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Strong Sales Growth Drives Wick Hill Acquisition Of Kaspersky Lab Business From C-Media

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.  

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman Wick Hill Group

"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."
 
About Wick Hill
Established in 1976, value added distributor Wick Hill specialises in secure infrastructure solutions. The company's portfolio covers security, performance, access, services and management. Wick Hill sources and delivers best-of-breed, easy-to-use solutions through its channel partners, providing customer support, implementation, technical services and authorised training courses.

The company works closely with vendors and its portfolio includes products from leading names such as WatchGuard, Check Point, Samsung, NETGEAR, VASCO, Allot, Barracuda, Open Text (formerly Hummingbird), Marshal8e6, Kaspersky Lab, ArcSight, CRYPTOCard and Yoggie. Offerings include firewalls, VPNs, UTM appliances, VoIP security, authentication, traffic management, log management, connectivity and converged solutions.

About Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky Lab delivers the world's most immediate protection against IT security threats, including viruses, spyware, crimeware, hackers, phishing, and spam. Kaspersky Lab products provide superior detection rates and the industry's fastest outbreak response time for home users, SMBs, large enterprises and the mobile computing environment. Kaspersky technology is also used worldwide inside the products and services of the industry's leading IT security solution providers. For further information, please visit www.kaspersky.co.uk. For the latest on antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and other IT security issues and trends, please visit www.viruslist.com

ENDS

For further press information, please contact Annabelle Brown on 01326 212130, email abpublicrelations@btinternet.com. For reader queries, please contact Wick Hill on 01483 227600, web www.wickhill.com. For pic of Ian Kilpatrick, please contact Annabelle Brown or download from http://www.wickhill.com/company/press/pictures.php