Kaspersky (note that Lab is no longer part of the name) is is going through a lot of change and evolving, says Andy Bogdan (pictured), now head of UK SMB Channel at Kaspersky. His background is in distribution and he wants to use that channel experience and inject it in to Kaspersky. The market is changing, and it aims to embrace a new brand, merging consumer and business to be more dynamic, he says.
“This year has been all about restructuring, with new people in the management. I’ve gone back to basics to create a different sort of leadership. I have regionalised the channel team which had been focused on the south of England. For example, we are about to onboard a northern territory manager.
In particular, he is looking to address the MSP business. “I want Kaspersky to be seen as an enabler for MSPs, working always through the channel and distribution. Globally we are 100% channel and I’m not sure the channel understands that. We want them to be better, and to give them the skills they need. Our job as a vendor to enable partners to become MSPs and get to a point where we are understood. I want to change the perception that we are an 'anti-virus' vendor or ‘that Russian’ vendor. We have over sixty solutions and services and want MSPs to use our tools and resources in what is a very competitive market.”
The only way the channel can grow is by becoming an MSP with security – technology plus human-centric security, he says.
“Traditionally we have been dealing with VARs who have security arms. The MSP with security skills are very few – couple of dozen perhaps in the UK. We deal with a lot of VARs who sell managed services – and because of the consolidation among them we often have MSPs within a larger VAR.”
“Where we are today is that the UK is the fourth or fifth region in the Kaspersky MSP organisation; I want it to be number one. We have a good opportunity – the German market is very large, Netherlands very strong, France has adopted it as well, but I want to get awareness out there that we can give the skills to VARs to offer managed services security. And distribution is evolving and can help with this - a lot of value is being added by distribution, either through leads, MSP enablement, platforms or services. Distribution is still critical in the channel, particularly when only a minority of the UK channel sells a security service.”
Kaspersky strengths are in threat intelligence, he says. “We aim to tap into the MSSP with marketing and training skills and services. Maybe it is not so much the lack of skills in the marketplace as soft skills - we want to use them get our services into the channel – whether it is incident response, malware or security awareness training. Today it is product and device-centric, but we want to become more valuable with such soft services.”
MSPs selling their own services are 15% of the market – those are ones with real skills, he says. It will take time for the channel to adapt to security services and the skills needed beyond antivirus and malware. “What are people doing around mobility, patch management, encryption – basic stuff? I think there is a massive opportunity to choose specific areas and become expert.”
“The product is supplied by a vendor but the skills must be in-house and this is the channel opportunity. Endpoint security is a [vendor] saturated market, but the skills to analyse and sort data, in particular to digest the endpoint data are in very short supply. Ultimately, the MSSP needs to be able to reach the SMB and midmarket space, and this is a huge opportunity.”
Will MSSPs split from MSPs? “Yes - maybe the MSSPs become the outsourced providers of security services. Just as specialist resellers emerged from the channel, there will be 100 or so really specialist MSSPs [in the UK] and then the rest of the channel will package a solution for a specific task,” he concludes.
