Kaspersky hits the road with new channel program

The North American arm of Kaspersky Lab has put forth a new strategy for channel partners that involves the security vendor coming to solution providers – basically door-to-door.

The Russian-founded Kaspersky has always maintained a 100 per cent channel friendly go-to-market strategy as well as a major channel conference usually held in the Caribbean or in Miami. But this year, Kaspersky has opted to travel to where the channel partners are.

The company will host regional events called Kaspersky Lab Partner Summits in no less than six cities this year. They include events in Dallas, Chicago, San Diego, Miami, Minneapolis and Boston. CDN has reached out to Kaspersky to inquire if there will be a Partner Summit in Canada. The company did say there could be other locations tacked onto this schedule.

Kaspersky is using this multi-city strategy to bring more education to the partners along with tailored sessions. Kaspersky is looking to engage with partners in a more personal way in hopes of driving increased revenue for the partner community. The strategy behind this move is for Kaspersky to expand its sales footprint regionally.

Front and centre to these Partner Summits will be Kaspersky’s new channel program. The company outlined the main framework of the program today that will see the security vendor offering more rewards to solution providers. The company also updated its training module. The new program focuses on four pillars. They are:

  1. Increased regional support;
  2. Advanced rewards and technology offering;
  3. New MSP program offerings; and
  4. Regional Kaspersky Lab Partner Summits.

One thing Kaspersky is doing differently with this program is empowering its partner sales managers to act as a single point of contact for solution provider executives. This will see partner sales managers work on smaller territories. This has been a general criticism of most solution provider entrepreneurs who are not nationwide; not specific to Kaspersky but rather to all hardware and software vendors in the IT industry.

One of the benefits to a more hands on approach by partner sales managers is that they will be able to work closely with solution providers to identify new business opportunities and close more deals.

Kaspersky is also looking to step up its technical certification requirements for the channel. Those who do upgrade their skills will gain more rewards from the security vendor.

Kaspersky introduced its first enterprise specialization called Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack (KATA). This new specialization enables partners to differentiate themselves and earn additional margin on registered, qualified and approved new Kaspersky Lab sales. The company is also adding a specialization for Managed Service Providers (MSP).

The MSP portion of the program will recognize remote monitoring and managing (RMM) platforms from Connectwise and LabTech as an example. This will enable MSPs to manage Kaspersky’s security solutions from a single, centralized console.

Over the years, Kaspersky has worked on developing its enterprise business in an attempt to capture more corporate business with the aim to augment its revenues bases, which is predominately retail.

Most of the channel program details will be made available this April, the company said.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Paolo Del Nibletto
Paolo Del Nibletto
Former editor of Computer Dealer News, covering Canada's IT channel community.

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