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Tarek Houballa, Cisco.

Unified threat management (UTM) has grown in stature as a concept during recent years, taking advantage of demand from end-users that want an uncomplicated approach to security. But channel players who assume it’s an easy way to make a quick buck need to think again.

Channel Middle East spoke to the following UTM experts: Judhi Prasetyo (JP), regional channel manager at Fortinet; Shahnawaz Sheikh (SS), regional sales manager at Sonicwall; Surender Bishnoi (SB), regional manager for sales Middle East at Cyberoam; Mark Romano (MR), director of global field and channel marketing at Watchguard; Tarek Houballa (TH), systems engineering manager at Cisco Gulf and Pakistan; and Taj El-Khayat (TE), regional channel manager at Juniper.

Over the last few years UTM solutions have entered the mainstream IT market. What kind of end-users should Middle East VARs be targeting?

TH: UTMs were created for the type of customers that wanted to have the maximum solution in a minimal box, so the UTM is usually a firewall bundled with an IDS and an IPS bundled with an anti-virus and whatever you can get in.

Traditionally, the ideal customer has been the SMB, particularly financial environments such as small banks and branches.

However, this is a generic answer because the UTM has evolved and some vendors, including Cisco, have pushed UTM to be more capable. But it definitely wouldn’t include large enterprises or data centres, for instance.

MR: UTM performance has increased greatly over the past two years and this has allowed SMEs to deploy UTMs without risking bandwidth bottlenecks. We see increased adoption of UTMs in distributed environments where there are multiple branch offices.

VARs should look at SMB and SME environments that want to get the most out of their IT budget. Businesses affected by regulatory compliance, such as PCI and DSS, are ideal candidates for UTM.

SS: This crisis period is almost a blessing in disguise because enterprise customers that used to buy premium-priced products are looking at cost-effective and easy-to-use solutions that can be managed with minimum staff.

Considering this, we feel we have an edge over the companies with the premium-priced products. Our solutions are simple to use and easy to manage. I would expect our resellers to focus on the enterprise sector, which until last year was dominated by some of our competitors.

TE: Unified threat management is a very broad subject, but usually small offices and remote offices are the best demographic for the UTM. In Dubai and the Middle East you have a lot of multinationals that are opening small remote offices here so they could be good clients for UTM.

Retail outlets, with the expansion of malls, is an excellent demographic for UTM expansion, as are fixed telecommuters that also require access and companies with multiple branches such as banks. Oil and gas, with offshore rigs, too.

When the competition is so fierce what can resellers do to differentiate their offering, and how as a vendor do you support channel partners with this?

TH: They need to sell competencies and services, such as consultancy and advisory. Security is more like insurance so the customer must have the assurances that it is safe and secure.

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