Stuart O’Loughlin, managed services development manager at Datapac (an AVG Managed Workplace partner in Ireland) agrees that since acquiring the LPI business last year, “AVG has been very progressive, keeping the open architecture approach to developing the RMM toolset – even to the extent of assisting us to integrate traditionally competitive security products into the suite of technology for us to manage through AVG Managed Workplace.
He adds that “the biggest difference” is that partners like Datapac “really feel that you have the support of a big company behind you. The depth of AVG’s top-down security and MDM expertise fills us with confidence and we are looking forward to future product developments that are packed with new tools and innovative features.”
As part of its efforts to get closer to partners and encourage more feedback, AVG established a partner advisory council in the UK in January last year, inviting a number of key partners to meet the product development team, engineers and Chin on a quarterly basis to provide feedback on what AVG can do to improve and change. She is hoping to introduce something similar in Ireland and to get a couple of Irish partners involved in the partner advisory council.
Managed services
The vendor is also encouraging partners to use managed services as a way forward that makes it easier for them to “have focus and be more proactive and engaged with users”. Chin reveals that adding remote monitoring and management to its SMB portfolio “is such a huge initiative for us and the services we can provide to partners. It’s something we want to be pushing out there. It’s phenomenal what we can do to enhance our partners.” AVG also provides a NOC help desk service that partners can offer their customers. “We answer the phone as the partner and the user knows no different,” she says.
AVG has established a free of charge partner enablement programme to help partners agree what they want out of the relationship with AVG and how the vendor can help them achieve their goals. Initially targeted at new resellers, the vendor has now extended it to all partners. In addition, it is considering running roadshows in Ireland.
Chin believes that the clincher for prospective partners looking at AVG is that “when they look at the platform and portfolio of services we offer, they’re looking at one stop shop. We can take ownership of whatever happens in that environment. They can get everything on one pane of glass and we will take ownership of that – it’s what makes us quite unique.”
Summing up AVG’s proposition for partners, Chin says: “It’s the nature of the partnership we deliver to partners that they are investing in a vendor focused on their growth and development as a business. We’re with them for the entire course of that journey.”
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