Accellion Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor of secure file transfer solutions, is expanding its reach into Canada with the addition of a new partner, inRound Secure Technologies, a wholly-owned division of inRound Innovations earlier this week.
In Canada, Accellion products are sold though large account reseller, Softchoice and IT services and PC systems integrator, Compugen. InRound, an Ottawa-based professional services organization, now marks Accellion’s third channel partner in the country. Paula Skokowski, vice-president of marketing at Accellion, said although the company has had two Canadian-based companies already representing the Accellion brand here, the new partnership with inRound means further opportunities across Canada.
“We’re happy to have inRound as a partner because they were recognized as the fastest growing company in Ottawa and now they’re bringing our Secure File Transfer solutions to Canada,” Skokowski said.
Jeff Lynt, president of inRound, said the Accellion product line was an attractive one to add to the company’s sales portfolio because he says the solutions are “easy” sells.
Using Accellion’s Secure File Transfer solutions, users are able to easily and securely send and receive large files starting at 2MB and up, Skokowski said.
“Previous to our solution, people have tried to attach large files to e-mails,” she said. “These files typically got blocked on the network because limits with e-mail attachments. Because files are much bigger today, users often resort to putting files on a thumb drive or CD and are shipping them over night.”
This of course, would expose information while in transit to security risks in the event of a loss or theft. Accellion’s Secure File Transfer solutions work via a secure appliance and through a secure Internet channel. Using a Web-interface, users attach files which are then sent over a secure Internet channel to the Accellion appliance and delivered to the recipient in an e-mail with a secure link which is then authenticated. The recipient then clicks on the link to securely download the file that was sent out.
“Security is becoming of increased concern,” Skokowski said. “The Secure File Transfer solution is delivered as a plug-and-play appliance. It comes available as a virtual or physical appliance and users can select if they want to use the Web interface, which comes standard for all users, or if they want to use a Microsoft plug-in within Microsoft outlook.”
Lynt says Accellion solutions offer end-users ease of use and better efficiencies in the workplace.
“Our business is based on helping organizations do more with less,” Lynt said, “and what better way to do that than to reduce servers and the amount of work needed to ship files out. Companies are also looking for ways to go green in their IT practices and this solution helps.”
The solution can scale all the way from a business with 100 employees or less, up to a company with 100,000 employees, Skokowski says. At its most basic configuration, businesses only need one appliance, or two, if they want to use the second appliance for disaster recovery purposes. Some companies though, elect to purchase multiple appliances to work throughout their network if they have a global presence, she adds.Secure File Transfer solutions work across all industry verticals and helps partners expand their solution offerings into areas they may not have been in before, Skokowski says. Partners can expect to see margins of up to 30 per cent on the solution depending on their partner level, she adds.
Lynt said before partnering with Accellion, inRound’s clients primarily were from the federal government sector, however with the partnership now, he said inRound will branch out to also target financial services, healthcare, hotel markets, and more.
InRound’s vice-president of sales, Steven Taraborrelli, says the company’s go to market strategy is to offer its customers a new security technology to help make the sending and receiving of large digital files easier for them.
“Everyone uses e-mail, so why not do it securely?” Taraborrelli said. “We’re going after every industry and we’re reaching out to the IT security and CIO folks to let them know the value of this best of breed solution, because everyone overall wants to be able to protect their data.”