When you look at MSSPs, they do staff augmentation; they manage other people's software. We don't do that."
Expanding on that point, FireEye Helix over time increasingly will be built for MSSPs, and it will be designed as a federated service, Mandia indicated. Helix is a cloud-hosted security operations platform that allows organizations to take control of any incident from alert to fix, FireEye has previously asserted.
FireEye Helix is not to be confused with traditional SIEM (security information and event management). "We are not going to manage SIEM," Mandia said. "That’s what MSSPs do. What we do is we find if something bad is happening and we ask if people want us to fix it."
FireEye Channel Partners
On the channel partner and customer fronts, FireEye's simplified pricing (rolled out in 2018) and packaging continues to gain momentum, according to Frank Verdecanna.
The company this past quarter saw a record number of customers coming from the channel, sourced from the channel, Verdecanna added. That included an uptick in the midmarket, where new customer logos were frequently sourced by the channel, Verdecanna asserted.
FireEye Financial Results
FireEye's revenues were $218 million in Q4 2018, up 6 percent from Q4 2017. Also, the company's recurring subscriptions and support billings increased more than 20 percent in Q4.
Still, FireEye provided a slightly weaker-than-expected financial forecast for 2019, causing the company's stock to fall about 7 percent in after hours trading on February 6.
