GhangorCloud sees enormous potential for expansion of its business through a deal. which will see the Chinese giant sell their security software on Huawei servers. While this will greatly assist Ghangorcloud in global markets, it will also have an impact in North America.

San Jose-based security startup GhangorCloud has announced a strategic partnership with Chinese networking and telecom equipment giant Huawei, in a move which the company believes will greatly expand its total addressable market.

“This is a very, very special thing for us,” said Tarique Mustafa, GhangorCloud’s CEO and CTO.

GhangorCloud, which launched a year ago, makes data security and compliance software which identifies, classifies, and protects large volumes of information against Advanced Persistent Threats in real-time, using an identity and role based GRC paradigm that uses powerful correlation engine and security algorithms. This software will now be delivered on Huawei server platforms. Huawei benefits from the relationship by being able to provide a next-generation architecture and security solution, and GhangorCloud benefits – massively – because partnering with Huawei massively increases GhangorCloud’s exposure to customers.

“Geographically, they have a global presence, while we are a small startup,” Mustafa said. “Through them, we get access to those geos. Huawei, in many parts of the world is very strong, to the point where they are close to a monopoly in some places. This applies outside of China as well, notably in some parts of the Middle East. Huawei is also very big in telecom, and telecom is hard to penetrate because those companies are so big.”

The partnership has already reaped results for GhangorCloud even before its formal announcement.

“Huawei has already taken us in to some of their major accounts in government and telecom,” Mustafa said.

Huawei has had some widely-known problems in the U.S. market on account of being a Chinese company, and Mustafa said that the GhangorCloud partnership is starting outside for North America first. North America is on their target list, however.

“The plan is to start in North America in Q4 this year, and get in discussions with some big customers in the U.S. through Huawei,” Mustafa said. “There are parts of the U.S. where they have a decent penetration, especially in pharmaceuticals, which is a very big target market for us. Canada has some sizable telecom businesses.

“In North America, our partnership with Huawei will be very targeted to verticals and customers within the verticals, particularly among customers that Huawei already has.” Mustafa said that GhangorCloud’s channel partners, who are their primary route to market, will be treated very fairly by this.

“Joint product offerings are also fully underway between us, and you can expect to see those in the Q3 or Q4 time frame,” Mustafa stated.

This is not GhangorCloud’s first partnership with a much larger company. For instance, British Telecom is a reseller of theirs in south-east Asia. Mustafa acknowledged that this deal is in a league of its own so far, however.

“We are extremely excited about this,” he said. “We are bracing ourselves to learn how to drink from the fire hydrant.”

Mustafa said that GhangorCloud has had a solid first year, in which they met their major targets.

“We have three major banks as clients,” he said. “We have a government deployment that is being completed April 15. We have one with a major national security agency, and with other major security agencies in both Asia and the Middle East. Two more government agencies are scheduled for Q3. In the high tech industry, we recently displaced the largest incumbent in the security space from one of their marquee customers in California, and we have more companies in high technology now doing proof-of-concepts with us. In retail, we have two deployments starting in the Q3-Q4 timeframe. We are also in discussions with law firms for the legal market.”

The company name, GhangorCloud, is from Urdu and Hindi, and refers to a monsoon cloud. The term is widely used in romantic poetry in those languages, where it brings down a bounty for everyone.