Cyberoam inching its way to top the league of UTM Players in India

Hemal Patel,
MD & CEO,
Elitecore Technologies

Network security is becoming integral as people spend more and more time being connected. The network security market in India is showing huge promise. Cyberoam, a division of Elitecore Technologies, has recently emerged among the leading players in the Indian UTM appliance market. A significant global presence in over 110 countries and 80% growth in this market in the last fiscal year hold testimony to the company's success.  The growth story of Cyberoam is in sync with the continued growth of other divisions of Elitecore Technologies. Apart from network security, the company has a presence in telecom software billing and hospitality management solutions.

Cyberoam is a partner-centric company. Channel partners including resellers and other solution providers are the main vehicles which allow them to offer solutions designed around security products. Cyberoam's Channel Partner Programme offers unique and innovative marketing and sales support. Elitecore features among a handful of product-centric IT companies from India that solely thrive on R&D innovation to deliver specialized solutions which are sold under well-known brand names such as Cyberoam and NetVertex Policy Manager. 

Cyberoam helps its partners achieve and demonstrate competence and gain industry recognition through its certification programmes, viz. Cyberoam Certified Network & Security Professional, CCNSP and Cyberoam Certified Network & Security Expert, CCNSE. Today, they have more than 2,000 certified Cyberoam professionals - achieved in the last two years. 

The company closely operates with partners through regular roadshows, distribution meets and promotions in the key channel media. Simplified partner functioning through automated processes, channel awareness, increasing customer support infrastructure are other key aspects applied to strengthen partnerships and helping them reach out to more of them.

As a UTM vendor, they have brought in a slew of products catering to every organization size ranging from small offices to SMB and mid-market as well as large enterprises. Moreover, current Cyberoam UTM latest versions have radically improved the price/performance/features ratio of its security solutions. 

Hemal Patel, MD & CEO, Elitecore Technologies, said, “We plan to acquire a local security vendor in Japan, China or Korea. For example, Korea has at least eight vendors operating in enterprise level appliances with firewall and VPN. We can port content filtering, bandwidth management and bring the product to our 600-plus partner base in India. Through inorganic route, market entry becomes much quicker. It is tough to maintain 70% growth organically. Hence, an acquisition might be on the agenda. We believe that for a security solutions vendor, the quality of support it provides can mean the difference between “customer retention” and “losing the customer base”. 

The company's in-house Global Support Management Centre (GSMC) is based at its corporate headquarters in Ahmedabad. The unit serves customers through a round-the-clock approach which helps Cyberoam partners scale up their support capabilities in line with the growth of their customer base. They offer customers a TAT of just 20 minutes with their troubleshooting specialists. 

Cyberoam's target verticals include government and PSUs, retail, construction & real estate, manufacturing, education, banking and IT/ITeS. For the SMBs, especially for managed services, they plan to build an army of partners to popularize MSSP model. By 2013, Cyberoam targets to cross the revenue figures of $80 million and emerge among the top five brands in the security appliance space and are looking at acquisitions either in the US or Europe to grow inorganically. 

Sharing the new initiatives planned, Hemal said, “SMB has always been our forte. Having garnered significant market share in this space, we believe we can further expand the market now by targeting small offices having less than 10 users. We are currently beta testing a product developed by our R&D centre in Ahmedabad for the SOHO segment. This product, priced under $200, is all set to revolutionize the UTM appliance space. The other big investment we are making is to move our assembly line for India from Taiwan to Ahmedabad. This would make us more efficient in terms of time-to-market and also in terms of managing logistics and pricing. We have taken up space at an upcoming IT Park in Ahmedabad for our continued growth ventures.” 

Cyberoam's priority is to deliver the channel promise of consistent growth and good margins. They are launching a comprehensive partner programme which would enable them to engage with leading Cyberoam partners in a more purposeful way like business planning, market development and capacity planning. The company is also launching a product for SOHOs at less than $200.

For more contact: S. Mohini Ratna
mohini@varindia.com