BANGALORE, INDIA: SonicWall has been a market leader in India in the SMB space. It recently introduced the enterprise E-class UTM, thereby, strengthening its position in that space.

SonicWALL has also been very committed to improving performance and productivity of businesses of all sizes by engineering the cost and complexity out of running a secure network. Over 1 million SonicWALL appliances have been shipped through its global network of channel partners.

Subhomoy Biswas, country manager, India, discusses the company's plans for India, as well as its revolutionary enterprise E-class technology with CIOL. Excerpts:

CIOL: What is SonicWALL’s plans and strategy for India?

Subhomoy Biswas: SonicWall is a Sunnyvale based company with global presence in 48 countries. We came to India in August 2005. We were selling earlier, via a distributor. We shortly took over leadership position. We have been growing for past three years at over three-digit percentage. India is also the fastest growing counrtry for SonicWall. Market acceptance has been great.

All of our business is done through channels. We have two distributors -- Select Technologies and Redington. We also have 80+ Medallion partners -- these are our authorized resellers. Both of our businesses have gone up. This October, we launched Enterprise class products. We operate in the security space -- especially UTM -- email security, SSL VPN -- and strengthened this with the acquisition of  Aventail; as well as CDP (continuous data protection).

All of these solutions are targeted at enterprises and SMBs. We are a leader in the UTM SMB space globally and in India.

We launched UTM for enterprises this October -- an appliance based on a 16-core CPU. This is the first of its kind. We have an SSL VPN for low-end -- from 20 users and goes up to 200 concurrent users. By acquiring Aventail, we now have SSL VPN for enterprises -- and can go up to over 5,000 users.

CIOL: Elaborate on SonicWALL’s new, revolutionary enterprise E-class technology.

SB: This is the same UTM box based on the 16-core CPU. Cavium is making the chips for us. All of our customers get a toll free number. Any customer can call the TAC (technical assistant center) -- one is in Pune and another in Bangalore. The TACs cater to worldwide. We have an RMA Center (return to manufacturing). If a box gets damaged, it can get replaced within 24-48 hours. This RMA works only within the country (India).

Our product ranges from 10-user UTM box to over 1,000 users UTM box. In a month, we will typically have six or seven returns. The low failure rate is our USP.

CIOL: Can you expand on SonicWALL’s leadership position in the Unified Threat Management (UTM) space?

SB: In India, we are going at a breakneck speed. In the SMB space, we are the market leaders in India. We have over 2,200 customers in India alone.

The Internet is used by everybody. We have a lot of installations in factories, retails, airlines, banks, stock holding companies, telecom, and also in government, like railways. A lot of educational institutes, like IITs, also use our solutions.

The market is still growing in India very fast. More and more smaller companies are witnessing the usage of Internet in their business. Security has become de facto. Users want one box. So, the demand has been growing rapidly. In India, the UTM market is growing 30-35 percent YoY.