Cyberoam to funnel $10m into its European channel

India-based UTM player to hire 14 regional staff over next two years as it builds out channel presence

Unified threat management vendor Cyberoam is ploughing $10m (£6.3m) into European channel development activities over the next two years.

Talking to CRN, chief executive Hemal Patel (pictured) said that the India-based firm would hire 14 European staff in the next 24 months as it aims to recruit and train a network of partners.

Cyberoam, whose appliances are aimed at companies with 15 to 1,500 employees, currently has 50 UK partners but Patel said the aim was to increase this to 250 to 300 over the same timeframe.

Patel said Cyberoam stood out from UTM rivals because of its support, flexibility on special pricing and its free training for partners.

"We are flexible on special pricing for larger deals and we always protect the partner's margin," he said. "Many other vendors expect the partner to take the hit."

Cyberoam will launch a cloud version of its central management console on 1 October that partners can use for free. The launch of a hosted log solution allowing partners to help customers monitor traffic is also slated for next January.

Cyberoam counts Sonic­Wall and WatchGuard among its rivals, but Patel admitted Fortinet was public enemy number one.

"From what I have heard, Fortinet partners are coming under margin pressure and feature-wise we are very close to them," he said.