Woking, Surrey: 14th September, 2009 - VAD Wick Hill has acquired the Kaspersky Lab business from fellow Kaspersky Lab distributor C-Media, with immediate effect. This follows strong Kaspersky Lab sales growth at both Wick Hill and C-Media.
Wick Hill has distributed Kaspersky Lab solutions in the UK and Germany for many years and this deal signifies an increased investment in Kaspersky Lab for the distributor and an increased commitment to the company.
Ian Kilpatrick, chairman Wick Hill Group, said: “We think that this deal provides excellent opportunities for C-Media, its Kaspersky Lab anti-virus resellers, and also for Wick Hill. We are very excited by this opportunity to further grow our Kaspersky Lab business.
“Our Kaspersky Lab reseller partners have been gaining business and market share against competitive workstation and server security vendors. This deal gives us even more resources to support them.
"To ensure a smooth transition for all C-Media’s Kaspersky Lab resellers, we have set up a special team at Wick Hill and both ourselves and Kaspersky Lab will be working closely with the resellers over the coming months.
“We have invested in finance, marketing and staff resources to grow business for and with our existing Kaspersky Lab channel partners, alongside the new resellers, and we plan to continue to deliver strong sales and margin growth to them in the coming years.”
Kilpatrick said it was an exciting time to be partnering with Kaspersky Lab. He stressed that Kaspersky Lab’s technical excellence, its cost-effectiveness, its low overhead on workstations, together with the speed of threat response, are all being increasingly recognised by customers and market penetration is growing fast.
Malcolm Tuck, managing director UK and Ireland for Kaspersky Lab, said: “We are pleased with this deal and are committed to ensuring a successful transition for C-Media resellers. This acquisition by Wick Hill fits closely with our own growth strategy for the UK market.
“Our business has grown by 86% during the first half of 2009 and we have also increased our reseller base by over 20%. Our technology and expertise is well recognised and we recently won ‘Security Product of the Year’ in the 2009 SC Magazine awards."