SonicWall extends its Pro-Trade Up scheme
Vendor aims to tempt Cisco, Symantec and WatchGuard partners with upgrade scheme
Bullish security vendor SonicWall has extended its Pro-Trade Up upgrade scheme to steal a march on rival vendors’ markets.
The vendor announced last week that it would be widening its targets to include Cisco, Symantec and WatchGuard partners and encourage more end-users to switch to SonicWall technology.
Andy Zollo, UK country manager at SonicWall, said: “Originally, Pro-Trade Up was aimed at existing SonicWall customers to help them upgrade from older generation products to our fourth-generation Unified Threat Management appliance. But we have identified a demand outside our own customer base.”
He added that SonicWall, which recently announced plans to strengthen channel relationships (CRN, 7 August), is always looking for new reseller recruits, and other vendors’ partners are a natural target.
“With Symantec pulling out of the appliance market, there were some resellers left with a gap in their business,” he said. “WatchGuard, which has always been one of our traditional competitors, has recently been acquired, and we have heard several comments about the lack of margin from Cisco. Therefore, we saw an opportunity and decided to extend the scheme to include a swap-out option with SonicWall products.”
Jason Hill, UK sales manager at SonicWall distributor Tekdata, said: “We are seeing a fantastic response [to the scheme] and are expecting further success with this latest initiative.”
Hill added that although SonicWall used to work in the SME space, recent additions to its appliance family mean it can cater for enterprises with up to 1,000 users, which opens up the market further for channel partners.
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