SonicWall halves Australasian channel

Security appliance vendor SonicWall has restructured its Australasian channel, dumping half its local partners and seeking resellers more in tune with its goals.

Antony Chapman, sales director for SonicWall in the Asia-Pacific, confirmed the US appliance vendor had 'rationalised' its partner relationships across Australia and New Zealand -- dumping two out of an original four Australian partners and one out of a previous two New Zealand resellers.

In Australia, distributors TechPac and BMS had been let go, and distributor ITW in New Zealand. Lan-1 and Dovetail would continue to fly the SonicWall flag in Australia while Renaissance would do the same across the Tasman, he said.

'We sat down with them and got out our strategy and they made out theirs -- and [for Lan-1 and Dovetail] it was a good fit,' Chapman said.

He said SonicWall -- which recently opened an office in Singapore to oversee its Asia-Pacific operations -- was moving away from distributors to add more VARs -- especially VADs -- to its Medallion partner program. The company wanted to ensure that resellers in particular were supported by the distribution channel.

'It's not necessarily a new strategy but more an implementation to make our channel stronger, more services-oriented and with a focus on providing great support. It's a channel rationalisation process,' Chapman said.

However, he claimed business had gone well for SonicWall here in the past year, although he would not reveal actual figures. 'Over the past three to four quarters, we have grown by double-digits in terms of percentages,' he said.

Chapman said the company was not seeking a specific number of new partners but expected interest in its products to increase next year as companies spent more on network security.

New partners would participate in a points-based rewards system aimed at individual sales staff.

'We have a frequent-flyer type of program whereby resellers sign up for our Partner Advantage Program, and get points for what they sell. We're putting a lot of value-add on individuals in the reseller organisation,' Chapman said.

SonicWall sells a range of 'about seven or eight' products, including network-based security appliances incorporating VPN firewall, anti-virus applications and other security systems.

'You can ... go into the devices from anywhere in the world and implement anti-virus using a key for example, update and configure applications,' Chapman said.