Tag Archives: Mike Foreman

AVG

AVG Awards Gala celebrates exceptional partners of 2014

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Our hugely successful Cloud Summit in Phoenix for partners and managed services providers (MSPs) came to a fitting conclusion with a dinner to celebrate the winners of the AVG 2014 Awards Gala.  AVG’s first ever event of this kind celebrated top performing partners from all over the world that were judged to have shown outstanding commitment, entrepreneurship and technical proficiency in protecting and managing their customers’ critical business systems during 2014.  It was a great thrill to be able to honor so many partners for their exceptional contribution to our success this year and I am proud to hold up their accomplishments as standards of excellence for every partner to follow.

We had over 150 nominations from around the world contesting awards in eight categories. Each nomination was judged by our panel of AVG CloudCare™ and Managed Workplace® experts.  I saw dozens of examples of the highest caliber from familiar, long-standing names to new cloud-oriented start-ups working on some highly innovative and exciting projects across the globe.

Winners were selected on the basis of such criteria as their outstanding levels of professionalism to customers, their market influence and their exemplary use of the AVG cloud-based security and remote monitoring & management (RMM) business solutions portfolio.

The complete list of categories and winners is as follows:

 

Largest Deployment of Managed Workplace

Awarded to the partner with the largest deployment of our managed workplace solution

Winner: Corporate Technologies

Recipient: David Pekarna: Senior Networking Engineer

 

Largest Growth with Managed Workplace, NOC & HD

Awarded to the partner who has had the largest growth with our managed workplace solution, NOC & HD offerings

Winner: Net@work

Recipient: Mohit Govani: IT Director

 

Most Complete MSP offerings

Awarded jointly to two companies adjudged to have leveraged all the tool sets within AVG’s product offerings

Joint Winner: Tekmate

Recipient: Jason Reopelle

 

Joint Winner: Alura Business Solutions

Recipient: Jason Derstine, President & CEO

 

Most Innovative Partner

Awarded to the partner that has shown the most growth and advancement through innovative business strategies

Winner: Advanced Technology Solutions

Recipient: Bob Ascherl, Product Development Manager

 

Community Partner of the Year

Awarded to individual MSP partners who have engaged, enriched, and helped to grow the AVG MW community

Winner: STF Consulting

Recipient: Sean Furman, President & CEO

Rookie of the Year

Awarded to a partner in their first year with AVG Managed Workplace who has shown the highest growth by aggressively deploying the solution and successfully launching their Managed Services offerings

Winner: 365 Managed IT

Recipient: Ken Stewart, Founding Partner

 

 

MSP of the Year

Awarded to the partner who has demonstrated outstanding growth, industry leadership, and customer service excellence with their Managed Services practice

Winner: TDARX

Recipient: Mike Shuping, President

 

To conclude, I should like to personally thank everyone that participated in our inaugural Partner of the Year Awards and many congratulations to the winners.

Already the bar has been set very high and I’m truly excited at what we can achieve together for our customers in the year ahead.

AVG

AVG Technologies Announces New Managed Workplace® Enhancements to Partners at Cloud Summit

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AVG’s RMM platform continues to evolve to give partners even tighter applications’ integration experience, reducing cost and complexity

AMSTERDAM and SAN FRANCISCO – October 23, 2014 – AVG Technologies N.V. (NYSE: AVG), the online security companyâ„¢ for 182 million active users, today gave partners attending its Cloud Summit in Arizona a first-look preview of key new features in AVG Managed Workplace®9.0, its open eco-system Remote Management & Monitoring (RMM) tool for IT resellers and managed services providers (MSPs).

Following continued close consultation with its partner-base, AVG is unveiling a number of significant technical refinements to its RMM platform that will enable MSPs to deliver an even more tightly integrated range of streamlined services through the same integrated management console.

