Kaspersky rolls out licensing portal for MSPs

Security vendors have been among the most active in courting managed service providers as they look to widen their routes to market, with many launching programmes to increase the support on offer.

Kaspersky has looked at the licensing side to offer MSPs another reason to plumb for a relationship with the vendor, rolling out a self-service portal for resellers to keep on top of the issue.

The security player quoted numbers from Ami Partners, that have charted the growth in the MSP market and found that it has almost doubled from 48,000 firms globally in 2016 to an expected 74,000 by next year.

The License Management Portal (LMP) helps MSPs order, manage and report on licences and gives partners that chance to offer users a pay-as-you-go monthly billing plan.

Via a dashboard partners will get the chance to monitor and manage customer licenses amd track real-time usage. Gaining more insight into what's happening across the network should spark more conversations around protecting emerging devices connecting up as well as changing user usage patterns.

The idea behind the portal is not only to make it easier for partners by speeding things up but with the new monthly billing option and the chance for a trial license it also increases the flexibility.

Kaspersky carried out research towards the end of last year that found that MSPs were struggling to convince customers to use the recommended solutions. The vendor revealed that many users were not picking up on the advice given by partners.

Against that background the LMP programme should provide MSPs with increased chances to show customers a detailed analysis of their solution usage and opportunities to expand coverage.

“MSPs are a strategic priority for Kaspersky and over the last year, the Kaspersky MSP channel has showed good growth. The number of partners that registered and are already selling continues to increase. As a result, the year-on-year MSP revenue growth reached 60%,” said Dmitry Golubtsov, head of MSP business, Kaspersky.

"The launch of the Kaspersky License Management Portal is the next step in our strategy to bolster our partner ecosystem and provide our partners with tools that help them offer more services based on Kaspersky products," he added.