AVG Ratchets Up Cloud Services

elliot markowitz

Specifically, AVG CloudCare provides solution providers a cloud-based platform allowing them to remotely manage its antivirus and filtering services. In other words, solution providers can practice what they preach and utilize a cloud environment to service their customers better, said Luke Walling, vice president of Sales and Operations at AVG North America, stressing the new service is the result of direct feedback from the channel.

There’s a novel idea and some of AVG’s bigger competitors should take notice: Before rolling out a channel service, bring in partners at the very beginning to help develop the direction of the platform. “This program was designed from day one with channel input,” Walling said. “We were pulling partners into the process at the alpha phase. Vendors like throwing products at the channel and spiffing them to sell. We are not designing these SMB products in a vacuum.”

Other features of AVG CloudCare:

AVG channel partners said these types of cloud-based services are exactly what they need.

“AVG CloudCare provides a unique offering for me. I can set up enterprise level managed security and web content filtering for businesses having only a few PC’s,” said Bill Schubert, owner of Friendly Computers of Georgetown,  located just north of Austin, Texas. “We provide local monitoring through the console and my customers know that Friendly Computers has their back. It keeps us on their radar and we can offer a real integrated product costing less than the fire and forget software typically sold to small companies,” he said.

“We are excited about the release of AVG CloudCare primarily because it is a great fit for our managed services program that we call V-Care,” said Matthew Adkins of Vanguard Technologies, Toledo, Ohio. Vanguard offers a wide range of IT solutions for small businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions across Northwest Ohio and Southeastern Michigan. V-Care is a “white-glove” offering that enables customers to focus on their business, he said.

V-Care includes anti-virus protection; however, the solution would have to be effective and affordable, has minimal impact on older and newer systems, and fit into its managed services model for Vanguard to consider using it, Adkins said. Until recently, it was unable to find a product that met all of those conditions.

“With CloudCare we can use one product to cover all of our clients, support them from one portal, and have billing that works the way we sell to our clients – monthly with easy on-demand changes,” Adkins said. “As a bonus, I save time and money since my techs don’t have to do end user server password lookups and login to a server to run scans. So yes, this is certainly a game changer,” he said.

Is this a game changer for you?

Knock em alive!