Kaspersky Lab has made several enhancements to its Green Team Partner Program, coming into effect next month, to offer its channel better service and support – and make it more profitable.
In December, Kaspersky, a Moscow-based Internet security vendor, celebrated its first year in Canada. Kaspersky’s Canadian country manager, Kevin Krempulec, said last year the company was “deep” in partner recruitment mode. Now, with the new enhancements to the Green Team Partner Program, Krempulec said the company’s working to expand and develop its existing partner relationships.
Krempulec said the structure of the Green Team Partner Program will change to now include three tiers: Registered, Gold and Platinum.
“The more partners commit to us in these tiers, the greater the benefits they’ll receive from us,” he said.
Krempulec couldn’t comment on the number of channel partners the company currently has in the country, but did say the partner mix right now is “healthy,” and that all existing partners will be moved into the appropriate partner tiers within the next couple of months.
“We have a healthy mix of partners in Canada across the board and I’m happy with the mix,” he said. “If we have gaps in certain areas, we’ll look at partners that want to move up (and see where they want to go with Kaspersky), and we’ll also continue to look out for high-quality partners to grow the program out.”
Among some of the new enhancements in the program, Kaspersky will introduce a new Business Discount Rewards offering for partners, which will provide the channel with financial incentives when they acquire new customers. The company will also make an Online Deal Registration and a Customer Account Registration available to partners. With these, partners who register their deals can earn additional discounts and have their deals protected. While Online Deal Registration is available to all Kaspersky partners, the Customer Account Registration is only available to Platinum-level partners.
To further educate its partners, Kaspersky will also introduce Kaspersky University Online training courses, which will include both sales and technical tracks. These courses will be offered free to all partners. To complement this method of education, Kaspersky will also offer partners the ability to syndicate the company’s ThreatPost Web site (a central repository for industry news and analysis from a global perspective) to their own Web site, which Krempulec said will help generate new leads for partners by facilitating online conversations with customers.
The new Green Team Partner Program enhancements will come into effect on June 7.
Krempulec said his objectives this year in Canada include to “further develop and enable the partners (Kaspersky) already has on board, continuing to educate and train partners, continuing to add high-quality partners to the program, and making sure the partner community is aligned with (Kaspersky).”
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