The suite, which contains new versions of its AVG AntiVirus Business Edition and AVG Internet Security Business Edition products, also contains a free remote management console.
Marco LaVecchia, AVG Business’s Vice President, Americas
Today, AVG Technologies is announcing the release of its 2016 Business Edition software suite, which contains new versions of its AVG AntiVirus Business Edition and AVG Internet Security Business Edition offerings. A free remote management console, which partners can use strategically with customers, comes with the suite.
“A lot of the changes in this releases were driven by customer feedback,” said Marco LaVecchia, AVG Business’s Vice President, Americas. “It’s customers and channel partners who ask us for changes that helps develop our roadmap.”
The technical changes begin with a new scanning engine, which uses new algorithms to trim scanning times.
“We’ve improved the scanning mechanism to make sure it’s faster and results in shorter scanning times,” LaVecchia said. “We have also better leveraged our 200 plus million endpoints to recognize new and emerging threats, and improve the time in which virus updates are delivered. That’s extremely powerful.”
AVG has also added crowd intelligence technology to improve their cloud-based outbreak detection, by identifying even the newest malware variants and outbreaks in software in real-time.
“Crowd intelligence, or crowd-sourcing, is the concept is that none of us is as smart as all of us,” LaVecchia said. “If we are all on the lookout and sharing information, then we are as smart as we can be. We have millions of endpoints on the lookout for malware, and when such is identified it is shared back to the server, and via update to all other endpoints.”
Advanced artificial intelligence, which is being constantly trained through incoming data, has been added to proactively identify new threats in real-time even before the AVG VirusLab team has catalogued the threats.
“This additional type of detection, which is based on a look at all our customers, will help to keep us on top of all the new threats,” LaVecchia said.
The Business Edition software suite comes with a free remote management console which partners can use to gain easy and efficient remote access to all systems on a network.
“The remote management console lets them easily manage multiple domains,” LaVecchia said. “That’s a very strategic advantage for them.”
While antivirus protection was AVG’s original core offering, since their 2013 acquisition of remote monitoring and management (RMM) provider Level Platforms, AVG has been pushing hard in the RMM space, where the anti-virus offering is one of multiple solutions offered. This has involved encouraging pure anti-virus partners to make the move into RMM, which AVG sees as the wave of the future for services delivery.
“We have having a lot of success getting antivirus partners into managed services,” LaVecchia said. “At the same time, we are also benefiting from AVG having its own channel program just for AV resellers who haven’t made the move to managed services. While antivirus is moving to the cloud, there are still a lot of customers who want a license and aren’t eager to move to the cloud. Our program gives our partner the option to sell both types of solutions to our customers, cloud or on-prem. While there is a big shift into cloud, being able to offer both and proactively manage both of those is important.”
LaVecchia said that over 85 per cent of antivirus sales today are cloud-based, but that customers who buy both cloud and on-prem licenses are not rare.
“We have many customers that are, say, 80 per cent on-prem and 20 per cent cloud,” he said. “We can sell in the manner that the customer wants to purchase.”
Partners can download comprehensive reseller kits for the new suite at AVG’s Reseller Centre.
“The kits gives them information how to best articulate the value proposition to the end user, and include PowerPoint presentations and data sheets,” LaVecchia said.
Technical support is also included at no cost.
The AVG AntiVirus Business Edition and AVG Internet Security Business Edition are available now.
