Stonesoft wants resellers to upsell, not renew

Network security vendor Stonesoft claims its new end user promotion could generate lucrative upsell opportunities for resellers.

The manufacturer is offering end users up to 35 per cent off its firewall and SSL VPN devices until midway through the second quarter.

Ashish Patel, UK country manager at Stonesoft, stressed that the vendor would take the hit on the discount, while partners will retain their usual margin on the sale.

“This allows the channel to go out with a different story,” he explained.

“Rather than encouraging them to pick up annual renewals, we are encouraging them to upsell the customer, thus creating more revenue for the partner and a cost saving for the customer.”

Patel said the promotion would focus on dislodging Check Point, Cisco and Juniper devices that are over three years old.

He denied that end users would be wary of a rip-and-replace approach in the current economic environment if a quick return on investment (ROI) could be demonstrated.

“After 1.5 to two years, the end users should get an ROI,” he asserted.

“Our maintenance costs are substantially less than our rivals. We calculated that on an 18-firewall site, maintenance over five years would cost £1.5m on a competitor’s product, compared with £300,000 for ours.”

Patel said Check Point would be a particular target because of the high cost of its maintenance services.

But Nick Lowe, managing director northern Europe at Check Point, hit back: " We invest hundreds of millions a year in our research and development. Stonesoft are a nice little Scandinavian vendor and I am sure they have a following, but you get what you pay for."