Key advances among the new integration features and benefits for MSPs of the enhanced AVG Managed Workplace RMM platform are:

  • Increased automation – extends automation best practices in a scalable, repeatable manner to transform an MSP’s service delivery, thereby reducing the cost of creating and maintaining secure compliant devices
  • Enhanced reporting and alerting – refinements in automated, real-time alerting increase quality and breadth of data available to enable a fast, focused response to help remediate issues before they have a chance to escalate, helping to save time and money.
  • Boosted patch management – increases in efficiency of patch scheduling ability help proactively close the gap between patch availability and patch application, reducing vulnerabilities on individual devices and avoiding costs.

“Recent industry events like Shellshock and Gameover Zeus have shown businesses that it is still best to leave your IT in the hands of experts,” said Mike Foreman, General Manager, SMB, AVG Technologies. “Incorporating the constructive feedback from our partners, combined with a set of technical enhancements to our RMM platform provides our partners with enhanced levels of protection and control that will let their customers sleep at night.”

AVG’s business security portfolio is supported by a worldwide network of more than 10,000 partners.  Its pedigree in this area makes it ideally positioned to help smaller IT companies and MSPs harness low cost, cloud-based tools so they can transition into fully-fledged managed services businesses.

In October 2012 AVG introduced AVG CloudCare™, a cloud-based administration platform offering resellers a new way to implement and manage services such as antivirus, content filtering, online backup and email security services for their business customers. In June 2013 it added AVG Managed Workplace, an open eco-system Remote Management & Monitoring (RMM) tool. AVG‘s vision is to make the lives of MSPs and their business customers as easy as possible, regardless of whether staff are in the office, at home, or on the road.

AVG Managed Workplace 9.0 is scheduled for general availability from November 2014.

About AVG Technologies (NYSE: AVG)

AVG is the online security company providing leading software and services to secure devices, data and people.  AVG has over 182 million active users, as of June 30, 2014, using AVG’s products and services including Internet security, performance optimization, and personal privacy and identity protection. By choosing AVG’s products, users become part of a trusted global community that engages directly with AVG to provide feedback and offer mutual support to other customers.

AVG

AVG Technologies Previews New Identity-as-a-Service “CloudCare SSO” at Cloud Summit

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AMSTERDAM and SAN FRANCISCO –  22 October, 2014 – AVG Technologies N.V. (NYSE: AVG), the online security company for devices, data and people, today unveiled a preview of its new Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) services to partners attending its Cloud Summit in Phoenix, Arizona.   Managed services provider (MSP) partners at the Summit had an exclusive first-look at how AVG’s full Cloud-security and remote monitoring & management (RMM) services portfolio can help MSPs deliver secure sign-on (SSO) for easy, one-click security and control over their customers’ cloud applications and mobile data.  Partners will soon be able to experience the breakthrough integration of Multi Factor Authentication, Secure Sign-On, Mobile Device Management and Mobile Application Management all managed through Active Directory to ease complexity and simplify management.

“The aim of today’s game changing advance in the expansion of AVG CloudCare’s cloud-based security and mobile management capabilities is to help MSPs grow their businesses further by enhancing the levels of protection and control built in to their customer services,” said Mike Foreman, AVG’s General Manager, SMB. “We know that with the rapid adoption of mobile, BYOD and Cloud applications customers will require additional expertise from partners to help control and manage all their users’ applications and data.  We are listening. That’s why, for the first time in this space, AVG is combining Centrify’s IDaaS capability with our existing RMM platform to provide a single, secure access layer to all our Cloud services as well as more than 2,500 of the most popular Cloud-based business apps for partners and their business customers.”

Underlying technology for AVG’s new IDaaS capability is driven by Centrify, a leader in unified identity management across cloud, mobile and data center environments.  Management of multiple passwords is a major headache for businesses, especially as they adopt more and more mobile and cloud-based applications.   Figures show up to 80 percent of end user breaches are password related. Furthermore, industry events like the Heartbleed bug have raised popular consciousness of the need for stronger password protection, especially in sectors like financial services or health where tight data security and privacy requirements are mandatory.

