Channel surges after Network Box

Managed security player, Network Box's aggressive push into the Australian channel has scored big with 17 new resellers achieving Level 1 certification since the campaign kicked off in July.

Spearheaded by distribution partner Firewall Systems, which recently hired ex-LAN Systems GM Nick Verykios, its channel focus resulted in over 30 new deals, ranging from $20,000 to $3 million over the past 60 days.

Network Box director, Andrew Tune, was cagey as to which companies had signed on the dotted line, with the exception of equestrian outfitters Weatherbeeta and Illawarra Christian School.

Weatherbeeta are using Network Box Australia to secure its worldwide managed IPsec VPN. With offices in the UK, Europe, New Zealand, the US and China, CEO, Michael Bucknall, said that the company has calculated it would save up to $100,000 per year in communications and security costs.

“The rollout of the Network Box systems has improved our security dramatically but it has also saved us substantial expenses on the telecommunications front,” said Bucknall.

“All things considered, by the time this rollout is finished, we'll be close to $100,000 per year ahead.”

Indications are, however, that network based managed security services are only starting to take off. Quoting a Yankee Group report, Tune said “that 90 percent of security will be outsourced by 2010.”

“When you think about it, this number is probably a bit on the conservative side,” added Verykios. “CIOs and IT managers, no matter how hard they try, are not security specialists and there is a tendency among everyone, vendors and IT professionals to plan to combat yesterday's threat.

“When you also consider that from a corporate governance perspective, under the provisions of CLERP and Sarbanes-Oxley, a company can't audit its own security, it doesn't make a lot of sense to try and keep it in-house.”

The final advantage of outsourcing security, said Tune, is that if things go wrong, if a company has outsourced there is always someone to sue.