Kaspersky has sold the cloud version of their SMB endpoint offering mainly through traditional partners, and not MSPs, but would like to attract MSPs to sell the product going forward.
Kaspersky Lab has made a pair of licensing option changes with their new edition of Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud, the SaaS version of their SMB-focused endpoint security product. They have added Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus, an upgraded version of the product that brings additional higher-end features from the mother product, Kaspersky Endpoint Security. They have also made changes to the core licensing model, adding a second mobile device per license at no additional cost.
Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus was introduced in 2016, and was originally intended to serve two markets. One was SMB environments where a lot of infrastructure was being moved into the cloud. The other was MSPs. Kaspersky has had some success with that first group, but very little with MSPs.
“We have sold it to smaller to midsize orgs who want a more SaaS-based solution, many of whom tend to be resource-constrained and workload -heavy,” said Rob Cataldo, VP of Enterprise Sales, Kaspersky Lab USA. “We have sold to them through primarily the same partners who have been focused on the SMB space. So far, it hasn’t given us an uptick in our MSP business. But with some recent advances in making it more MSP-friendly, we hope to educate the MSP market about that.”
During the last year, those advances have seen multiple integrations with RMM and PSA platforms, including Autotask, ConnectWise, SolarWinds MSP, and TigerPaw.
“We have also added multitenancy to the console,” Cataldo noted.
So why haven’t Kaspersky done better with MSPs with this product?
“It been a lack of focus on our end perhaps,” Cataldo said. “We are revamping the channel with the Kaspersky United partner program, and we will have a more dedicated focus on proactively reaching out to MSPs to make them aware.”
With this version of the product, a new enhanced version has been added. Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus contains all the elements of the regular Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud, plus additional web and device controls, patch management and encryption management.
“We have added a lot of the control and management capabilities that were part of the traditional Kaspersky Endpoint Security on-prem platform,” Cataldo indicated. “This extends additional functionality for customers who have higher levels of security requirements. We created the Plus version separately, rather than just upgrade the whole product, because we wanted to make the licensing flexible, and make the regular version more affordable to those who might not see a benefit in having the additional capabilities in there.”
Cataldo described the difference in the pricing as small, with the price variable depending on the number of nodes and the number of years to which the customer commits.
The second major change is the addition of support for an additional mobile license with each license purchased, so that each provides support for one PC or file server and two mobile devices of any type – Windows PCs, Macs, smartphones or tablets.
“We wanted to meet the demand of the modern customer base, which uses more mobile devices,” Cataldo said.
So why not just support an unlimited number of devices per user?
“We tried to assess the number of devices that a user would use specifically for business purposes,” Cataldo indicated. “Most organizations don’t provide and provision more than two. While many people carry more than two, the others are likely to be consumer devices. This is a business solution.”
The new version of Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus is available now.
