Clearswift business shift sees rapid sales growth

Appliance sales up 50 per cent as partners urged to wrap web and email offerings in a single sale

Rippon: partners are getting better at selling our combined solutions

Content security vendor Clearswift claims UK partners have already registered 100 deals under its new Catalyst partner programme as it transitions more of its business from software to appliances.

Some 70 UK resellers have signed up to Catalyst since its launch in April, with 20 positioned in the top Solutions category.

Miles Rippon, Clearswift’s vice president of worldwide channels, said he was happy with the major metrics but urged more partners to wrap its web and email security appliance technology into a single sale.

Clearswift’s appliance sales grew by 50 per cent in Q1 year-on-year. Rippon said transactions involving both email and web technology now account for 30 per cent of the total.

“This shows partners are getting better at selling our combined solutions,” he said.

“But we want to see that grow to 40 or 50 per cent. Customers are looking to reduce management costs and the number of solutions they have.”

Clearswift moved to a sole-distributor model with Sphinx in May and Sphinx sales director Nick Bannister claimed the vendor had “grown beyond his expectations”.

“Clearswift understands where it is going with its business,” he said.