This year ProCurve Networking by HP wants more partners certified and qualified in its security solutions as the company strives towards maintaining its security vision for network infrastructures.
During a security seminar event hosted by ProCurve in Toronto, Mauricio Sanchez, chief security architect at ProCurve, outlined three key pillars making up the company’s security approach when it comes to securing an organization’s network infrastructure. These pillars include secure infrastructure, access control and network immunity. When combined, these pillars, he said, make up ProCurve’s ProActive Defense strategy, which enables any organization to have an adaptive network.
“Networking is a strategic proponent to any organization’s success,” Sanchez said. “A lot of threats today are coming from inside attacks and the adaptive network that we enable for organizations fortifies security, increases productivity and reduces complexities within organizations.”
Sanchez says partners are increasing their revenue streams by adding services to the product solutions. Becoming certified on the products will also open new doors of opportunities for a partner’s existing and new customer base, he adds.
Based on a recent interview with Corey Copping, product marketing manager for ProCurve Networking by HP, he said out of the 5,000 to 6,000 resellers that HP currently touches in Canada, about half of them are ProCurve partners.
“From a security point of view, about 15 per cent of (resellers) are fully security qualified,” Copping said. “We want to increase the channel base to make sure we have coverage wherever ProCurve is being serviced.”
Mark Tauschek, a senior research analyst at London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group, said when it comes to networking products, Cisco still dominates the industry with about 70 per cent of the total market share. ProCurve, he said, rakes in about 12 to 13 per cent market share. From a partner perspective, Tauschek says there are plenty of opportunities to be found since every organization faces security risks and challenges.
“One of the challenges with security on the network side is that it’s been quite complex,” Tauschek said. “ProCurve is presenting an enterprise-class way for administrators to implement and easily manage their infrastructures.”
Products such as ProCurve’s Identity Driven Manager (IDM) and its Network Immunity Manager are ways in which businesses can better manage and monitor their networks. With IDM, administrators are able to define access based on roles, users and devices that are connected to the network. As well, ProCurve’s Network Immunity Manager gives individuals real-time visibility to detects and respond to network threats and attacks.
A value proposition for the channel and end-users, Sanchez said, is that ProCurve’s ProActive Defense solutions strengthen existing infrastructures and also work well with other third party security solutions.
“IT budgets are either flat or in decline so we’ve tried to craft our security solutions as evolutionary ones that don’t require a forklift upgrade,” he said. “Our solutions will integrate well with what’s already in place.”
Tauschek said ProCurve products are attractive because they’re typically priced about 30 to 50 per cent less than Cisco’s.
“ProCurve has a solid product suite that’s feature rich and provides good value,” Tauschek said. “I think they’re going in the right direction in terms of their value proposition and price points,” he adds.
