OREANDA-NEWS. Kaspersky Lab held its annual Emerging Markets Partner Conference, which took place in Marrakech, Morocco and brought together more than 100 visitors from 42 counties from the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. The company's partners found out more about its new enterprise-level security strategy, partnership enhancements and heard about the latest trends in the world of cyberthreats; they shared their best practices, received technology training and discussed the latest hot topics. Some partners received awards for their outstanding results in a number of spheres.

During the conference, which offered Kaspersky Lab's partners opportunities for both formal and informal discussion, eight presentations and a training session were delivered by Kaspersky Lab's key executives and experts: Chief Business Officer Garry Kondakov, Managing Director in the Emerging Markets Maxim Frolov, Director of the Global Research & Analysis Team Costin Raiu, Head of Product and Technology Intelligence Vladimir Zapolyansky, Chief Marketing Officer Alexander Erofeev, and others.

In his opening presentation Garry Kondakov spoke about the new challenges Kaspersky Lab is facing today as the world's economies constantly shift. He stressed that although the situation is changing the users and enterprises still need protection and pointed out that the success of the company's operations relies not only on an effective line of security products, which are being constantly updated and introduced, but also on the partner community's ability to reach the client.

Ў°The IT world is changing more rapidly than it has in the past, bringing us new challenges. During the last couple of years we have seen the emergence of new trends affecting IT companies' business models. In addition a totally new generation of buyers has appeared and they expect us to be flexible enough to meet their requirements. At the same time the world still has a basic need for security and the key to delivering it to the users and companies during this on-going turbulence is an evolving partner ecosystem. This is the reason we are moving on up to a new level of mutual relations with our partners: to maintain a swift pace and successfully pursue each new opportunity as it arrivesЎ±, concluded Garry Kondakov, Kaspersky Lab's Chief Business Officer.

The conference focused on the company's continued commitment to the partner channel. Kaspersky Lab's dedicated support of its channel has seen its partner network becoming stronger each year. During the Annual Award Ceremony several partners got special attention for their success:

Best Marketing Initiative of the Year - Solo Networks (Brazil);

Best Project of the Year - Sariya Company (Saudi Arabia); li>Best Support Services of the Year - Network Secure;

Best Growth of the Year in the B2B Segment - Sistemas Applicativos (Guatemala);

Best Sales Person of the Year - Cesar Paulin Paredes, Bufete de IngenierЁЄa en Telecomunicaciones y Sistemas S.A. de C.V (BITS) (Mexico);

Best Reseller of the Year - NSC Bilisim (Turkey);

Best Distributor of the Year - Phoenix Distribution (South Africa).

In his presentation Maxim Frolov spoke about the strategies that have led the company and its partners to leading positions in the Emerging Markets in recent years, and elaborated on the new trends and opportunities that provide the chance to make even greater progress.

Ў°We are no longer simply an antivirus company. We are Security Solution Provider that is able to deliver world class solutions at the enterprise level. As the demand for security solutions grows, we are aiming high. In order to secure future growth we are going to empower our partner eco-system with new level of dedication and focus. That means we will raise our sales and technical support to a new level, we will help our partners to evolve to enterprise level solutions, growing their competencies and market presence. We know this is a pretty big commitment from our side, but we are ready and believe in this passionately. This is what Partnership 2.0 means for usЎ±, said Maxim Frolov, Kaspersky Lab's Emerging Markets Managing Director.