“IDaaS is solving real problems for the enterprise and thanks to the initiative of market-savvy companies like AVG the technology will soon be giving AVG partners and their businesses the same benefits in a format they can afford,” said Shreyas Sadalgi, Centrify’s SVP of Business Development for Centrify. “We are thrilled to be working closely with AVG, a globally respected security brand with one of the largest active partner bases in the industry.

An exclusive preview of the Centrify IDaaS solution is available to resellers and MSPs attending AVG’s inaugural Cloud Summit for partners taking place from October 20th-22nd 2014 at The Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort in Chandler, Arizona.

For more information or to contact sales for a free, not for resale account, please email [email protected]

AVG’s business security portfolio is supported by a worldwide network of more than 10,000 partners.  Its pedigree in this area makes it ideally positioned to help smaller IT companies and MSPs harness low cost, cloud-based tools so they can transition into fully-fledged managed services businesses.

In October 2012 AVG introduced AVG CloudCare™, a cloud-based administration platform offering resellers a new way to implement and manage services such as antivirus, content filtering, online backup and email security services for their business customers. In June 2013 it added AVG Managed Workplace, an open eco-system Remote Management & Monitoring (RMM) tool. AVG‘s vision is to make the lives of MSPs and their business customers as easy as possible, regardless of whether staff are in the office, at home, or on the road.

About Centrify

Centrify provides unified identity management across data center, cloud and mobile — resulting in one single login for users and one unified identity infrastructure for IT. Centrify’s software and cloud services let organizations securely leverage their existing identity infrastructure to centrally manage authentication, access control, privilege management, policy enforcement and compliance across on-premise and cloud resources. More than 5,000 customers have deployed Centrify across millions of servers, workstations, and applications. With Centrify, organizations are reducing their costs associated with identity lifecycle management and compliance by over 50 percent.

About AVG Technologies (NYSE: AVG)

AVG is the online security company providing leading software and services to secure devices, data and people.  AVG has over 182 million active users, as of June 30, 2014, using AVG’s products and services including Internet security, performance optimization, and personal privacy and identity protection. By choosing AVG’s products, users become part of a trusted global community that engages directly with AVG to provide feedback and offer mutual support to other customers.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

AVG

70 Percent of MSPs Must Adapt Services to Capitalize on Internet of Things, AVG Study Reveals

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AMSTERDAM and SAN FRANCISCO – October 22, 2014 – Roughly 1-in-4 (26 percent) small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and managed services providers (MSPs) expect the Internet of Things (IoT) including multiple devices, wearables and Cloud-based services in general to generate more money for them than any of the other current big IT trends, according to a new survey announced today by AVG Technologies N.V. (NYSE: AVG), the online security company for devices, data and people. Almost three out of five (57 percent) SMBs agreed that IoT will help boost their revenues, a sentiment that was echoed by around two-thirds (67 percent) of MSP respondents. However just 18 percent of SMB respondents thought their IT provider was ahead of the curve regarding IoT management while 70 per cent of MSPs themselves admitted the need to adapt their services to meet customer expectations in this regard.

“Our MSP partners are telling us that the ‘Internet of Things’ is the one IT trend making an immediate difference to their bottom line and the business customers that they serve. A massive 7 out of 10 stated they need to amend their offerings to enable business growth.”  said Mike Foreman, AVG’s general manager, SMB

The study*, which interviewed 1,770 small businesses and MSPs in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia, also revealed more than half (55 percent) of MSP respondents say customers are demanding Internet of Things related services and over three quarters (77 percent) are planning to expand their service/product portfolio. However, they had better adapt quickly. Of those SMBs with an IT provider, 68% feel that their provider could improve their service with regard to Internet of Things offerings and understanding.

