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Probrand, a digital VAR providing managed services to over 3,500 SMBs, has been chosen as Kaspersky Lab’s 2017 Partner of the Year. The award recognises Probrand’s impressive first half results within the Kaspersky Lab Partner Program, which provides a world-class ecosystem of tools, incentives and support to help partners stand out in today’s competitive cybersecurity industry.
The Kaspersky Lab Partner Program has been designed with partners’ needs in mind, giving them easy access to the resources they need to work more efficiently and boost their earnings – one of their largest UK resellers generates an average 29 per cent profit margin through the program. Offering discounts and support through Kaspersky Lab’s comprehensive partner team, as well as investment through lucrative deal registration and incentive offerings (including Ferrari driving experiences and Formula One racing tickets), the program extends across the globe to over 3,500 clients.
“Probrand were chosen as Partner of the Year based on their commitment and backend development; the company is fully skilled to provide end to end professional and support services around Kaspersky Lab solutions. It also has a unique online marketplace, which is creating net new business for Kaspersky Lab, both the public and private sectors,” commented Russ Madley, head of channel at Kaspersky Lab.
“Being part of Kaspersky Lab’s partner program gives us so many benefits, from training and support to discounts and incentives, which helps us work better and improve our profits. Kaspersky Lab is central to our managed offering for customers, and it’s clear that it lives up to their mission to save the world! It’s an extremely enjoyable company to work with and it offers first-rate products – and being part of their partner program makes it easier to stand out in today’s competitive industry. We’re proud to be Kaspersky Lab’s Partner of the Year and we look forward to working with them for years to come,” comments Ian Nethercot, supply chain director at Probrand.
As well as making constant updates to their partner program – adding more training and incentives this year – to improve the experience for partner firms overall, Kaspersky Lab also has specific initiatives. One of these was the Move to Gold campaign that was specifically designed to on-board new partners and accelerate the right profile of partners to give them Gold partner benefits for a limited time while they gain the correct accreditations and revenues to become full time. This incentive benefited 10 of Kaspersky Lab’s partners who received Gold status.
The year started strong for Kaspersky Lab’s channel business with over 20 partners increasing their growth of Kaspersky Lab sales by over 300 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter. Kaspersky Lab channel market share was also up 26 per cent year-on-year, as of June. Its enterprise figures have also increased, with advance Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business sales up by 40 per cent – marking a shift in customers moving away from basic anti-malware software to a multi-layered approached that includes encryption, application control, vulnerability and path management. This shift in security posture is largely due to this year’s WannaCry and ExPetr attacks, as well as in anticipation of GDPR implementation next year.
