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Security vendor wants more Canadian solution providers

Taiwan-based firewall makers expands aggressively into Canada

A maker of modems and firewalls for SMBs and service providers says it’s looking for more Canadian value added resellers to grow its business here.

Steven Joe, executive vice-president of channels for ZyXel Communications Corp., said the company wants to move “more aggressively to the Canadian market.”A Taiwan manufacturer with North American headquarters in Anaheim, Calif., ZyXel makes the ZyWALL unified threat management and security appliances, a firewall gateway for small and mid-sized companies, a wireless access gateway for the hospitality industry, desktop switches, as well as modems for service providers.

Products are distributed through Tech Data Canada, but Joe said ZyXel wants to make a bigger presence here.In particular he’s looking for VARs that target 50 users or less.To make the company more attractive to partners here and the U.S., ZyXel has just integrated access to Commtouch Inc.’s cloud-based security suite and GlobalView URL filtering service as part of the an upgrade to the operating system of the ZyXel USG and UTM security appliances.

The subscription-based email service will help add recurring revenues for resellers, Joe said. “It gives our VARS an option for a best-in-breed email security service to go along with our UTM devices,” he said.Coming shortly, Joe added, will be another partner benefit: A cloud-based licencing renewal portal for ZyXel firewalls, which he said should make it easier for VARs to sell and update customer licences.

“Hardware is very price-sensitive today,” he said, “so VARs can no longer compete on today’s market without moving forward to a cloud-based service model.”

The ZDL 3.0 operating system update for the unified threat management devices also includes two other significant improvments:–native Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) support for iOS and Android-based mobile devices, which will give secure VPN connectivity to corporate networks;–the ability to support dual-stack IPv4 / IPv6 environments. As a result, the UTMs will be able to resolve both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.Last month ZyXel said its P660HN series ADSL2+ gateways and VSG servies VDSL2 gateways now support IPv6.

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