Kaspersky’s ANZ channel has seen “increased levels of activity” over the past year thanks to its “well-received” partner program changes.
ANZ managing director Margrith Appleby told CRN there is a renewed vigour in the market following a tumultuous 2018. “We are more visible, and the conversations we have have now shifted from ‘what’s on offer?’ rather than ‘who are you?’.”
The security vendor launched its new global partner program "Kaspersky United" in January 2019, offering partners more financial incentives and the option of adopting specialised IT security solutions and services. As a global channel program, Kaspersky said the core set of tools, services and incentives are available for any partner in any country.
Appleby mentioned a few features of the program that have been popular among the ANZ channel, the introduction of country clusters and solution specialisations.
Kaspersky started giving partners pathways to provide more in-depth knowledge on certain security products so they can offer specialised IT security solutions and services.
New topics for online and in-class technical training courses, hands-on workshops for pre-sales and global partner events were also introduced.
“Not every partner is a cybersecurity specialist, but we’ve seen more partners adopt that specialisation because it drives a higher margin for them,” Appleby said.
On a global scale, Appleby said the introduction of “country clusters” was also another well-received change, where markets are measured on the size of available market and maturity of the market, rather than using a tiered structure.
“The tiered structure to me has an ‘elitist’ connotation, whereas the new structure is about the size of opportunity for a partner in a particular market,” Appleby said.
“What that effectively means for a Kaspersky partner is the threshold required for a smaller market opportunity country, by default, are smaller than a partner operating in larger opportunity countries.”
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