While its acquisition by fellow Czech-based security vendor Avast approaches, AVG continues business as usual, completing the final phase of its North American distribution strategy that was first announced months before the acquisition. The deal will also apply in Canada, but has not yet been implemented here.
Francois Daumard, AVG’s Vice President of Global Channel Sales
HOLLYWOOD FLA – At the CompTIA ChannelCon event where they are in attendance, AVG Business has completed what it says is the final stage of its distribution restructuring in North America with the announcement of a new agreement with D&H Distributing. The deal will cover both the U.S. and Canada in due course. However, at this point, while product has already begun to ship in the U.S., that is not yet the case in Canada.
“The deal is for North America, but while the first order in the U.S. shipped last week, it is not yet set up for Canada,” said Francois Daumard, AVG’s Vice President of Global Channel Sales. Daumard indicated that he did not expect the delay in availability in Canada to be a lengthy one.
The D&H deal caps a significant restructuring of AVG’s distribution network, which has seen the addition of a significant number of boutique distributors in both Europe and North America since Fred Gerritse took over as AVG’s SMB chief earlier this year. In North America, Ingram Micro and SYNNEX continue as their broadline distributors. However, in addition to software-focused holdover Lifeboat, AVG added mid-west focused Earthbend in May for a stronger regional component in both the U.S. and Canada. Now it has completed its North American roster with SMB-focused D&H.
“We are closing the loop on our distribution strategy in North America by announcing our partnership with D&H,” Daumard said. “It’s a strategy where we have representation with broadliners, and with more specialty distributors than before. Now that we are done adding distributors, we can focus on executing through distribution.”
Daumard cited several reasons why he said D&H was an ideal choice for AVG. He noted that D&H has an atypically strong relationship with both its customers, each of whom have their own assigned reps and their own employees, who have, as a group, been with the company for many years more than the industry average.
“They are very SMB-focused, as are we,” he said “There is also alignment around our Managed Worksplace product. D&H was looking for a RMM vendor. They were also looking for a security vendor, as they are leaving Sophos and onboarding us. They are a family-owned business, in their second generation. I have also had good experience doing business with them in a past business life.”
D&H will distribute the full AVG Business product portfolio, including the AVG Managed Workplace, AVG CloudCare, AVG Internet Security and AVG AntiVirus Business Edition solutions.
Daumard indicated – no surprise here – that many attendees at ChannelCon had been pressing him for more information about what would happen once the company’s acquisition by Avast becomes final. He indicated, however, that he has been unable to comment on the transaction.
