Peapod wins contract after signing Kavado
Public-sector success follows agreement with web app security vendor
Reseller Peapod has won a public-sector deal just weeks after signing up to carry web application security products from Kavado.
Tony Larks, marketing director at Peapod, said the company will sell Kavado on a consultancy basis. The VAR closed a deal to supply Kavado products to Basildon District Council within three weeks of agreeing to partner with the vendor.
"We've been looking at the web application security market for about a year," said Larks. "We looked at all the players in the industry. Kavado doesn't have a huge channel in the UK; it sells on a single-tier basis and has existing customers."
Larks said Peapod had been helped by Kavado "to develop more in the way of solutions".
"We generally work with integrators that have competence and skills in applications and application security," said Jon Greene, vice-president of marketing at Kavado.
"This isn't a box-mover market; it's more about understanding the client and applications. We don't want 30 resellers in the UK; we want a small number of expert partners."
Greene said resellers were selling the products in different ways, with some offering vulnerability testing and policy formulation as a managed service and others selling the entire package.
Kavado's products are intended to identify weaknesses in web-based applications that might let intruders gain access to databases or a firm's internal networks.
The company produces three products: ScanDo performs vulnerability assessment; AutoPolicy generates a security policy; and InterDo applies the policy in the same way that a firewall protects a network at the lower OSI levels.
Kavado considers US firm Sanctum a direct competitor, and said vulnerability detection firm SPI Dynamics and security firms Teros, Check Point and Imperva operate in a similar market.