Watching over SME networks

WatchGuard Technologies Inc. sees a big market for its integrated VPN-firewall security appliances among SME manufacturers and software houses, says Akhtar Pasha

According to a Frost & Sullivan report, the firewall (FW), VPN and intrusion detection system (IDS) market was worth $22.7 million in 2003. This is expected to grow to $28.3 million in 2004 at a CAGR of 24.1 percent, the highest in the APAC region. (China, Australia and Singapore have a projected CAGR of 20.4, 7.4 and 3.2 percent respectively for the

same period). Vishak Raman, country sales manager-India, WatchGuard Technologies Inc. says, “$22.7 million is a sizeable market opportunity for us. Our security appliances are focused on the fastest growing vertical in the SME space—manufacturing and software houses.” WatchGuard has 200 installations of its flagship products—WatchGuard Firebox Vclass and Firebox III.

Frost & Sullivan has rated WatchGuard and Symantec highest in customer satisfaction. Chandrashekar G, assistant manager-Systems, India Life Hewitt says, “We have started using WatchGuard solutions recently and our experience with the product’s performance has been totally satisfactory. WatchGuard packs many features in a single appliance, such as stringent security policies with built-in features of firewall, VPN, and packet filtering for high throughput, load balancing, and email-content filtering—it is a value for money solution.” India Life Hewitt is planning to add a few more appliances from WatchGuard in the near future.

This low-profile company has come out-of-the-blue and is second only to Symantec in the appliance-based security solution market. In 18 months since commencing operations in India, WatchGuard’s clients include Krone Communications, SBI, India Life Hewitt (ILH), DTDC, Tata Elxsi, NIIT and Kale Consultants.

WatchGuard’s flagship product, the Firebox Vclass, is an enterprise-class product that comes in six variants that have some common features such as pre-integrated Firewall and VPN along with intrusion detection system (IDS), a LiveSecurity service for live updates or patches, advanced proxy capabilities and an unlimited user license. The Firebox Vclass is priced between Rs 4.5 and Rs 20 lakh. Its Firebox III product has five variants and is best suited for medium-sized enterprises. The products are price upwards of Rs 1.8 lakh. Firebox III also supports IDS, mobile VPN and branch VPN, firewall, Network Address Translation (NAT), content filtering and spam protection. Of the 200 installations, about 140 are Firebox III products with the balance being Firebox Vclass implementations. Its solution provides an integrated security solution (Firewall and VPN) for medium-sized businesses. Raman adds, “The Firebox III range of products will continue to be our front runner.”

WatchGuard has benefited from its global contact (R Systems) centre being located in Delhi. The centre offers local technical support for WatchGuard’s customers in India.

akhtar@expresscomputeronline.com