Sonal Desai, CRN, June 17, 2011, 1000 hrs
Partners have welcomed the acquisition of Astaro—a private provider of network security solutions by Sophos – an IT security and data protection firm.
Earlier too, Sophos brought in PE firms TA associates (in 2002), and Apax (in 2010) to monetize the investment into sustainable and profitable product lines. With UTM added to the kitty, the company would look at more security related products/services including reputation management, managed security services, etc.
Astaro, with $56 million in billings and 30% year over year growth in 2010, is the fourth largest dedicated unified threat management (UTM) provider. With over 56,000 installations in over 60 countries, it protects business and government networks, and has more than 220 employees in nine countries across three continents.
Traditionally, Astaro has been a mid-market player (focus on <250 nodes). This market has witnessed about 20 percent growth last year, and is expected grow in 2011 and 2012 also. “Astaro has significant presence in Europe (about $19.4 million revenues from Europe) for access control and Sophos would use its resources to harness the managed side story of Astaro to shore up revenues through that channel. It would help Sophos to provide better end point (its bread and butter) + UTM integration (where it used to compete with Fortinet, Juniper, etc) across markets,” said T.R. Madan Mohan, Managing Partner, Browne & Mohan.
But Sophos would have to work on the pricing front since Astaro is more expensive then Checkpoint and Fortinet. “During our discussions with the management team, we pointed out that the pricing of Astaro needs to be right-sized. Pricing wise, Sophos is more competitive and flexible. So hopefully this acquisition should make Astaro’s pricing also flexible,” said Amit Shirolkar, Vice President, of Pune based AVI Electronics & Networks, a Sophos partner.
“Fortinet, Cyberoam, Sonicwall and other traditional UTM players have been addressing the market through OEM and channel partners. Astaro has been a complete channel led company and Sophos would fold the channels into one in about two quarters. Sophos street prices would be closer or lesser than Fortinet. It would also offer huge discounts on support cost to beat the competition,” Mohan said.
Ashok Kumar, CEO, RAH InfoTech, the sole distributor of Astaro in India is also optimistic. “We will continue to distribute Astaro. Both the companies are encouraging cross selling. Although, we would sell Sophos products and solutions, the billing would be done by Sophos distributors and vice versa. Secondly, customers get a single window for endpoint security and vendor support. Thirdly, Sophos is a big name in the market and we will leverage on that. And lastly, since both the companies are European, there will be no cultural difference, which is another plus. For us, it is a good story to sell to the customers.” |