Spam diet expanding for Melbourne Barracuda

Anti-spam appliance vendor Barracuda Networks has opened its first Australian office, planning to ramp up staff and reseller numbers as revenues rise.

Paul Oxley, regional manager for US-based Barracuda, said the company had opened an office in Melbourne to boost sales via recently signed local distributors WhiteGold Solutions and Roswel.

"Our products have been available in Australia since May or June 2004," he said. "Because wherever we have an office we have had a significant increase in sales."

Oxley said Barracuda's anti-spam appliance, dubbed Spam Firewall, had only been in the market for a relatively short time but had already claimed pole position for anti-spam appliances worldwide.

"And we're aiming to be number one spam solution in 12 to 18 months," he said. "There's really only a handful of anti-spam appliances."

Oxley said Spam Firewall's advantage was it wasn't priced per user.
Also, it gave similar results as anti-spam software but fitted easily into a gap in the market for anti-spam product that was affordable for organisations with 10 to 30 users, he said. Barracuda Networks had some 10,000 enterprises covered by Spam Firewall. "And nobody else is claiming anything like that many for their solutions."

The new Melbourne office would initially be staffed by Oxley only, but the company planned to take on technical staff for the office in the near future, he said.

WhiteGold and Roswel were both taken on a few months back. Barracuda had no plans to sign more distributors, Oxley said.

Dominic Whitehand, managing director at WhiteGold Solutions, said Barracuda product had so far been selling well.

"It's going very well. The pipeline is building up as we speak. We had an evaluation box that went out with one of our resellers and the customers tend to keep it," Whitehand said. "There's a very short sales cycle."

Spam Firewall should compete well against software anti-spam packages as well as other appliances, he said.