F5 fires up channel with acquisition
Increased consultancy opportunities for VARs with MagniFire take-over
Resellers are set to benefit with increased consultancy opportunities from F5 Networks, following its £15.8m take-over of web application firewall firm MagniFire.
F5 acquired the TrafficShield appliance through the deal, and believes the technology's multi-threaded approach to network protection can offer better chances for consultancy.
The MagniFire TrafficShield security appliance protects the enterprise from malicious threats by combining application-layer filtering with network and encryption technology to prevent web infrastructure attacks, according to Erik Giesa, senior director of product management at F5.
"Traditional products have done a good job of protecting the perimeter, but the application level has become a vulnerability. This will address it," he said.
"But these threats require an in-depth knowledge of the security market, and this is where resellers and system integrators can make a profit through consultancy and implementation."
Giesa claimed that UK and European resellers in particular will benefit from the acquisition, because MagniFire has a stronger market presence in this region.
"It will have a good impact on our channel and the European market in general. Discounts on our products will also be very healthy for the channel," he said.
Giesa added that F5 will roll out TrafficShield product training to resellers globally over the next three months.
He said the channel will be able to offer it in addition to the FirePass Secure Socket Layer (SSL) VPN product, which has been integrated into its product range, following the acquisition of uRoam in July 2003.
Kay Eggleston, country manager at F5's distributor Risc Technology, said the new products will be particularly beneficial to system integrators and resellers focused on providing in-depth value-added consultancy.
"It is interesting because traditionally F5 has been perceived as an application-aware company, but predominantly a networking vendor," she said.
Eggleston added that the move by F5 and other networking firms, such as Juniper, into the web application security market reflects an uptake for web-based services. But she said the F5 product will be suitable only for a certain type of reseller.
"They need to be very strong technically and consultancy-led with their projects. It will suit system integrators, rather than those focusing on SMEs or volume sales," she said.
Separately, F5 has launched a cross-platform SSL VPN product with support for remote Macintosh and Linux users as part of the latest version of its FirePass Controller.
It offers an open application programming interface and software developers' kit that enables third-party application vendors to build secure remote access into client applications.
Jason Wright, analyst at Frost and Sullivan, said the cross-platform capabilities are more justification for users to choose SSL VPNs over IP security VPNs.