Kaspersky beefs up margins to boost channel

Internet security vendor Kaspersky Lab will launch an aggressive channel promotion in Australia next month to reward distributors and resellers who help it crack the enterprise market.

Resellers may increase their sales margins by up to 15 per cent, up to a total of $50,000, each for the fourth quarter.

The Russian company will release its first major corporate products in four years in October. Three-years in the making, Endpoint Security 8.0 and Security Centre 9.0 will include a number of improvements.

Among them, a hybrid strategy that combines cloud-based threat intelligence obtained from a 400 million user base with endpoint security that includes white-listing of safe applications and web filtering to block malicious websites and content. Some of these improvements have already been incorporated into its consumer-level packages to match competitive offers.

At the heart of the enterprise push is the fact the new suites are VMware-ready.

The company’s VP technical division, Nathan Wang, said it would allow system administrators to provision and manage the security of virtual machines remotely without the need for third-party virtualisation tools.

Kaspersky anti-virus products are well-known among small and medium businesses in Australia, but until now the company did not have an end-to-end product it felt confident about selling to large enterprises.

“This is the product resellers have been waiting for the last four years to take to the large accounts. We’re moving from anti-malware-only to full security suite,” Suk Ling Suk, corporate sales director, APAC, said.

The company has a policy of only selling through distributors and resellers, although it provides free technical support to end users.

Andrew Mamontis, managing director, Kaspersky Lab ANZ, said local resellers could make up to 45 per cent profit depending on the number of user licenses sold.

“We’re putting more margin into their pockets,” he said.

Dominic Whitehand, managing director of WhiteGold Solutions, one of Kaspersky’s largest corporate product distributors said the deal would be welcomed by resellers.

“Some of the competition products are becoming a bit dated. Having a new product to sell plus the additional margin is a good thing,” Whitehand said.

He said his company sold twice as many Kaspersky licenses in the first half of 2011 than in the previous 12 months.

“The product looks good pre-launch. If it does what it says it does it will be really good.”

Mamontis said he would like 5 per cent of the corporate market in 12 months.

Kaspersky will run certification courses for distributors and resellers in Sydney and Melbourne in September, and partner launches in October.

Its biggest competitor, Symantec, will be demonstrating its Endpoint Security 12 suite in Sydney on Monday [Sep 12].

Lia Timson attended the channel preview of Kaspersky Lab enterprise products in Malaysia as a guest of the company.