Barracuda and Avast announce a new partnership which adds the ability to resell Avast’s anti-virus solution to Barracuda’s own portfolio. Barracuda will actually acquire the Managed Workplace RMM business, which should be a better fit with their MSP business than it was at Avast. Barracuda also stated its commitment to retain the Managed Workplace presence in Ottawa, where it originally began as Level Platforms.

Barracuda Networks has made a pair of related announcements involving solutions from the Avast Business Portfolio. They will acquire the Avast Managed Workplace RMM [Remote Monitoring and Management] solution, which Avast acquired with AVG, and which was originally developed by Level Platforms. They will also become a Master Reseller of Avast Anti-Security, as well as of Avast Business CloudCare and Avast Management Console.

“I think that the acquisition of Avast Managed Workplace is the really exciting part of this announcement,” said Brian Babineau, SVP and General Manager, Barracuda MSP. “It gives us a long-standing product with a strong reputation, and it is highly complementary to our other managed services products.”

Managed Workplace was originally the jewel in the crown of Ottawa-based RMM Level Platforms, which was acquired by anti-virus vendor AVG in 2013. It has always provided secure and remote access, reporting and alerting, patch management and automation, and has added additional functionality since its original release in 2004. The acquisition by AVG was not a model one however. AVG had no experience with the RMM business, and the integration was problematic. Many of the Level Platforms staff moved on. AVG was subsequently acquired by Avast in 2016, and while securing AVG’s stronger portfolio in the B2B space was an objective of AVG in the acquisition, the fact they are divesting Managed Workplace now indicates the RMM business specifically was no longer a priority for them.

Barracuda sees a lot of potential in Managed Workplace however.

“They have maintained and increased their market presence, they have continued to display innovation in the recent releases of the product, and they still have a strong engineering team,” Babineau said. “One of the highlights of my week was meeting two employees who were celebrating their 15th year of being involved with this product line.”

Babineau affirmed Barracuda’s commitment to the Managed Workplace facility in Kanata, Ottawa’s westernmost suburb.

“We are pleased to be adding a Canadian R&D facility to Barracuda,” he stated.

Babineau also stressed that Barracuda has the ability to tap Managed Workplace’s unrealized potential.

“Barracuda has built a very strong brand in the midmarket, which is also showing momentum among larger companies,” he said. “We have already built out a strong managed services business with a strong brand of its own. We are excited about what we believe Managed Workplace will add to our portfolio.”

The other part of the announcement will see Barracuda become a master reseller of Avast Antivirus, the Avast Business CloudCare SaaS platform, and Avast Management Console, which manages the anti-virus deployments.

“We have not had a pure anti-virus product,” Babineau said. “It is something that both partners and customers had asked us about.”

The companies said that the reseller agreement marks the beginning of an important long-term partnership between the two organizations. Babineau said this means that the companies will work closely together and do meaningful planning together going forward.

“Some partnerships are what I call Barney relationships, where the companies don’t do much together except say that they love each other,” he stated. “This won’t be like that. We will work closely with Avast going forward.”