Johannesburg, 12 Aug 2013
The issues surrounding security, especially in the SME sphere, have seen firms like SonicWALL that deliver tight and scalable security solutions, grow steadily over the years. SonicWALL sparked Dell's interest for a number of reasons, and its purchase of the company in 2012 put Dell in a superb position with the channel.
"SonicWALL is more than just a company that produces VPN products, continuous data protection and backup software," explains Othelo Vieira, product manager for Dell at Tarsus Technologies. "What made it such a great buy for Dell is the current value in the unified threat management market, and how the company's unified threat management tools account for 77% of its sales. That and the fact that SonicWALL has made over 139 patent applications to the US Patent and Trademark Office, of which 64 have been issued to date."
SonicWALL also had a very well-developed reseller market, with over 15 000 worldwide channel partners. These merged with the PartnerDirect programmes currently offered by Dell on a global scale. The channel benefited from the increased support and infrastructure, making it far easier to integrate the new offerings into current products and services.
Certainly, one of the trends currently circling the market is that of data centre security. The questions being asked by decision-makers - the growth of BYOD, the demands of the user and the business - can all be secured using the current set of SonicWALL products that have already been tried and tested in the market.
"Customers see security as one of their biggest concerns," says Vieira. "In many cases, especially in emerging markets, it is seen as the main IT risk. The spread of data across a multitude of devices, many of which are not even monitored or protected, is a big problem, and by offering the SonicWALL range of services to their clients, Dell is taking a big step towards alleviating these concerns." Dell's strategy has been to focus on cost-effective and affordable technology solutions for consumers and businesses alike. Its products are easy to use, reliable and have been doing with security what it has been doing with networking and storage - making it simple, focusing on key features and giving complete solutions to the small to medium business market.
It has succeeded. One year on, Dell SonicWALL is rated as one of the leading next-generation firewall vendors, with solutions that deliver tight, scalable and flexible security to businesses.
"Dell's taking on SonicWALL meant they were able to diversify," says Vieira. "In a market where returns are shrinking on hardware, thanks to the ever increasing growth of the tablet arena, Dell has adapted a strategy that's taking a clear long-term view, one that should make the minds of their channel rest easy."
The Dell SonicWALL firewall SuperMassive E10800 has received the coveted Recommend rating in NSS Labs 2013 Next Generation Security Map for the second year in a row, with a score of 100% in stability and reliability, firewall, application control and identity awareness testing. It's an impressive accolade and one that shows how an investment into the future has paid off for this forward-thinking organisation.
"It was nothing short of brand genius and has boosted their credibility in the security space considerably," concludes Vieira.
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