Kaspersky Chiefs: Channel Must Focus on Value Proposition

The security space has gotten its share of press lately, thanks to data breaches ranging from Target’s massive security breach to the Heartbleed Bug vulnerability found in OpenSSL. That means customers are looking even closer at their security measures, and looking harder at whether their solution providers are doing enough to keep them safe.

Jim Sullivan, Kaspersky Lab’s director of Channel Sales for North America, and Leslie Bois, Kaspersky director of North American Channel-National Resellers, got on the horn to discuss Kaspersky’s evolving channel, security’s continued evolution, and how both are being addressed. Read on for some paraphrased thoughts and direct quotes from both.

Let’s start with Kaspersky’s channel. I know there have been some changes in management. Can you discuss?

Sullivan: There have been positive changes that have happened as it relates to the channel. (Former VP of Channel Sales) Chris Doggett is now managing director of North America … it’s good that we have someone managing all North American business who has such a strong interest in the channel. The channel is in Chris’ pedigree, which is a real positive for our channel organization.

In addition, Kaspersky is adding a vice president of Channels, reporting to the senior vice president of Corporate Business. There is an active search going on to fill that position and the interview process for the SVP position is continuing.

What have you noticed in your position about the channel? How is it evolving?

Bois: I have been responsible for LARs (large account resellers) for the last two and a half years. When I came in they had a big presence, but it has evolved a lot. Now I’m noticing the market is extremely competitive — more than it had been. That means we need to be a lot more engaged, our technology has to be stronger than before, and we need to provide our resellers with more education and more coverage.

Sullivan: Our VARs that historically have focused on things like data center networking virtualization are now starting to create security practices. The market is going to grow—endpoint security continues to be popular because the nature of the threat continues to evolve and how it can continue to propagate.

The messaging is changing as well, in the way VARs can differentiate themselves. So many are now offering services and in the case of small business are the IT department. Their ability to go in and be consultative with customers brings a lot of value to the customer. If I’m thinking about what is most important to a VAR, high margins are certainly one of them but it’s also the services opportunity that comes along with security. Not just the presale but the post-sale services as well.

What is Kaspersky doing to help its channel partners in the services space? Does Kaspersky have a security-as-a-service offering?

Sullivan: At this time Kaspersky doesn’t offer a cloud-based solution, but we can work with partners to stand up their own security center and then manage their clients from that. It depends on the business model of the partner.
In trying to enable our partners more—and we don’t want to be in the services business—we are enabling them to deliver the services opportunity for us. We rolled out the Certified Service Provider program for companies that become certified, and these are the partners that we look to farm these services opportunity to. And in an effort to enable and reward them, we have a technical certification incentive program that will offer incremental 10 percent upfront discount for companies that have this certification with us.

What are some of the trends you’re seeing?

Bois: With LARs, the areas of growth we’ve already seen and will continue this year are companies embracing a growth strategy that focuses on third-party software companies. All other partners following suit and adding security practices that are proactive. Cross-selling into virtualization support groups. We will see opportunity from that as well.

Sullivan: VARs are seeing such an increase in competition and seeing much greater focus on the value they are bringing to a customer or prospect. For those focused on new customer acquisition, it is extremely competitive. For those targeting their existing customer base, they are looking for ways to get more wallet share. We’re helping them differentiate through credible solutions—that’s the linchpin of our value proposition.