Watchguard plays the zero-day protection card

When you are in an overcrowded market and face competition from several other
companies who are offering more or less the same products as yours, what do you
do? Ajit Pillai, Country Manager, Watchguard India believes that you should talk
about the finer aspects of your products and your service strength. Especially
when your response time can determine your success rate.

"Our business model is service and not hardware. A lot of our
competitors think that selling units is all that matters. But that is not
true," noted Ajit. This is why he

is busy interacting with his channel partners, educating them about the zero-day
protection offered by Watchguard's products. 

Zero-day threat protection refers to identifying threats before they affect
users, and coming up with solutions for it proactively. "We have a response
team that comes up with as many as 15 patches daily, for any imminent
threats," explained Ajit.

The company introduced three models of the Gateway Firebox X, a firewall
appliance for SMBs and corporates, which monitors incoming SMTP traffic. Priced
between $300 to $700, this product is an add-on security device that can be used
in conjunction with any firewall from another brand as well. Watchguard is
offering a 30-day trial version of this product to its existing customers,
through its channel.

Watchguard has also built its gateway firewall appliances on open source,
which is less susceptible to attacks. Another reason for it is to help other
vendors to load their proprietary OS on the product and therefore make it more
scalable.

Watchguard has great hopes and plans for the Indian market, especially as the
country was the best performer in the APac region for its sales in the last six
months. APac contributed 28% to Watchguard's global sales. The company has
already bagged 550 customers in the country and is focusing on verticals like
education and SMB for further growth.

Watchguard is also re-aligning its channel strategy by increasing its partner
base from 27 to 32 in the current fiscal. However, it will not go about randomly
appointing partners.

VINITA BHATIA