“The study shows clearly that as businesses grow to rely more and more on the Internet of Things and Cloud-based services to help generate revenue most MSPs are still some way short of being ready to help customers’ manage this,” continued Mike Foreman. “The research strongly indicates that MSPs need to significantly up their game and demonstrate enhanced levels of protection and control over their customers’ ever changing data and device needs.”

A summary of the other key findings in the study were:

SMBs

Almost half (46%) of SMBs think that the Internet of Things will be the IT trend that has the greatest impact on their organization over the next five years. An even higher proportion -around seven in ten (71%) – say that due to the Internet of Things their organization will need to take extra steps to secure and protect their data

  • Around three fifths (62%) of SMB respondents report that their organization has budget specifically assigned over the next 12 months for the development of Internet of Things solutions. 49% have a moderate or substantial budget assigned for these solutions.
  • Only 18% of SMB respondents say that their IT provider is completely ahead of the curve with regard to the Internet of Things and the potential for their business. Of those with an IT provider, 68% feel that their provider could improve their service with regard to Internet of Things offerings and understanding.
  • The majority (84%) of SMB respondents say that their organization has purchased mobile devices within the last year, spending an average of over $6,500 on these devices. Of those who have purchased mobile devices within the last 12 months, SMB respondents estimate that their organization spends an average of around $4,500 in hidden costs annually.

MSPs

  • Over half (55%) of MSP respondents state that customers are demanding Internet of Things related services and seven in ten (70% but only 56% Germany) say that they will amend their services based on the wants of the customer.
  • However, less than two fifths (38%) of MSPs say that their organization currently has an integrated remote monitoring and management platform.
  • Around three fifths (58%) of MSP respondents say that they will need to join up with cutting edge partners in order to successfully offer Internet of Things-related services. Currently only 38% of MSP respondents feel that the vendors they work with are cutting edge.
  • Furthermore around three in ten MSP respondents feel that their current vendor helps make efficiency savings (31%) or productive gains (25%) for their customers.

* AVG commissioned independent technology market research specialist Vanson Bourne to undertake this research.  1770 interviews were carried out during September 2014 with IT and marketing decision-makers of organizations with of 1 – 500 employees with and 85/15 per cent split between SMBs and MSPs. Interviews were performed across five countries: UK, US, Canada, Germany and Australia. Respondents to this research came from a range of industry sectors, with only the public sector excluded.

For more information, please see our video on the survey findings:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/70-percent-of-msps-must-adapt-services-to-capitalize-on-internet-of-things-avg-study-reveals-573155550.html

About AVG Technologies (NYSE: AVG)

AVG is the online security company providing leading software and services to secure devices, data and people.  AVG has over 182 million active users, as of June 30, 2014, using AVG’s products and services including Internet security, performance optimization, and personal privacy and identity protection. By choosing AVG’s products, users become part of a trusted global community that engages directly with AVG to provide feedback and offer mutual support to other customers.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

AVG

AVG CloudCare scoops award in independent tests

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AVG CloudCare’s AntiVirus 2014 component has just received an award following its first ever participation in one of the industry’s top security comparison tests.  The latest Virus Bulletin  gave us a score of 91.2 out of a possible 100 in both Reactive and Proactive tests.

In an age where security breaches are common and a company trades more than ever on its reputation, small businesses simply cannot afford to take any chances when it comes to protecting their confidential or customer data.

In fact a recent eMarketer study shows that undetected malware and cloud-based security are still among the top security concerns for small businesses.

SMB Threats
That’s why I’m delighted that the Virus Bulletin test singled out AVG CloudCare for its scanning and detection performance. It is a strong indicator that we design our product wholly with users in mind and are addressing their very real concerns.

 

Here’s what Virus Bulletin had to say:

“Scanning was very fast indeed, even in the initial runs, and overheads were pretty light, barely detectable once files had been checked for the first time. Our set of activities ran through in good time, and resource use was low. Detection was very strong indeed with excellent scores throughout our sets, and with no issues to report in the WildList or clean sets, a VB100 award is well deserved, adding another good result to that strong score.”

