The Rise of Unified Threat Management
UTM’s ease of use makes it the security product of choice for many, but resellers need to earn their stripes to be preferred partners with leading vendors.
By Sandhya Malhotra
The blistering pace of expansion in the world of computer networks has led to two prominent effects: first, as the Internet built itself with more interactive, real time content distribution, application vendors kept rolling out new services. Second, security breaches at the gateway (entry point) of a network skyrocketed as never before.
What is more, attacks are only getting stealthier by the day. In the last three years, the nature of attacks has seen a shift from simple, network-based attacks to blended, content-based ones that utilize multiple transmission techniques to spread malware and attack other computers.
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Security experts say that traditional and point security solutions are not enough to effectively block blended attacks from entering and leaving the network. A single weak link in security can compromise an entire security implementation. The rise in blended threats is driving the demand for blended security at the gateway. It is no surprise then that UTM (Unified Threat Management) appliances, which pack in the features of individual security appliances like firewalls, SSL-VPNs (Secure Socket Layer Virtual Private Network), IDPs (Intrusion Detection and Prevention) and gateway antivirus, are the fastest growing segment in the security appliance market.
A pull market
With the UTM segment poised for explosive growth—analysts predict a 50–60 percent year on year growth—vendors like Fortinet, Elite Core and Sonic Wall are aggressively marketing their products. New vendors keen to grab a piece of the security pie keep emerging and they are racing to deliver products that tap into this opportunity.
According to Chennai-based Sudarsan Ranganathan, CEO of solution provider Veeras Infotek, who has been in the security market since 1992, demand for UTMs comes largely from the SMB section, followed by the enterprise customers. He also says that in the UTM product space, which is a pull market, they do not require any assistance from vendors in terms of lead generation.
Ranganathan, however, points to other aspects of UTM selling that cry for attention. “For channel partners, getting pre- and after-sales service from the vendors is more important,” he says. Another issue resellers face is delays in return/replacement of the material.
On resellers’ aspirations to explore new market opportunities, he says that in order to do so they (the resellers) need to have demo appliances in place and at the same time understand the basic level of security of customers in order to scale up security through appropriate configuration and implementation.
John Dilullo, vice president of worldwide sales for SonicWall, affirms that the SMB segment is the biggest consumer of UTMs for reasons that have do with the economy of the appliance. “80 percent of our revenues comes from the SMB segment. With falling bandwidth costs, SMBs offer Internet access to all its employees.”
According to Dilullo, falling costs have led to increasing SMB presence on the Internet and a rise in B2B and B2C commerce as well as communications via the Internet. “SMBs can neither afford the large capital expenditure involved in purchase of multiple solutions nor do they have the manpower and capacity to handle high operational expenditure involved in multiple solutions with multiple updates, AMCs and vendors. This has led to UTMs capturing the SMB market,” Dilullo said.
Vendor demands
While vendors are empowering resellers on critical fronts through extensive training, sales and marketing support, and through participation in regional events and programs, they are also expecting a lot more from them. The ability of the reseller to transform himself from just a reseller to a systems integrator or solution provider is highly prized, especially so in the UTM space.
In fact, the reseller’s skill-set is so important to some vendors that it can influence the vendor’s choice of reseller for partnering. “The ability to design scalable network architectures and integration skills are very important,” says Digvijay Singh Chudasama, vice president of sales at Cyberoam.
Another trait vendors look out for in resellers is how well they identify with customers’ requirements. Says Ajit Pathak, country head of sales operations for SecureSynergy, “A partner should understand the customer’s infrastructure and, based on that knowledge, the policies/products should be implemented.” He also insists that as a best practice customers should carry out a third party firewall audit.
Another area resellers need to get their act right is building relationships with the customer. According to Fortinet’s country manager (India), Vishak Raman, “So much of a reseller’s or solution provider’s time is spent focusing on activities like marketing, lead generation and systems integration that there is hardly any room left for developing and nurturing customer relationships and closing sales, which should actually be the primary concern.”
Final frontier
As cybercrimes increase in complexity with each passing day, UTMs are getting more attention. Vendors are focusing on the UTM space and investing in a big way in order to research and develop more security for applications.
IDC projects a strong growth rate of 80.1 percent in the UTM market segment. Vendors see a lot of potential in emerging markets. “We expect our products to sell in good numbers in B & C-class cities,” says Raman.
With the evolvoing nature of threats, vendors have also added capabilities to UTMs. The definition of UTM has changed to accommodate this development: today UTMs include more than the four-feature set defined by IDC to include additional features, such as content filtering, multi-ISP load sharing, anti-spam, traffic management and VLAN support. Also certification from independent test labs and organizations like ICSA (International Computer Security Association) is becoming increasingly important for UTM devices. |