NetD launches UK fleet with flagship gateway

Vendor seeks UK distributor and up to 25 resellers to roll out product family by end of year

Services gateway vendor NetDevices (NetD) aims to shake up the networking market with today’s launch of its first official channel drive in the UK.

It is seeking to recruit up to 25 resellers and a distributor this year to help boost its market share.

Gordon Young, European managing director at NetD, said: “We have been working with a few partners in the UK for the past five months, but felt the time was right to launch officially in the UK.

“We’re looking to recruit resellers with experience in networking or security, or both. If we can get between 20 and 25 high-quality resellers selling our product by the end of the year, that would be great. We’re also looking to take on a UK distributor.”

NetD will launch its flagship SG-8 product in the UK initially, but will follow with a family of products by the end of the year. The SG-8 Unified Services Gateway (USG) unifies multiple services such as standards-based security, Voice over IP, data services and access services.

Young said: “SG-8 simplifies networking at large branch and regional offices by unifying multiple services into one always available, remotely manageable platform.”

NetD will offer resellers margins of up to 35 per cent, along with marketing development funds and training.

Young cited Cisco and NetScreen as NetD’s competitors in the UK, but said it would also be positioned in a new ‘business gateway’ market.

“A market is emerging for modular, highly available, standards-based business gateways that support multi-services and offer a wide variety of service modules,” he said.

Bob Tarzey, service director at Quocirca, said: “NetD is well backed financially and has spent a considerable amount of time researching and thinking through its products. It should give the mainstream networking vendors a run for their money.''