SonicWall determined to gain share in the mid-market

SonicWall has enjoyed strong backing from the channel over the past 18 months and the security player is looking at not only keeping that momentum going but plans to replicate the approach it has taken in the SME market into the mid-tier space.

That will involve providing partners with more support to ensure that they can sell to those customers as well as making sure it keeps the foot on the pedal in developing fresh products to take to market.

SonicWall CEO Bill Conner is fully behind the firm’s partners and believes that there is a trust building with the channels and that is also being backed up with profitability.

“We are now over 25,000 partners since day one on SecureFirst, our channel programme. That is over 1,000 net new partners in that same period. One thing I am pretty excited about is we are now over $560m of deal reg. We upped that 50% when I came in so in 20 months we have gone from zero to $560m. That is significant to me because that it a measurement of trust for me and how are we doing for them,” he said.

“I don’t know anyone else who has done that in that type of time frame. I feel really good about our team and our disties and partners that are behind that,” he added.

About a month ago the firm indicated that the next step in its business is to target the high-end of the medium sized customer base and it intends taking the channel with it as it goes after those users.

“When we announced a month ago our next step the third wave of products are geared towards the high end middle business, so distributed networks, campus networks. We also announced our next step in go-to-market, which is bringing direct touch to our channel strategy. We are still 100% channel,” he said.

“We have solidified our brand and our channels in SME and SMB and we have recapped twice and we are arguably number one or two globally in that business. We are number five according to Gartner in the mid-tier already because we have a lot of large accounts but people don’t know us for that,” he added “We are number five and never known for that so when you look at the third round of products geared towards that mid-tier we think the same value proposition we brought to those smaller businesses is needed now in the mid-tier. The automated real-time detection and protection.”

Conner stressed that it was not leaving the SME market but was looking at gaining more market share in the mid-market.

“In that segment you have got to have somebody able to represent the company, the roadmap, the service, going with a partner to that end user to talk to them about the strategy and get them comfortable with the roadmap and the services and they have to trust you. They don’t know us as well because we are number five in this place,” he said.

Partners that work with SonicWall on a mid-market deal will also be eligible for rebates to encourage them to take up the challenge.