CipherTrust VARs must go through distribution
Secure Computing claims that the acquisition of the vendor will result in 'significant growth'
CipherTrust resellers will now have to go through distribution instead of dealing directly with the vendor, following the completion of its acquisition by Secure Computing.
Earlier this year, Secure Computing announced its acquisition of CipherTrust for $273.6m (CRN, 20 July), just a year after it bought rival CyberGuard for $295m (CRN, 29 August).
Speaking to CRN, Andrew Philpott, vice-president of European sales at Secure Computing, said the vendor is working hard to integrate the technology and channel partners, and has appointed CipherTrust’s EMEA head, David Stanley, to head up Secure Computing in the UK.
“We believe we are going to see significant growth as a result of this acquisition,” he said. “We are working hard with our distributors to get the CipherTrust partners up to speed.”
Earlier this year, Secure Computing slimmed down its UK distribution line-up from nine to just two: Sphinx and OpenPSL (CRN, 27 March). Philpott said this would make the integration of CipherTrust easier.
“CipherTrust had a single-tier route to market, so we don’t have the challenge of having to whittle down distribution,” he said.
Philpott added that the vendor will ensure that the transition of CipherTrust’s partners over to distribution will be as simple as possible.
Duncan Hume, manager of the security division at Bell Microproducts Europe, s aid: “The acquisition will allow us to offer a wider breadth of product to our reseller base, which can only be a good thing. It offers opportunities to both Secure and CipherTrust’s partners.”
Ritchie Jeune, managing director of CipherTrust VAR Evolution, said buying through distribution is not a problem for most CipherTrust VARs.
“We are a reasonable-sized reseller, so we deal a lot with distribution on our other product lines anyway,” he said. “However, it could cause some of the smaller partners problems. Secure Computing’s distribution is very competent and I am sure it is going to solve a lot of growth pains for CipherTrust.”
Ed Blake, managing director of CipherTrust VAR Real Solutions, said: “We buy a lot of our existing devices and software through distribution and we don’t have an issue with this change at all.”
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