Channel Post MEA speaks to Shahnawaz Sheikh, the Regional Director for MEA and Turkey at Dell SonicWALL, to find out how SonicWALL has been absorbed into Dell’s structure post its acquisition in May last year. Shaikh also throws some light on Dell SonicWALL’s channel strategies, its products, and the road ahead.
Dell completed the acquisition of SonicWALL in May last year. Now, one year down the road, how has the journey been so far?
It has been very positive on all fronts. Dell is one of the most well-known and recognised brands in IT. The acquisition has resulted in more investments in R&D, people, marketing, and so on, in addition to access to Dell’s customers and resellers.
Have there been any changes to your channel strategy?
Channel is in the SonicWALL DNA and hence the acquisition has not changed anything. Dell also has an award winning channel programme called Partner Direct. Dell SonicWALL products are sold through the channel in the Middle East region.
Does SonicWALL have any plans to shuffle its channel community by addition of new partners?
Partner recruitment is an on-going activity at Dell SonicWALL, both at the SMB and enterprise level. The good news is that we also have access to Dell’s resellers who might not carry any IT security products or competitive products to SonicWALL’s opportunity to convert them to Dell SonicWALL or add Dell SonicWALL to their offering.
What kind of performance and advanced threat capabilities are your new Network Security Appliance (NSA) Series next-generation firewalls equipped with?
Dell SonicWALL’s SuperMassive 9000 Series Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), is built from the ground up to meet the needs of enterprise networks by delivering security, productivity, performance, and scalability without compromise. It is equipped with:
- Advanced threat protection to ensure maximum network security and performance.
- Comprehensive protection against sophisticated evasion techniques utilized by modern threats.
- Application traffic awareness, visualization and granular control for risk mitigation and increased network productivity.
Providing complete advanced threat protection including high performance intrusion prevention and anti-malware at multi-gigabit speeds with near zero latency, the Dell SonicWALL SuperMassive 9000 Series delivers carrier-class network security and performance along with the industry’s highest core density architecture in an elegant one-rack appliance that also saves space, power, and cooling costs.
With 4 SFP+ 10GbE interfaces, 16 1GbE interfaces and a dedicated management interface, the SuperMassive 9000 Series can be deployed in a variety of networks in either a traditional gateway security deployment or as an additional layer of security for traditional networks in a transparent layer 2 bridge or wire-mode deployment.
NSA Gen 6 on the other hand is equipped with:
- Dell SonicWALL’s Network Security Appliance (NSA) Series Next-Generation Firewalls offer the same high level of security and capabilities as the enterprise-class SuperMassive Series.
- Dell brings first low latency high performance NGFW with 10 GbE connectivity to bandwidth intensive mid-sized businesses.
- The NSA Series delivers enterprise class protection and application control while maintaining its acclaimed ease of use.
How do these new next-generation firewalls measure up to similar products from your competitors?
Dell SonicWALL is currently up against UTM players such as Fortinet and Sourcefire in the mid-market and enterprise next generation firewall markets. Over the last few months SonicWALL has emerged as the winner in several award categories across the UAE.
Our state of the art products have allowed us to maintain our competitive edge and with that has come our reputation and recognition. Dell SonicWALL’s SuperMassive E10800 for instance, earned the coveted “Recommend Rating” in NSS Labs 2013 Next-Generation Firewall Security Value Map for the second year in a row.
Meanwhile, SuperMassive E10800 Next-Generation Firewall running SonicOS 6.0 has earned the highest rating of ‘Recommend’ from NSS Labs, which provides independent validation for IT administrators who seek the best-performing security required for their modern corporate network and deployment scenarios.
To achieve this ranking, SuperMassive excelled in one of the industry’s most comprehensive, real-world tests of Next-Gen Firewalls and secured a leading position in NSS Labs’ Security Value Map for the second consecutive year. The product demonstrated the highest security effectiveness ratings in the industry.
Going far beyond simple stateful inspection, the Dell SonicWALL Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection (RFDPI) engine scans against multiple application types and protocols to ensure your network is protected from internal and external attacks as well as application vulnerabilities.
This sets us apart from our competitors. Unlike other scanning engines, the RFDPI engine is not limited by file size or the amount of concurrent traffic it can scan, making our solutions second to none. By working at the application layer, RFDPI protects against hidden application vulnerabilities that may be inadvertently letting attackers in through an unknown back door.
Has SonicWALL and its offerings been inducted into Dell’s PartnerDirect program?
Yes SonicWALL has been inducted into Dell’s PartnerDirect program. In addition, they are also included in the technical and sales certifications. However, specific level of revenues is required for partners to qualify as Preferred and Premium Partners. Registered is the entry level option in the program.