 

Our customers are echoing this sentiment:

Thomas Keats of Rainbow Computers, a small business and AVG IT partner told us   “I love so much about AVG CloudCare, it’s increasing the bottom line, increasing interaction with the customer on more than one level, keeping me and my shop more in their mind each step of the way.”

If you are a small business looking for a way to stay ahead of the security curve why not ask a local IT contractor about AVG CloudCare? Your company’s security would be one less thing to worry about!

Learn more about AVG CloudCare at: www.avg.com/cloudcare

Learn more about the Virus Bulletin 100 test at: https://www.virusbtn.com/virusbulletin/archive/2014/06/vb201406-comparative

AVG

Who Dares Wins in The Pitch, UK

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On Thursday 18th September more than 40 intrepid small business entrepreneurs  – including one  17 year-old – from around the UK assembled in Manchester for the Northern semi-final of The Pitch 2014, the small business competition that this year has AVG as its lead sponsor.   As with the first semi-final in London the event took the form of a Boot Camp during which the competition’s main sponsors provided a series of mentoring workshops designed to help the contestants hone their pitches as they bid to land a coveted place in the Live Final taking place in Bristol on 23rd October.

The AVG workshop – appropriately held in a room called ‘dare’ – centred on overcoming sales objections.  Adapted from the classic objection-rebuttal cycle training that AVG provides to IT partners our workshop was based on the premise that entrepreneurs are great at dreaming up ideas for new products and services but are less confident when it comes to dealing with negative responses to their sales proposition.

Led by Mike Byrne, the workshop taught one or two simple techniques for overcoming common sales objections. People were then split into pairs for a role-playing exercise where they had the chance to practice what they’d learnt.  This format seemed to work very well, never failing to break the ice and fully engage the participants.  This was reflected in the numerous pieces of positive feedback that we received – a good example being this tweet from RecruitPacks.

Then it was time for the main event.  Everyone was given just 90 seconds to step up in front of a room full of judges and rivals, pitch their business idea and make the case why they should be selected to go through to the live final. There was a hugely diverse range of start-ups to choose from.

As lead sponsor and one of the judges AVG has the very difficult task choosing between such a high calibre of entries. Of course, AVG is always interested in eye-catching new ideas – especially in tech -Very occasionally, we take more than a passing interest as the recent acquisition of mobile monetization start-up Location Labs demonstrates.  If you would like to read more on this why not check out Mike Foreman’s recent interview with BusinessZone, published this week, where he talks more about what companies like AVG look for when weighing up prospective acquisitions and what entrepreneurs can expect.

The Boot Camp had a whole spectrum of businesses: everything from e-book stores and games for teaching numeracy; radon detectives and crime scene cleaners ; Twitter-driven advertising concepts and nano technology; and many more besides.  However in one thing Manchester was united. They all shared the same courage and determination. A willingness to push themselves well beyond their personal comfort zones in pursuit of making their business dreams come true.

For some the experience was plainly quite traumatic.  But in conquering their nerves they won the sympathy and support of the whole room.  A place in the live final awaits 30 of the top semi-finalists and a chance to present their pitch to a live audience, a panel of judges that will include Judy Bitterli, as well as investors and supporters.

One final word on Manchester to end on.  There cannot be many other business contests where people who are technically in fierce competition do so much bonding with their peers and provide so much emotional support for each other.  As Dan Martin editor of BusinessZone put it, “There was a lot of love in the room!”

AVG

AVG to lead innovation sessions at The Pitch, London

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This Thursday 4th September in London, AVG will be attending the first of two small business boot-camps as part of The Pitch, UK. Now in its seventh year The Pitch is one of the UK’s longest running small business competitions and awards thousands of pounds worth of prizes to innovative startups.

