Kaspersky reappoints ComGuard for large customers

Kaspersky has formally terminated its partnership agreement with two of its distributors, including iValue and Techmatics.

After a gap of almost two years, Kaspersky Lab has reappointed, ComGuard, one of the largest Middle East based distributors, as its VAD for distributing enterprise range of security solutions catering to the mid sized and large customers in India, wherein its two existing distributors including Sea Infonet and Ecaps will continue to remain its national distributors.

Commenting on the realignment with ComGuard for second time, Altaf Halde, MD, South Asia, Kaspersky Lab India, said, "Yes, we have parted away from direct partnership with iValue and Techmatics. As both the distributors were not able to maximize their investment, time and effort to meet our targets. Hence as ComGuard coming in, we have divided our numbers of licenses as per target customer account."

As per the current distribution structure - Sea Infonet and Ecaps will be working for customers, who have a need for licenses for 10-500 users. For 500-1000 users, Comguard along with other two national distributors for enterprise -Sea Infonet and Ecaps, will be responsible, wherein ComGuard will exclusively target customers accounts that are 1000+ users.

For Kaspersky Lab, the retail business contributes 75% of revenues and the remaining comes from enterprise. As company claims that it has already achieved #1 position in consumer business, now the focus is to strengthen its small and large enterprise business. Already, ComGurad, is one of the biggest distributors for Kaspersky Lab, in Middle East, with large customer base and state of the art training facility in Dubai. Also, for last couple of years, ComGuard has been on a growth spree in India, with the company representing close to 10 global brands in the country. The distributor is also planning to start out its first toll free service in Mumbai, in next two months and remote log- in for its Dubai POC for its local partners.

Speaking on the sideline of the partnership, Ajay Singh Chauhan, CEO, Spectrum Group said, "Currently, we have 20-30 enterprise partners, all our partners will be working for Kaspersky. To begin our sales in India for Kaspersky, our prime focus is to first educate our large customers on cyber security. We have been providing training to Mumbai and Delhi police. Firstly we would target on lead generation and POC."

Talking about the realignment with Kaspersky, Chauhan said, "During 2011-12, Kaspersky was not ready with the products catering to large customers, Kaspersky was consolidating its SMB business footprint in India, and SMB was not a core focus area of ComGuard, our focus is acquiring large key customers accounts, and therefore our realignment is a strategic business decision that has come at the right time."

As part of second inning, ComGuard will focus on new suite of offerings, including Kaspersky security for virtualization, security for mobile, systems management, anti-malware, security for mail server and many more segments. Halde also highlighted, "Globally, our lot of focus is on strengthening our enterprise business in terms of investment, people and products offerings. As of now, in India we are not able to grow bigger and better, we have close to 5% marketshare in last two year of our enterprise domain. The other area is our mobile security business. So far, we have not been able to tie-up with large telcos."

For Kaspersky enterprise business has close to 800 registered partners and 300 active, of which 50 partners are very active. The company wants to first integrate its 50 partners with ComGurad partners for tapping the large customers base. Shortly, Kaspersky Lab will also merge its APAC Green Team partner program for enterprise partners with its global partners program.