With a number of players entering the market over the last few years, the unified threat management (UTM) market in India is thriving on innovation and holds great potential to take the profitability for vendors and partner ecosystem to the next level.
Apart from the established players like Fortinet, WatchGuard, SonicWall, Cyberoam, etc, this market is witnessing the consolidation of players like Quick Heal, GajShield, etc – and innovation is right at the helm of their agenda to target and nourish the Indian market.
Focus on India
According to Jitendra Ghughal, National Channel Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet is focusing on deploying effective network security has always been challenging for Small and Medium Business networks sharing the same threat environment with larger organizations yet with limited resources with which to defend themselves. They look to security vendors to be a trusted advisor to help them:
- Deliver comprehensive network security that can protect against sophisticated attacks across a wide range of locations
- Support new initiatives, like enabling secure wireless guest access or integrating mobile devices into your network
- Meet compliance requirements and ensure business continuity while reducing total cost of ownership
“Fortinet’s Connected UTM solution provides SMB customers with a single, proven high-performance platform for all of their network security requirements that is both comprehensive and cost-effective. Unlike other UTM devices that combine a few security technologies into a single device, Connected UTM allows you to optimize your customers’ Small or Medium network by using a single security platform to deliver a wide range of centrally managed security, access, and connectivity technologies.” He explains.
Internal Network Firewall for Enterprise:
Attacks are finding ever more ways into Enterprise networks, and once inside taking their time to cause damage. Enterprises need to find new ways to protect their networks from the inside-out, and to protect them continuously, so they can shorten the window of exposure to threats.
Until now traditional border firewalls have not been effective as internal firewalls due to the high-level of performance required on internal networks, in addition to the complexity to deploy. Fortinet’s Internal Network Firewall (INFW) takes advantage of the ASIC architecture to provide multi-gigabit throughput, without disruption to existing applications or systems. Pre-configured Transparent Mode enables rapid and easy deployment with instant network traffic visibility,” adds, Jitendra Ghughal, National Channel Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet.
Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager – India & SAARC at Allied Telesis says that target markets for Allied Telesis include enterprise, government, education, healthcare and transport.
“We are also actively involved in smart cities that encompass all of these markets and bring together knowledge and intelligence to increase efficiency, decrease resource usage and build a better society for everyone. With the increasing use of technology in each of these markets, the rapid growth of smart cities along with the Internet of Things (IoT) and the reliance on this for critical decision making, security is of paramount importance. Platforms like our Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) brings together a best of breed security appliance from Allied Telesis with best of breed vendors like Kasperky, Emerging Threats and Procera are particularly relevant in this context.” He explains.
Opportunities in UTM
Speaking on the opportunities in the UTM space, Jitendra Ghughal, National Channel Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet says that, organizations of all sizes are being targeted by cyber criminals and must defend their critical infrastructures and proprietary data from advanced, highly focused threats more than ever before. Yet, increased bandwidth requirements and network utilization complicate the process, particularly as organizations increase in size and scope. What they need are industry-leading solutions that provide the security effectiveness and features to protect from advanced threats, while delivering the performance and connectivity to future-proof their infrastructures.
“Traditional firewalls have not kept pace with the changing threat landscape, forcing organizations to look to next-generation firewalls for a deeper level of inspection. Today, customers want gateways that fight advanced threats, like zero-day malware and that respond to new cybercriminal tactics, such as encrypting payloads or stolen data inside of an SSL tunnel. Therefore, advanced threat prevention, sandboxing and more are becoming the norm with an emphasis on security
effectiveness and performance above all else. Customers are looking for high-performance, next-generation security that won’t slow down their business or break their budget,” he elaborates.
On the other hand, Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager – India & SAARC at Allied Telesis says that Allied Telesis has been developing and deploying security appliances for over 20 years and our recently released Next Generation Firewall represents an evolution in our product line in this space.
“As our NGFW has only recently been released, our market share in this space is relatively small but interest in this product range has been significant.” He explains.
Innovations in UTM Market
As innovation is one of the biggest driver for this segment, Jitendra Ghughal, National Channel Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet says that the company is focusing a lot towards innovation today.
Advanced Cyber Security: Inside and Out
“The current state of network threat protection is often focused primarily on the border, working to prevent outside threats. Yet, this approach can be ineffective once a threat gets “past the gate” and enters the internal network by other means, such as end-point devices, infected flash drives, or even internal employees or consultants, putting critical data at risk. The reality is that sophisticated hacker attacks and insider threats continue to penetrate more deeply and persist undetected for long periods of time inside an organization’s internal network, making it even more critical for organizations to mitigate potential damage. Hackers are taking advantage of the typically flat internal architectures to put internal networks at greater risk.
Fortinet has introduced a new class of firewall to combat these internal threats, leveraging proven and robust FortiGate Security Appliances. Fortinet’s new INFW employs a layered approach to security that sits closer to the assets within an organizations’ network, segmenting and preventing breaches from spreading, while providing full visibility into all traffic types, users and devices, to help protect against threats inside the network.” he explains.
Emphasising on the need to innovate, Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager – India & SAARC at Allied Telesis says that, “innovations within our NGFW include zero touch replacement of a failed device – including those that are remotely deployed – along with a technology for unified management of wired, wireless and security infrastructure. The underlying technology that enables this is our Allied Telesis. Management Framework or AMF. Unified cloud-based management of all infrastructure including wired, wireless and security is something we are working toward and expect to be able to provide further updates to our customers on this in the near future.” He explains.
Market Reach Plan for India
Talking about the go to market strategy for the organization, Jitendra Ghughal, National Channel Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet explains that trends for mobility, agile infrastructures and cloud set alongside the evolution in advanced cyber threats, means organizations increasingly demand high-performance, integrated security solutions and experienced partner support.
“Fortinet will support resellers to increase expertise and leverage our end-to-end network security solutions to better align their services with the needs of their customers, and ultimately boost value.” He adds on.
Growth Expectations
Jitendra Ghughal, National Channel Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet says that according to Frost & Sullivan Fortinet has had a very successful year in 2014, and has registered a revenue growth of 51.9 percent in the Network Security Market in India.
“Keeping this trend in mind, Fortinet has been gaining both revenue and shipment market share in the Datacenter, Enterprise and SMB market segments. Fortinet attributes this ongoing market momentum to a strong customer focus, return on its sales and marketing investments, partner momentum and continuous best-of-breed technology innovation. Our broad product line of complementary solutions goes beyond traditional Network Security to address all of the security needs of the extended enterprise – whether network, branch, cloud, mobile, data center or other complex environments. This end-to-end security solution includes scalable management, control and reporting, giving comprehensive visibility on the state of the network provides partners multiple business opportunity to address each and every network security need of customers of all sizes.” He adds on.
Giving details about the company’s go to market strategy, Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager – India & SAARC at Allied Telesis says that,“We are targeting organizations that are seeking a unified approach to infrastructure as this is where we have a compelling story, particularly when considered lifecycle management and total cost of ownership which can often be as much or more than the initial capital purchase,” he explains.