TORONTO – Managed services will be a big channel push for some security vendors this year, while some will also concentrate on developing partner-friendly products and solutions.
According to MX Logic Inc. executive vice president Pete Khanna, 2007 was the year managed services, and in particular managed security services, became a reality. The Englewood, Colo.-based firm predicted that more vendors will release managed security services in 2008, in turn creating a more integrated service set and allowing for greater adoption on a global basis.
As resellers and solution providers increasingly adopt managed services, distributors will play a key role in driving the implementation and acceptance of such services in the next year and beyond, MX Logic said. Distributors that sell managed services will bundle different offerings together into integrated solutions. In this way, customers will be able to access multiple resources through one service provider, and partners will be able to build new, recurring revenue streams.
Graham Bushkes, Canadian country manager for Fortinet Inc., agreed that the security-as-a-service market will experience rapid growth spurts in the coming year, “with more managed security service providers (MSSPs) offering both network and LAN security services,” including firewall/VPN management, content filtering, anti-virus and e-mail security. However, in order to achieve this, MSSPs will have to partner with integrated security hardware vendors, he said.
In the coming year, Fortinet will concentrate on its unified threat management (UTM) products. The vendor expects demand for more simplified security systems to increase as companies strive to meet critical IT needs and reduce costs. Since many customers “lack the internal resources to address very different types of security issues,” opportunities will emerge for value-added resellers (VARs) to fill in the security gap, Bushkes said.
McAfee Inc.’s senior vice-president of North American channels, David Dickison, also said his firm would continue to focus on managed services in the coming year. With its Total Protection for Small Business (TOPS) offering, which includes desktop and server anti-virus and anti-spyware, e-mail protection and a desktop firewall, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor will “continue to engage partners in how they can transition parts of their business from a traditional approach to a managed service approach with recurring revenue,” giving them higher predictability, Dickison said.
Other areas of focus for McAfee will include encryption, device control and data loss prevention, made possible through its acquisition of Safeboot for $350 million, completed in November. In addition, Dickison said McAfee plans to introduce security technologies for virtualized environments.
This column was written by Patricia Pickett of ConnectIT
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