Infosec 2011 channel roundup

With 300 vendors in attendance, Infosec 2011 enjoyed a busy start this week.

With one of the busiest stands at the show, distributor VADition crammed six vendors onto its booth including Fortinet, AeroHive, Q1 Labs and recently signed up Exinda, which the disti hopes will challenge Riverbed in the web application acceleration space. VADition also unveiled FireEye, a product its marketing head Barry Desmond, describes as “letting enterprises really see what they have been missing” when it comes to zero day malware detection.

Wick Hill highlighted its strength in the convergence arena with a range of security systems including Sipera with its smartphone and SIP trunking security as well as Kaspersky Lab’s Mobile Security 9, which received a lot of interests from spectators.

Newcomers

G Data, another vendor in the crowded antivirus space, marked its first year in the UK with an InfoSec stand. The vendor, which has just signed a distribution deal with Koch in retail, is also “in discussion with two other distributors’” in the enterprise space according to UK channel sales manager James Coombes.

Other newcomers to InfoSec included Conseal, a UK start up offering protection for removable media, which launched a new server product to allow enterprises to monitor and provide remote access control using cloud and on premise.

Created as an antidote to embarrassing data losses suffered by organisations like the DWP two years ago, Conseal has also begun a fledgling effort to recruit partners. Tom Colvin, chief technology officer and co-founder talked about “ongoing discussion” to sign a distributor to bring the technology to market in a two tier model.

Old Hands

Established players like Webroot also used Infosec as a stage to launch new mobile device management and enhancements to its cloud strategy. Ian Moyse, EMEA channel director described a commitment to develop more MSP relationships and ongoing behind the scenes work to get its platform into a modular form to plug into helpdesk platforms like Kaseya and others that have proven popular with growing managed service providers.

Barracuda Networks’ Michael Hughes, VP for worldwide sales enthused about the show and professed a message to help educate its channel on the depth of its product portfolio. Admitting that maybe it “hadn’t done enough to educate its channel,” the firm believes that demand for its security and backup business has led  to growth in its UK channel of around 20 percent in the last year to hit 500 partners. The firm also confirmed that it has added another 10 staff on the ground to support its European channel during the same period.

Old hands like Vasco pitched a message of verticalisation and solid growth. Dan Verbruggen, director of indirect sales channel for EMEA gave a nod to the mismanagement by RSA of its security breach response saying that Vasco had taken the opportunity to communicate its own security procedures and highlight its credentials to partners. The firm also choose the event to honour a number of partners’ including Ultima Business Solutions for a massive project at the AA, RM for several high profile wins and Seecon as one of its fastest growing partners.

With one of the tallest stands on the floor, F5 Networks arrival at Infosec coincided with the firm posting a second-quarter profit jump of 68 percent. The vendor, which has around 15 top tier partners in the UK, is in the process of training up a few more to sit at the high table. It says it feels its rules engines and XML interfaces allow partners to create unique customisations for demanding web centric environments.

F5 has also tweaked its partner programme to help partners move up the tiers. “If [partners] add technical resources or equipment for a proof of concept it also gives additional margins, it helps the up and coming to add value and get ready for gold status” explained Owen Cole, UK technical director for F5 who feels that helping to build innovative cloud services as another potential money spinner for its channel over the next few years.

Elsewhere, cloud was a big theme this year with firms including Cryptosoft launching the first encryption in the cloud service and Gridsure offering the first “pattern based authentication” also in a cloud. Both firms are currently looking for reseller and system integration partners.