Zscaler to exit email market in UK - sources
Security vendor refuses to comment on rumours it is ditching email filtering SaaS business in UK
Cloud security vendor Zscaler could be planning to exit the email security market, according to sources.
The California-headquartered firm offers a range of security products such as web and advanced security offerings and cloud-enabled networking to 13 million global users.
A source close to the situation told CRN: "Zscaler appears to be showing intention to exit the email filtering SaaS business with communications to multiple partners and customers [asking them] to migrate their filtering to comparable services. They have also indicated [they] want to keep this quiet."
Operating through a number of resellers and disties as well as service providers and technology partners, Zscaler has a UK office in London as well as other EMEA bases in Munich and Dubai.
Zscaler declined to comment for the story but a number of UK partners we spoke to told us confidentially they were aware of the strategy change.
Etienne Greeff, chief executive of security integrator SecureData, a Blue Coat and Websense partner, said it would "make sense" for Zscaler to leave the email market.
"Zscaler found themselves extremely nice and niche very early on and they did very well," he said. "They were staffed in the early days by ex-Blue Coat people and they traded off the back of – at that time – the weakness of Blue Coat. Blue Coat was not doing a good job. Anyway, Zscaler started doing well and branched out into the areas Blue Coat were in – web security, remote wireless [and so on].
"[Now], commercially, I think they are struggling to find traction. They are a high-end solution; a premium solution – they don't market themselves at the bottom end of the market.
"If you look at the threat landscape, it has moved towards the web. The way email works now, you capture most of the threats using a web proxy. It is not just that [Zscaler tech] is partly redundant; it is because the price [of rivals' email security] is so low. If you are adding a lot of value, you can charge a lot of money for it. Because mail security is becoming less important for customers, the value... becomes cheaper."
Jon Busfield, managing director of Cygnia, agreed that the security market has become more crowded.
"[Zscaler exiting email] would not come as a surprise to me," he said. "There are lots of new entrants coming into this space such as CensorNet and Cyren and also many partners providing the service themselves using readily available solutions from on-premise providers. So competition is getting fierce."
Ed MacNair, chief executive of CensorNet, said he thought Zscaler's email product does not fully fit into the UK market.
"Their focus has always been on very large enterprises because that is the price point they operate at," he said. "In the UK market, it is mainly SMB. I would not be that surprised they are pulling out [of the email market] because penetration is limited in the UK. Anecdotally, I've heard a lot of partners are not particularly happy, or customers for that matter. They are hard to deal with."
Zscaler said it "will not comment on rumours or speculations".