Aquion adds four vendors

Specialist security distributor Aquion has bedded down vendor agreements with Patrick Townsend & Associates, Ecora, GuardedNet and Digital Persona in advance of what it expects to be a strong year.

Audrey Lyon, business development manager at Aquion, said the four new signings would broaden and deepen Aquion's coverage, complementing other security vendors with which the distributor already worked.

"Patrick Townsend & Associates makes software for the AS400 and IBM i-series and they do secure encryption and secure FTP, based on PGP algorithms," she said.

US-based Patrick Townsend & Associates' applications had not previously been sold into the Australian market, so the signing represented a new opportunity for resellers.

"This rounds out the PGP offerings," Lyon said. "They have got technology for SOA enabling, even providing web services, so it's a good move for us."

Ecora – which makes patch management and other security applications -- had worked with Australian resellers but hadn't had a distributor. Aquion was particularly interested in its enterprise auditing, Wi-Fi and device-locking products, she said.

"It was really Ecora Enterprise Auditor that attracted us, because of our channel and customers ," Lyon said.

Ecora Enterprise Auditor let users create a cross-platform configuration database for the likes of Cisco, Unix or Windows. Companies wanting to improve their disaster recovery processes could benefit, she said.

GuardedNet was a "really different category of technology" for overall security. "It's a security management and incident response system. What I like to say is it's sort of like a Tivoli for security," Lyon said.

"It's able to aggregate from right across the environment."

GuardedNet had real potential for consultancies, because it required a high level of skill to work with, Lyon said.

Aquion had also signed up Digital Persona, a vendor mainly known for its biometric technology. It had worked with another partner here in the specialised authentication and token solutions space and had "really good references" in the banking and finance industries, she said.

In general, Aquion was expecting a strong 2005, partly on the back of good sales in F-Secure and WRQ. PGP Universal was also getting "good traction", Lyon said.