Magirus takes on Stonesoft portfolio

Magirus becomes Stonesoft's only pan-European distributor

Magirus wants to build whole solutions

Storage distributor Magirus has signed a pan-European agreement to carry virtualisation security vendor Stonesoft’s solutions for VMware environments.

Distributing the vendor’s portfolio across 10 countries, Magirus has become Stonesoft’s only pan-European distributor in the virtualisation space.

Stonesoft’s security solution combines the StoneGate firewall and intrusion prevention system (IPS) appliances to create a secure, high-availability network designed for both virtual and physical environments.

Niall McGrane, director of security and virtualisation for northern Europe at Magirus, said: “Security and management are what the customer is concerned with and are both hotspots at the moment. Stonesoft covers both. At Magirus, we try to build whole solutions instead of just focusing on sales.

“Currently, only seven per cent of servers are virtualised as there are still concerns among potential customers, he said. “When a datacentre is virtualised it becomes a dark room ­ Stonesoft’s solutions turn on a torch in that dark room.”

McGrane claimed that traditional security solutions do not work in a virtual environment. “With a virtual environment comes a whole new set of rules and new solutions are needed to address them.”

Ashish Patel, country manager for the UK and Ireland at Stonesoft, said: “Magirus has a good footprint in the virtualisation space. With Magirus we will look at new markets ­ before we focused on just security.

“Many customers may put virtualisation on ice because of the security concerns surrounding it.

“Our solutions address these concerns and allow VARs to sell them as an extra to their normal VMware offerings.”
Patel said VARs that already play in the virtualisation space can add Stonesoft’s security solutions as an additional component.