“Cyberoam’s acquisition of SonicWall partners to help expand market reach”

Cyberoam is reaching out to customers and partners of SonicWall. The UTM vendor, committed to the growth of its market footprint in UTM space, has offered a lucrative trade-in offer on Sonicwall appliances, following the latter’s takeover by Dell. The excerpts of an exclusive interaction between Hemal Patel, CEO Elitecore Technologiesinteracts with Faiz Askari of Channel Times to discuss the business strategy and road map of the company. Excerpts:

-By Faiz Askari

With this acquisition of SonicWall partners, what are your projections in terms of bottom line of the business? Also, what does this strategic move mean for the company?
It is too early to comment on figures. We have recently launched this program and are initially getting good response.
We are committed to become a leader in UTM solutions space. The recent takeover of Sonicwall by Dell has created a good opportunity for us to increase market penetration of our UTM products and diversify across to new verticals and industry segments.

SonicWall is also known for its focus onto the SME segment. Will this acquisition bring more focus for you towards the SME segment?
Cyberoam delivers a cost-effective and comprehensive Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution, delivering enterprise-class Security Appliances to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with 60-400 users. SMEs can function with assured Security-Connectivity-Productivity, with Cyberoam UTM protection over a single security appliance, eliminating the need to invest in multiple solutions. In the last few years we have emerged as a string brand in the segment. Addition to the SonicWall customer/channel partners will strengthen our brand in the segment.

Are you expecting a rise in the number of channel partners base?
We are expecting a 15-20 percent increase in the existing channel partner base. Partners can benefit from our high brand loyalty among its existing customer base and attractive margins provided.

Please highlight the key benefit of strategy for the customers?
Existing Sonicwall customers can take advantage of this offer to upgrade their UTM protection to Cyberoam’s identity-based UTM appliances which render end-to-end user visibility through Layer 8 technology, thus helping organizations stay secure from insider threats and data leakage.

Cyberoam has bought an interesting model for cost effective delivery for UTM solutions mainly targeting the smaller businesses. Please elaborate on this?
Cyberoam UTM offers visibility and controls over the Application Layer 7 and User Layer 8, enabling the firewall to identify applications and users. Cyberoam integrates firewall with the 4 elements of who (users), which (application), when (time) and what (bandwidth). This ensures the creation of the most efficient, straightforward set of firewall rules to make bandwidth available for critical applications and staggering non-critical application usage