Cybersecurity firm Sourcefire (NASDAQ:FIRE) has lifted the lid on plans to roll out its Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) and Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) to partners at its Global Partner Advisory Council.
The vendor met with partners to get feedback on its product strategy, channel programme and incentives. Sourcefire expanded its channel in EMEA by 25 percent over last 12 months, with distributor Avnet (NYSE:AVT) its big UK signing.
“Sourcefire was a natural fit for our business,” explains Bruce Hockin, head of business strategy, networking and security at Avnet. He says having Sourcefire as part of its stable will prove valuable in the move from network to application-based security.
“By integrating application control and network context into its Next-Generation IPS, Sourcefire is providing Avnet’s channel partners with a competitive advantage, protecting end user customers against threats posing the most risk to their networks.”
Gartner predicts that 50 percent of the IPS sold in 2015 will be next generation firewalls. Sourcefire says its NGIPS increases the power of traditional IPS solutions by providing contextual awareness to accurately identify real threats, an open architecture to enable customisation and intelligent automation for impact assessment and IPS tuning. The vendor says it plans to expand its security portfolio to include NGFW in the second half of 2011.
This year saw Sourcefire launch its Global Security Alliance Channel Programme, with a strong focus on its deal registration scheme, which Graham Welch, EMEA managing director at Sourcefire describes as “the most aggressive deal registration programme in the industry” and “brought some serious margin differentiation to partners.”
