What's The Score?

By Stefanie Hoffman

Partnership in the channel is not an afterthought, it's a primary way of taking our technology to market," said John Eddy, senior vice president of sales of the Americas for Kaspersky Lab, Woburn, Mass.

It's a philosophy that has served the company well. As the emerging 2008 VARBusiness Annual Report Card survey champion in Client Security Software, Kaspersky Lab rose head and shoulders above many of its competitors, acing the product innovation subcategory with an overall score of 85, boosted by a 98 in the criteria of product quality and reliability and a 91 in compatibility and ease of integration.

"We're always making sure we maintain a very positive business culture," Eddy said. "Our company was built and grew on relationships—the relationship that we have with our customers, with our partners. We never ever want to get to the point where we're managing our business on a spreadsheet."

In particular, Kaspersky channel execs said that the company has made it a point to excel in product innovation with high-quality technology in its core competency areas of endpoint security, mail servers and gateways.

"You have to have a great product. At the very foundation, making sure we're innovative," said Randy Drawas, chief marketing officer for the Americas. "We're highly rated for protection against malware. It's always seen as a very light footprint on the endpoint, where it's not slowing the systems down. That's probably one of the biggest levels of discontent—that people feel like these products are very heavy and they impede the user's experience."

While Kaspersky might have been the newest to join the ranks of the ARC champions, its win was far from a surprise for the company's channel partners.

Monte Robertson, CEO and founder of Lakewood, Colo.-based Software Security Solutions, said that Kaspersky's vision and forward-thinking products, such as signature databases, hourly updates and whitelisting technologies, aligned with his own company's mission, which aims to promote early-adopter companies for leading-edge security solutions.

"I admire their courage to take these bold steps. It really shows they're a thought leader in this industry," Robertson said. "Plus, they're just very customer-focused. ... Not only are they visionary, but they also listen."

Close on Kaspersky's heels was Lynnfield, Mass.-based Sophos Inc., which ranked slightly lower with an overall score of 82 in product innovation."

"It wasn't entirely a surprise. We were hoping the additional program and work we've done over the year would show results," said Chris Doggett, Sophos director of channel sales in North America. "On the product side, we've been a company that has been leading the industry, and that certainly continues to show with very high scores overall."

In particular, Sophos surpassed many of its competitors with high scores in product innovation, punctuated by a score of 95 in product quality and reliability. Doggett said that Sophos prided itself on both presales and postsales support—two areas where the company received scores of 81.

Doggett said that the company's ARC scores also increased across the board in areas that included return on investment, ease of doing business, and revenue and profit potential.

Sophos' scores fell slightly short, however, in the partnership subcategory of revenue and profit potential, as well as the support subcategory of training—areas where the company was putting effort into improving, Doggett said.

"We're happy with the results," he said. "We had hoped and expected to see an increase. That's been a very good confirmation of what we're continuing to work on."

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