Managed service providers (MSPs) and resellers using anti-virus company AVG Technologies will now be able to use one unified dashboard to serve small business customers.
In a press briefing in New York on Sept. 4, AVG announced it was going to be merging two of its services for MSPs – CloudCare and Managed Workplace. For MSPs who serve small to midsized businesses (SMBs)’ security needs using AVG, that makes it easier for them to monitor their customers’ security and privacy.
For example, if a client registers several devices with a reseller using AVG CloudCare, the reseller can look at the dashboard to see the status of their endpoint services, like AVG anti-virus, content filtering, and email encryption. The dashboard also shows which versions have been installed and the date and time of the last time they were updated.
If resellers or MSPs spot gaps or possible vulnerabilities, they can then help their customers with fixing them. They can even upsell and offer to provide customers with more IT services, activating trial versions or the full, paid subscription versions through the dashboard with the flick of an “on-off” toggle.
The dashboard also alerts resellers or MSPs to problems that AVG doesn’t cover, such as a hard drive that is getting too full or a CPU that is maxing out.
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“We set out on our journey to simplify IT management for small businesses,” said Mike Foreman, AVG’s general manager of SMBs, speaking from a smaller press meeting Sept. 4. He said AVG typically targets SMBs with less than 100 employees.
“What we try to do is ensure that the small businesses can receive and get the same level of protection and security that the big guys have, without the complexity and without the expense of it.”
News of a single dashboard comes a couple of months after AVG first announced it was acquiring LPI Level Platforms Inc., an Ottawa-based company that built remote monitoring and management software. By leveraging LPI Level Platforms’ technology, AVG was able to build out Managed Workplace and then create this new dashboard.
“This is really what I would say is the real next step for CloudCare,” said Foreman, who moved to Ottawa to oversee the acquisition, which was announced at the end of June. “This goes beyond selling the anti-virus and in fact, it doesn’t sell the anti-virus … this is about managing that whole customer’s network.”
Foreman says today’s SMBs are struggling to keep up with four major areas – cloud services, the bring-your-own-device trend, social media, and data privacy – as many of them are starting to become aware of how these might affect their daily basis. In the future, AVG will most likely offer services that focus on these, rather than just providing anti-virus software, he said.
AVG currently has about 155 million users, with about 10,000 resellers and MSPs worldwide.
Check out this video of Mike Foreman speaking about AVG Managed Workplace:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgh7PrVLJWA