Channel fuelling momentum at SonicWall

SonicWall has lifted the lid on the contribution of the channel to its market progress, with the security player reporting decent progress through 2020.

The vendor has reported a 29% increase in revenues and a 16% increase in earnings for the past year, with the channel helping to support that growth.

During the course of the pandemic, there has been an increasing level of cyber attacks as criminals look to exploit vulnerable home workers, which has contributed to a decent performance by the data protection player.

Those increased threats saw increased sales of mid-range and high-end firewalls, with a 53% quarter-over-quarter increase in bookings for its NSa firewall series, and a 380% quarter-over-quarter increase for the high-end NSsp firewall series.

“We have been hard at work to deliver the technology, services and programmes our partners and customers need to stay ahead of cyber threats – including ransomware – that are outpacing organisations’ traditional security postures,” said SonicWall president and CEO Bill Conner.

“This is evident by the company’s three consecutive quarters of sequential and year-over-year bookings growth. Our momentum demonstrates that the global customer community is recognising the need for a new cyber security paradigm, and it is accelerating business for our valued SecureFirst partners worldwide,” he added.

Specifically on the channel front, the firm noted that its decision in spring 2020 to roll out more dedicated support for managed security service providers (MSSPs) and managed service providers had paid off, with more signing up to work with the vendor.

SonicWall also charted a significant rise in the number of partners accessing its university training tools, with more than 213,000 courses completed in 2020, equating to 396,000 hours of training and administration of 791,000 successful exams.

“We have experienced steady growth in our partner base because of the expansion of our portfolio and the ease of management of our products, specifically in the retail and education sectors,” said SonicWall’s vice-president of global channel sales, HoJin Kim. “The SonicWall Boundless 2020 virtual event also helped to boost our number of transacting partners as we surpassed company records in attendance.”  

The firm recently enhanced its SecureFirst partner programme to make it easier for partners that were certified by third parties to get recognition and by reducing some of the ongoing educational requirements for silver partners to add a greater flexibility for those channel partners.

SonicWall also expanded the portfolio that the channel could handle this time last year, bringing in switches and branch solutions to boost the networking side of the business

The firm reported that it had seen a 33% increase in bookings of the SonicWall Switch series, which it introduced in June last year.