ACAL targets network security market place

Specialist distributor will focus more on security after seeing growth in the sector

Specialist distributor ACAL will focus more on its network security portfolio after it saw a 30 per cent year-on-year rise in the division last year.

The firm, which has traditionally focused on storage and networking, has already signed its first vendor in the secure network arena. ACAL has signed a distribution agreement with Mirage Networks, a network access control (NAC) vendor.

Paul Reeve, divisional director at ACAL, said the Mirage product set helps to prevent threats that occur from the mobility sector – when firms reconnect to an internal network after connecting outside and bring in viruses with them.

“We are very strong with our network access control vendors in Holland and we wanted to emulate that here,” Reeve said.

“Our Dutch arm is adding lots of value to its security sales, including managed security services, which is something that we are hoping to do here. We are also looking to sign more vendors in this market sector.”

Reeve said the distributor steers clear of tier-one vendors because, he claimed, they are more interested in distributors for volume and not value-add. He added that ACAL will focus on a few select partners rather than over-reaching itself.

Grahame Smee, managing director of specialist distributor Cohort Technology, which has recently signed up NAC vendor ForeScout, said: “Mirage has been in the market for a while. The market for NAC is a big growth area and Mirage is widening its breadth to encompass this.

“Although we can never be sure of the exact growth or when it will happen, most of the analyst reports are saying NAC is going to be big, which means there is enough growth to sustain a few players in the sector.”

In a recent study of the US sector, analyst Infonetics Research stated that half of US large enterprises have already deployed a NAC and this will rise to 60 per cent by 2008. Half of US SMEs will have implemented a NAC by 2008, the analyst predicted.