Riverbed Technology has signed a partnership deal with McAfee to integrate security on Riverbed's wide area network (WAN) optimisation solution for organisations dealing with remote offices.
According to Riverbed, the solution includes McAfee Firewall Enterprise software running on Riverbed's Steelhead appliance. This speeds up data and application access across remote offices while protecting critical information and infrastructure from security threats.
Mark Lewis, Riverbed senior director of marketing and alliances, told ITWeb the solution is well suited for Africa because the continent faces infrastructure challenges, high latency, dispersed offices and inconsistent broadband availability.
“What is significant about the partnership is that it adds a security element to the box and enables people to communicate with one another securely from multiple locations as if they were in the same place,” notes Lewis.
“Environments facing bandwidth challenges are where we can bring the biggest improvement. It reduces the traffic across the WAN, and improves the quality of service for an organisation.”
Linking up
Lewis explains Riverbed will add more partners to the Riverbed Service Platform. “This won't necessarily be from the security space, but we will look at making partnership deals with companies in other areas, such as media streaming and print services.”
Jayson O'Reilly, McAfee regional manager for Africa, says that coupled with its acquisition drive, the security giant is also making headway in its channel partnership strategy.
McAfee plans to acquire three to four companies every year to help drive its growth. McAfee's biggest acquisition to date was its purchase in 2008 of Internet security company Secure Computing for $465 million.
O'Reilly, points out: “One of the key things McAfee is driving towards in the 24 months is partnerships, as part of McAfee's Security Alliance Innovation Partnership strategy. We will look at key security players and IT organisations McAfee traditionally doesn't focus on. We have currently partnered with over 100 vendors globally.”
Changing landscape
According to O'Reilly, businesses are struggling to keep up with the number of technologies available, and he expects this will fuel consolidation in the vendor space.
O'Reilly agrees with Lewis that one of the biggest challenges South African companies face is broadband. “The partnership with Riverbed is to enable organisations to reduce bandwidth costs, accelerate functionality, and increase the security of the organisation.
“There is constant development to get customers away from reliance on the vendor and to improve risk management. We are trying to make our customers proactive about where they should be focusing their efforts.”
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