Data Integration bags Palo Alto deal

Hats off: Palo Alto beat more established firewall vendors to Canterbury Christ Church University deal

Emerging firewall vendor Palo Alto has snatched another UK deal from under the noses of more established rivals, in partnership with reseller Data Integration (DI).

Canterbury Christ Church University has chosen DI to deliver and support ‘next-generation’ firewalls from the start-up vendor, which was founded in 2005 and only landed in the UK in December 2008.

The university, which has about 16,700 students, had also reviewed technology from the “established firewall manufacturers”, Basingstoke-based DI said.

Jon Murphy, principal consultant at DI, said an increasing number of organisations are now switched on to the benefits of next-generation firewalls that can detect application-specific attacks.

“This is especially true of higher education where managing specific threats must be balanced with the freedom required of an academic environment where boundaries must be challenged,” he said.

However, Keith Bird, EMEA vice president at firewall stalwart SonicWall, claimed that – despite the hype – he had seen very little of Palo Alto.

“We typically do not come across them,” Bird said. “Customers and partners in the current climate are looking for security vendors with a good pedigree and track record and we have been around since the early 1990s.”

He added: “The piece that is relatively new is application protection, which we do in all our latest-generation appliances.”

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