According to the IT businesswire, the veteran ITsec vendor is partnering with ES Williams, a Canadian IT consulting firm, to pilot the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering – which will be known as Kaspersky Service Provider Edition (SPE) – which will be launched in the second quarter of this year.
The newswire reports Andrew Leung, ES Williams' vice president, as telling partners at Kaspersky's partner event in Cancun, Mexico, that the service will offer a low monthly cost and the ability to add/subtract licences as required.
"There is no capital outlay or infrastructure cost for clients to acquire this end point security solution. It's a low cost point of entry for customers and we have been able to manage it on our network, which will help them be protected better", Leung told delegates.
Gary Abad, vice president of North American channel sales for Kaspersky, meanwhile, is quoted as saying that his firm will initially be offering Kaspersky SPE to resellers that already handle managed services.
Abad added that pricing and channel margins on the SaaS offering are still being discussed.
Infosecurity notes that the plans outlined at C3 Americas build upon comments made at the C2 Americas event in the Dominican Republic this time last year, when Keith Maskell, vice president of Kaspersky corporate, said the company was looking at a September 2010 launch for its SaaS offering.
"We're depending on the channel here, it's a channel-friendly model for distribution", he said at the time.