VARs promised funds from Sourcefire’s IPO

Intrusion prevention vendor Sourcefire plans to plough funds from its recent initial public offering (IPO) into its channel and is close to appointing its first UK channel manager.

The firm, which raised around $86m from the IPO earlier this year, and also secured $20m through venture capital funding last summer (CRN, 26 May) is the first network security vendor to go public since 2001.

Speaking for the first time since the IPO, Graham Welch, managing director EMEA at Sourcefire, told CRN: “Our EMEA operation continues to grow and we are continuing to expand. This includes channel focused individuals and we are due to appoint our first dedicated channel manager in the UK in the next couple of weeks.”

The firm recently launched its Enterprise Threat Management (ETM) strategy, which unifies four elements of security – intrusion prevention, network behaviour analysis, network access control and vulnerability assessment – and claimed to be the first in the market to do this.

“It allows our resellers to unify all four elements and centrally manage them for their customers, which not only creates a recurring revenue stream, but helps firms cut the cost of security,” Welch said.

Tony Smith, marketing manager at Sourcefire VAR Phoenix Datacom, said: “We’ve been a Sourcefire partner for a year and have always found them very supportive anyway, but it’s good to know it is appointing a UK channel manager.”

Paul Godden, managing director of VAR Armana Security, added: “Sourcefire has been managing well without a channel manager – we have a great account manager. The channel manager will probably get Sourcefire doing things more proactively, which can only be a good thing.”

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