The boot camps will be attended by 100 small businesses that made it through the first stage of the competition. These are split into two regional groups, North and South, who will attend boot camps in Manchester (on 18th September) and this week in London where after an intense day of mentoring their pitching prowess will be assessed.

As a main sponsor for The Pitch, AVG is delighted to attend these boot camp sessions and will be working directly with the competitors in one of the hands-on sessions. The boot camps will focus on the four key pillars of pitching:

  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Business model innovation
  • Pitching

AVG’s Director of Partner Enablement Mike Byrne will be leading the Business Model Innovation session aimed to provide candidates with some useful ideas about how to optimise their business models and sharpen their sales techniques using technology. Whether it’s managing relationships, assessing the competition, reducing sales cycle time/costs or simply making life easier, technology has a lot offer business sales activities.

AVG’s philosophy is all about empowering small businesses to manage their technology simply and reliably so they can stop worrying about their data and concentrate on growth in today’s fast changing, increasingly mobile workplace.

After the boot camps, the competitors will be narrowed down from 100 to 30 applicants to proceed to the final where a winner will be chosen by a panel of judges including AVG’s own Judith Bitterli.

 

The overall winner of The Pitch will win a priceless prize package that includes expert mentoring from business leaders and free access to world leading products and services including free AVG CloudCare services for two years.

AVG

Microsoft Office 365 service module offers MSPs the best of both worlds

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Life for a managed services provider (MSP) is seldom straightforward.   Support staff in the service center have long had to juggle between screens as they log in and out of numerous applications from different vendors in the course of their day-to-day remote management operations. Over the years advances in technology have created ever more diverse technical environments for them to manage.  Nowadays it’s commonplace for customers to have a mix of traditional on-premise IT along with mobile devices and the latest cloud-based applications. The number of management screens just keeps on multiplying – all the while pushing up the time and costs of administration.

The Microsoft® Office 365™ cloud-based collaboration, communications and productivity software platform is a good example.  Its combination of Exchange e-mail, SharePoint online, Lync VoIP and conferencing online, web hosting via SharePoint and the Office Web Apps has proved extremely popular with businesses of all sizes. Indeed Microsoft’s own executives have described it as the fastest growing business in its history. Little surprise, then, that it has also gained a strong channel following with more than 60 percent of top MSPs seeking to wrap their services around one of the market’s current best sellers.

Yet managing this along with a multitude of other applications is no picnic.  Our MSP partners have been telling us that they would like a more convenient way to administer hybrid physical and online environments so that they can add value for customers with the Office 365 cloud platform.  In view of the large numbers of MSPs using Office 365, developing a solution to help our customers support and obtain recurring revenue streams from supporting Office 365 with ease and simplicity has been a priority.

The Microsoft Office 365 service module for AVG Managed Workplace®, just released, goes some way towards addressing this issue. It allows our channel partners to provide management services such as user password resets and mailbox policies – which Microsoft typically will not do – via a single screen through AVG Managed Workplace. In fact the module allows MSPs to remotely perform five of the most popular management tasks. Apart from the two already mentioned you can also set license expiration alerts, receive service down notifications and managing users without using Windows PowerShell®. Other administrative tasks can be accessed without any additional logins.

Allowing administrators to view all the essential information they need about cloud-based and on-premise applications together within the same screen in this way gives IT services providers the best of both worlds.  In so doing it neatly solves problem of multiple logins for partners and helps them to run their operations more efficiently.

Our simplification of Office 365 management for services providers is a clear demonstration of our commitment to our channel partners.  We will continue to add modules to AVG Managed Workplace that allow IT service providers reap productivity benefits and deliver long-term value to their customers.

In summary, the Office 365 service module represents a first step in developing easy ways to manage cloud data within AVG Managed Workplace – something that appears destined to become commonplace as more everyday objects and devices are IP-connected to form the Internet of Things. It also further enhances the wide range of productivity benefits already available to MSPs who use AVG Managed Workplace to remotely manage the IT of their entire customer-base through the same, single pane of glass.