Gartner recently reported an increase to 30,000 new threats being released every single day. For any business, but especially SMB’s the importance of data integrity is vital to their existence and growth. A breach in security, resulting in loss of private customer data could lead to loss of customers, loss of revenue and incurring huge costs in recovery. The cost alone of the time incurred for resolving a breach or infection is a minimum of 2 days. SMB’s, typically at the early stages of their growth, cannot afford the luxury of a dedicated IT department. As such SMB’s are a honey pot for the cyber-criminal community.
With the UTM vendors releasing end-to-end solution for the SMB/SME users, how are you planning to address the growing network security concerns of SMBs?
With growth in mobile workers it makes sense for the UTM manufacturers to increase their scope to end point security. AVG is working in conjunction with several UTM manufacturers to offer customers complete end to end security.
What kind of strategic initiatives have you taken to increase the visibility as well as ensure the product availability throughout the Indian territory?
The PC is becoming more accessible to Indian users and the Indian. The digital landscape, too, holds a large potential with nearly 30 million internet subscribers in India at present, which is expected to grow to 50 million users within the next 2 years.
The AVG range of security products is distributed by Milestone Interactive, who has a strong retail pedigree. Appointed as the master distributor in March this year, Milestone Interactive, has been assigned the target of enlisting 1000 resellers by 2010. The reseller network will be of primary importance in reaching out to the SMB segment. On the other hand, in order to reach out to the masses, AVG Technologies has tied up with major large format retail (LFRs) stores to enable users to buy security products over the shelf.
How will you enable your partners to sell AVG range of products across the targeted user segments?
Through Milestone Interactive, we will host a reseller roadshow in September across major cities in India. This includes Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai. Here, we will be launch a new reseller programme designed at maximizing long term profit opportunities for the reseller community.
What are the additional or recurring revenue options for the channel?
AVG is dedicated to the channel and part of our strategy is ensuring our products deliver the highest levels of profitability. This is reflected in our end point pricing and discount strategy to our major partners. This coupled with multiple upgrade paths offers the reseller the opportunity to monetize every customer more than once. Finally with our low support requirements and availability of AVG support staff resellers should rarely be in a position of incurring cost through poor service.
The Indian market is dominated by the reseller community and as such our products will be priced accordingly to support all partners of AVG.