AVG lures resellers into the cloud

AVG CloudCare platform will make partners more money and save them time, claims security vendor

AVG is urging its resellers to get on board as it branches out from its roots as an on-premise anti-virus outfit.

The vendor today unveiled AVG CloudCare, a free cloud-based platform resellers can use to deliver anti-virus, content filtering and remote IT support to customers with up to 100 employees.

Xavier Juredieu, vice president cloud services at AVG, said the platform would save resellers time by allowing them to deploy products and service customers remotely, as well as raking in more money by adding adjacent services with one click.

The AV and content filtering services start at $1.50 (92p) and $1.00 per user per month, respectively, with customers billed monthly.

The platform has already been trialled by 500 resellers and Juredieu said he hoped the bulk of AVG's partner base would migrate from its on-premise to cloud offering within 12 to 24 months.

"We hope that resellers will see this as not only a way to save time and lower their management costs but also to earn more money as we add more modules," he said.

"This is the first platform that is dedicated to small businesses. The second differentiator is that it is a free platform with some remote IT capabilities. If you look at our competition, they do not have that, and those that do are not in the security space and tend to charge a lot."

Initially, AVG will push CloudCare at two reseller "personas": Boutiques that have not yet moved to the cloud and those that already sell managed services but are disenchanted with their current supplier.

Juredieu said the launch is an indication of AVG's desire to be known not only for AV and security but also IT management.

AVG recently split its business into SMB and consumer arms. CloudCare will initially be available to SMBs only and is available to resellers in the US and UK from today.