ESET continuing to increase MSP support
Security player has been evolving its partner position over the past couple of years to increase the support it can provide managed service providers
ESET has been on a mission to make life easier for managed service providers (MSPs) to support its existing base and make it an attractive partner to fresh prospects.
The security player has evolved its platform and used its ESET World event last month to outline an enhanced MDR offering for MSPs, as well as improve its cloud security and expand its artificial intelligence (AI) advisor to support partners looking to respond to customer demand or services that both exploit and defend against AI-capable tools.
Matt Knell, UK country manager at ESET, said it had to arm its channel with technology advancements as well as make it straightforward to sell and add services around the firm’s offerings.
“It’s been a combination of a year or so, roadmap and investment, in moving to a new platform,” he said. “Everything then goes into that one management platform. That brings, obviously, one platform, rather than potentially multiple platforms. That brings the ability of better reporting, better functionality, and enhanced solutions being developed into those new platforms as well.”
That platform approach was also seen as a move that would make life much easier for MSPs trying to juggle the management demands generated by protecting customers.
“Specifically for MSPs, [before the platform] it was hard for them to integrate and get into their offerings, so that’s now removed, and it’s a very slick, very easy, very standard, straightforward process of being able to adopt managed detection and response from ESET,” said Knell.
“For those MSPs that are delivering the security management of traditional endpoint security, that’s great, to deliver true managed detection and response that takes resource, 24/7 platforms of SIEM, SOCs, etc,” he said. “We can now give that to MSPs that don’t want to make that big investment, but they can then continue to deliver the security operations that they do for the customers with that enhancement of managed detection and response, which for small and mid-sized businesses – which MSPs tend to sell to – is huge.”
Making the processes work
Knell said the technology was a major part of the proposition, but that it had to also make the processes work for an MSP business model.
“It’s not just about one size fits all … it’s got to be easy and it’s got to be straightforward,” he added. “They want to be able to support their customers and deliver what customers are hearing about.”
Over the past year, ESET has significantly increased its MDF funding, with the vast majority of its sales being generated via partners.
“We are front and centre, and supporting thousands of partners who sell ESET every year,” he added. “Our adoption and growth is all through the channel. Everything we do about growing is through the channel.”
“The past two years have been about giving more to partners than anything else … we want them to be more profitable, and we want them to retain more of the margin that we’re giving them as well,” said Knell.
He said the firm was continuing to look at increasing the support it could offer the channel, particularly MSPs, and the business was working on further developments to help protect and increase margins for partners.
