WatchGuard A/NZ Continues Pattern of Strong Growth

WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader in business security solutions, today announced that its Q1 billings have once again returned double digit, year over year growth.

ANZ regional growth for WatchGuard broke a new record with business growing more than 14 per cent over all business lines and growth in the mid-market lines growing 94 per cent and representing over 25 per cent of total ANZ revenue.

“WatchGuard continues to lead in the SMB security segment with more than 14 per cent growth over the same period last year,” says Scott Robertson, VP Asia Pacific. “In fact, the Australia and New Zealand business experienced 94 per cent growth in XTM 8, 10 and 20 Series sales which deliver up to 10GB of XTM/UTM throughput and purpose built for the needs of mid-market enterprises with between 500 - 5,000 employees. These results confirm that, as a category, XTM/UTM continues to deliver exceptional solutions for Australian and New Zealand businesses of all sizes.”

“WatchGuard continues its pattern of significant growth. Because of our strong channel partners, solid product offerings and unbeatable customer value, 2012 appears to be on pace for another record-breaking year.”

Robertson’s claims have been confirmed by WatchGuard partners such as Michael Jablonka, Sales Manager, Elmtree Consulting Services, who recently stated, “WatchGuard appliances are comprehensive and there is not much that they cannot do. Clients are able to solve their complex security problems with a simple one-device solution by WatchGuard that is easy to manage and provides visibility, clear reporting and troubleshooting tools. With WatchGuard anything is possible”.

In particular, the company notes five consecutive quarters of double-digit growth (averaging 15 per cent) from the company’s core UTM business, extremely high customer retention rates, and 39 percent year over year billings growth for its enterprise class, next-generation multifunction firewalls, which includes the XTM 8 series, XTM 1050 and state of the art, XTM 2050.

Enterprise Performance for Any Sized Business

The WatchGuard XTM 8 Series, XTM 1050 and XTM 2050 set the standard for high performance network security. Unlike other next-generation firewalls that only perform limited firewall, IPS and application controls, WatchGuard next-generation firewalls provide “defense-in-depth” firewalling, which includes stateful packet inspection, deep packet inspection and WatchGuard's proprietary proxy technology, as well as seven additional security service options, which include: Application Control, WebBlocker, Gateway Antivirus, Reputation Enabled Defense, spamBlocker, Intrusion Prevention and LiveSecurity.

The award-winning WatchGuard XTM 8 Series delivers 6.5Gbps firewall throughput, 2.3Gbps gateway AV throughput, 2.6Gbps IPS throughput, and industry leading 1.4Gbps full UTM throughput, making it ideal for demanding networks of 1,000 or more users. With full security features activated, the XTM 8 Series achieves a faster-than-line-speed 1.2Gbps throughput, which represents a major leap forward for multifunction firewall appliances in delivering high security without compromising network performance.

WatchGuard’s flagship lines, the XTM 1050 and XTM 2050, are respectively 10 and 20Gbps next-generation firewalls. They provide true line-speed security inspection on all traffic and support multi-gigabit packet-filtering throughput. In addition, they provide Application Control; unique drag-and-drop VPN connectivity; and give businesses unparalleled visibility into real-time and historical user, network, and security activities.

With WatchGuard XTM solutions, businesses can define, enforce, and audit strong security and acceptable use policies, resulting in increased employee productivity and less risk to critical intellectual property or customer data.

All of the WatchGuard XTM Series take advantage of the highly sophisticated WatchGuard operating system, Fireware XTM, which defends networks by utilising innovative security features, including WatchGuard’s cloud-based Reputation Enabled Defense security service, Application Control, full HTTPS inspection, VoIP security, and IM and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) application blocking. With Fireware XTM, the WatchGuard XTM Series integrates advanced networking capabilities, including clustering, load-balancing and other enterprise-class networking features.

WatchGuard XTM Series solutions are available worldwide from authorised WatchGuard channel partners.

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.

Since 1996, WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. has been the advanced technology leader of business security solutions, providing mission-critical protection to hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. The WatchGuard family of wired and wireless unified threat management appliances, messaging, content security and SSL VPN remote access solutions provide extensible network, application and data protection, as well as unparalleled network visibility, management and control. WatchGuard products are backed by WatchGuard LiveSecurity® Service, an innovative support, maintenance, and education program. WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle and has offices serving North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit http://www.watchguard.com/ .

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WatchGuard is a registered trademark of WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. All other marks are property of their respective owners