Although most of its business now comes from Western Canada this was not always the case for Calgary-based Wedge Networks, a network security appliance vendor.
According to Pat Hinds, vice-president of sales and marketing at Wedge Networks, the Canadian company first grew its base by distributing its flagship BeSecure Web security product in Japan and China. In 2007, Wedge Networks decided to expand its reach to also include the U.S. and Canada.
In just a year, the 22-person company has signed up a total of eight resellers in North America, including four in Canada.
Hinds said Wedge Networks is looking to increase its reseller community, especially its base in the U.S., by positioning its products in the market place as unique, high-security performance solutions.
“We started the development of BeSecure in 2003 and we did the official launch in Canada in January 2007,” Hinds said. “Ninety per cent of our focus today is on this solution. I would say right now, about 40 per cent of our business comes from Western Canada, 30 per cent in Asia and the other 30 per cent comes from North America.”
Wedge Networks’ BeSecure Web security appliance is a secure Web gateway solution that is installed at the edge of the access network and scans Web traffic at the network layer for malicious code and viruses. Any malicious content is then intercepted before anything actually reaches the desktop and, ultimately, the end-user. The hardware appliance, Hinds said, is able to scan 3.5 million Web pages every hour without impacting a user’s productivity because it continuously runs behind the scenes.
Hinds said the company, typically targets customers in the SMB space that are greater than 500 users and above with its solutions.
Not only is BeSecure a scaleable solution, but it also works well with other existing firewalls and virtual private networks (VPNs) to scan in real-time for malicious signatures.
“There’s a market out there for unified threat management (UTM) solutions regarding firewall and content inspection,” Hinds said. “The value proposition for our customers is that we offer them a high-speed performance solution that lowers their total cost of ownership (TCO).”
Alberta Milk, a non-profit organization representing 714 dairy producers, is just one of the many examples of one of Wedge Networks’ customer stories.
Dana Rust, IT Manager at Alberta Milk, said she chose Wedge Networks’ BeSecure network security appliance solution because she wanted
to enhance the company’s overall security infrastructure without having to turn to a complex and difficult to manage solution.
Not only is the BeSecure solution’s interface intuitive, but Rust also says the time it takes to learn how to use the solution is minimal.
“BeSecure is very easy to use once it’s in place,” Rust said. “It’s pretty much a what you see is what you get kind of an interface and it’s doing what I expected it to. With this solution, I can also block certain Web sites and I can see which IP addresses are trying to access those blocked sites too.”
While Wedge Networks’ distribution strategy is currently a combination of both direct sales and partner sales, Hinds said Wedge Networks eventually wants to be move to a 100 per cent channel base distribution model.
“Our channel focus right now is to approach customers directly to find out who their VAR partners are to then engage them in sales activities and opportunities,” Hinds said.
The company’s value proposition for customers, Hinds notes, is to offer customers a consolidated solution to help drive down their TCO. When the TCO is low, Hinds said this then translates into high margin sales for the VAR.
According to Hinds, Wedge Networks offers its partners attractive margins that are slightly above the current industry average.
“Our goal is to be a leader in the market from a margin perspective,” Hinds said. “Our objective is to be able to drive over 35 per cent margins for the distributors of our products and so far we’ve been able to live up to this goal.”
When it comes to partner support, Hinds said Wedge Networks looks to the VAR to be the tier one level of support to the customer and Wedge Networks accordingly provides tier two, 24 by 7 support services.
In addition, Wedge Networks also hosts trade show initiatives, training and mailing activities, as well as jointly-funded marketing programs with its partners, Hinds added.
When asked about Wedge Network’s business road map for the rest of this year, Hinds said the primary focus will be to maintain a continued focus on its BeSecure product and other Web security and optimization product offerings in the Canadian market and beyond.
“Everyone uses the Internet,” Hinds said. “Therefore everyone should be concerned with Web security and data theft. A firewall is simply not strong enough and we want our partners to know that we’ve created a new breed of a high-performance network appliance that blocks and defends against malicious Web traffic.”
On his message to partners, Hinds says, “We believe Web security is an area of interest for most companies today. Our solutions are a good opportunity for partners to make money as they continue to grow with us in a profitable fashion.”