Kaspersky finally warms to the Australian climate

The prospect of dealing with foreign, specifically European, security firms can send a shiver down the spine of many Australian resellers. With strong offerings available from language-compatible countries such as the UK and the US, not to mention homegrown developments, why should we leave our safety zone? Especially when it comes to IT security measures.

This is a question Russian anti-virus vendor Kaspersky will need to answer as it launches its first-ever Australian office later this year. Many resellers will be familiar with the firm and may already be sourcing Kaspersky products from its various Australian distributors. Kaspersky has in fact been selling to the Australian market for nearly a decade, but only now have plans for the local office been announced. A regional office is a vital component for any international vendor, especially one suffering from both language and time-zone disparity.

A decade is also the time its global partner conference has been running for. Hence CRN was surprised to be invited to Russia’s picturesque former capital of St. Petersburg for the conference’s 10th outing last month.

Spoilt by Australia’s temperate climate, CRN was even further surprised to be greeted by a pleasing Russian climate and an equally toasty welcome from our counterparts from the behind the iron curtain. Someone had reason to impress.

“We want a partner community in every territory,” said the vendor’s charismatic founder, Eugene Kaspersky, a man highly respected in his homeland as self-made and one of Russia’s finest entrepreneurs. “We want to have this presence to offer local marketing, a sales team to support the partner network and provide technical support. We are against direct deals.

“We plan to open the Australian office in Q4 calendar year. We have plans to be closer to our customers around the globe, so alongside the Australian office we are opening offices in Latin America and Middle East countries to be ready for the global contracts. Our strategy is still partner-based and our new offices are not replacements for our partners, they will help the partners.”

Kaspersky was also keen to predict what the anti-virus landscape would hold in years to come, with operating systems a clear focal point.

“Modern operating systems are flexible, but insecure. It is the customers who determine operating system design and they choose flexible over security. Secure operating systems are unlikely to emerge in the next decade.”

He stressed that in the future all operating systems will reach the limit of their functionality and will be hugely similar to each other. Next on Kaspersky’s prediction list was the rising concern around so-called ‘e-terrorism’, with attacks likely to rise. “There will be armies of cybercriminals and e-terrorists and no real solutions from governments,” he warned.

Offering a local perspective on the vendor’s vision for the market, Alexey Gromyko, business development manager for A/NZ at Kaspersky, said: “It is important for us that we are not planning to do any direct things as we value our channel. The next step we are going to implement is having a local presence [in Australia]. This will support our channel and protect our channel. We want to give our partners the expertise and we will have a dedicated AV (anti-virus) expert for Australia. For all the deals for our business customers, we are going to go through the channel. We have longstanding partnerships with companies such as Micro. Recently we have gained more brand awareness and partnerships, including working with WhiteGold. We are a channel-orientated company.”

When seeking additional Australian partnerships, Gromyko said Kaspersky is looking for vertically segmented partnerships with no overlapping.

“It is very important that we show that we have local resources and we are able to support the deals that our customers make. We are not the type of company that will always be changing our partners and we are building long relationships,” he said.

“We are currently finalising our decision on whether the office will be in Melbourne or Sydney. There are different options for both of the locations and within the next month we will have a decision. We are creating this office to support our channel. We need to give more information flow to our business customers and increase awareness of the security issues which will affect businesses.”

Gromyko said Kaspersky is now preparing for the jump into the enterprise segment. It is changing its approach to the segment with new products, which will be “even better and more flexible”.

“We have been very successful in consumer space, next we will be very successful in corporate,” he said. “We understand that the reseller is happy when the margin is good. Resellers understand the importance of a good product which comes with good support and demanded generation. We also understand this. Australian customers are willing to pay for a high level of service. This is why we realise that we need to develop high-quality local support for each of the chains of the service delivery,” added Gromyko.

Harry Cheung, managing director of Kaspersky Asia-Pacific, said the firm already has its Asian research centre up-and-running in Beijing. Cheung confirmed that a virus lab is likely in Australia, possibly next year or in 2010.

“At the moment we have around fourth or fifth position in Australia, as players such as Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee have been in Australia for so long. However we are really rising in terms of licenses sold in Australia.”

Cheung said Kaspersky may use a similar tactic in the Australian market as what was successful in China where it targeted the education market first and gave schools six-month licenses as a trial and then gained the business at the end of the trial.

“In China we also teamed up with some ISPs and email account providers. We do not have a huge marketing and advertising fund. So in China we found a very big email provider happy to use our product and every time a user opened an email they saw it had been scanned by Kaspersky. Then millions of people saw our logo every day and alongside the education tactic, we picked up more business. I think we may use a similar strategy in Australia,” said Cheung.

Dominic Whitehand, managing director of WhiteGold Solutions, said the distributor is finding the most success for the Kaspersky offering in the 100-1000 user segments across all markets and verticals.

“We are hoping that the new Kaspersky office will give stability of support for channel partners and create more trust and confidence in the brand. Also, with a marketing resource planned we hope to see a drastic increase in awareness of the Kaspersky brand. We will be fully qualified to train the channel on Kaspersky products and will work closely with Kaspersky to increase the numbers of quality, proactive resellers in the local channel.”

Whitehand said the feedback the distributor has received from resellers is that the Kaspersky offering is not only comparable to the more well-known brands locally, but that it is in fact superior on many fronts.

“It’s interesting to note that in the UK, Kaspersky is second only to McAfee in consumer and SME markets. This is testament to the quality of the products and our resellers are seeing the fruits of positioning the Kaspersky solutions to their end-user customers,”
added Whitehand.

Kaspersky has gained a strong reputation with those in the know about solid anti-virus offerings. It is known as the choice of the security geek. Strong growth across Europe and America in the consumer space has been the firm’s reward. Its latest plans in the corporate and APAC markets will test its expansion and brand building skills. It has the advantage of loyal and existing Australian partners, alongside a sizable Russian coffer to get business rolling. Potential still needs to be executed, but if strong sales in the US are any indication, we will be hearing a lot more from the Russians.