Security and managed services software maker AVG Technologies N.V. today announced significant changes to its partner program, the addition of new distributors, and multiple enhancements to its AVG CloudCare security product.
The partner program changes come in the form of a new partner certification program that measures and rewards resellers based on their investment in employee education rather than sales volume.
“We have built this partner certification program really around training,” says Fred Gerritse, general manager of Amsterdam-based AVG’s business sales and channel organization. “The more you train your people, the higher the certification level.” Partners that qualify for higher certification tiers are eligible for discounted pricing on AVG products.
According to Gerritse, AVG’s revamped certification model also emphasizes topics like cross-selling and up-selling far more than its predecessor did. “In the past, it was more concentrating on the technical piece,” he says. “The very important feedback coming from the partners is that they really like to have sales training as well, so we’ve added that to our overall framework.”
More broadly, Gerritse continues, AVG’s new focus on partner education is aimed at ensuring that the company’s resellers have the skills and expertise they need to close more business by providing consultative, solution-oriented advice to their customers.
In further support of that goal, AVG today said it will be adding new distributors with specialized knowledge of security solutions, vertical industries, and regional market conditions to its partner channel. The company cited CMS Distribution, a value-added distributor with more than 3,000 resellers in the UK and Ireland and deep relationships with roughly 60 vendors, as an example of the kind of company it will be bringing on board this year. According to Gerritse, working with fewer suppliers more closely than bigger, name-brand distis enables CMS to understand those vendors’ products and solutions better and share that greater insight with VARs.
“Sometimes a partner needs to have a little bit more in-depth knowledge about the solution” than larger distributors can provide, he says. AVG plans to forge ties with similar companies in the U.S. and Canada this year.
On the product front, AVG today disclosed that it’s building key features from its AVG AntiVirus offering into AVG CloudCare, a solution that lets partners manage multiple cloud security solutions for multiple clients centrally via a single, unified interface. Beginning next month, CloudCare users will have access to a faster scanning engine, advanced policy settings, and new real-time, machine learning-based threat detection capabilities.
“It [provides] a true analytical look at how threats behave within a specific end point,” says Ryan Vallee, a senior product manager at AVG. “We’ve really expanded upon how deep we go and the analytics that we take into account.”
Today’s news comes some four months after AVG hired Gerritse, formerly managing director of services strategy and operations for Cisco Systems Inc., in a bid to revitalize flagging sales of its software to SMBs. The company plans to release a major update to Managed Workplace, its RMM solution, later this year as well, but declined to specify exact timing for that move.
