Allot, an Israeli-based veteran of the network intelligence and security space, is much stronger in EMEA than in North America, but is looking to change that, and have expanded their distribution here, bringing on Lifeboat to take their SSG unified solution to channel partners.
Aviel Sivan, Vice President Channel Development & Sales Operations at Allot Networks
Israeli-based Allot has engaged Lifeboat Distribution to take the Allot Secure Service Gateway [SSG] unified solution to its partner base in North America. The company is a significant player in EMEA, but is much less well known in North America, and is hopeful that this new distribution deal can help to change that.
Allot is a well-established organization, which has been around for over 20 years, and has been listed on the NASDAQ for the last ten. They are a significant player in the Layer 7 deep packet inspection space.
“Our major market is EMEA, where we have 50 per cent of our sales,” said Aviel Sivan, Vice President Channel Development & Sales Operations at Allot. “We do have an install base and some nice projects in the U.S., but this is not our main market now, which is something that we are trying to change. We have a few service provider customers in Canada, including Primus, and some enterprise customers there.”
When Allot started out, many years ago, their initial focus was on the enterprise space.
“We approached this market with a 100 per cent channel strategy, and we continue to have an active partner ecosystem,” Sivan said. “This was before the mobile traffic boom, and when that boom took place, we switched our main focus to telecoms. Today, with the larger Global Tier One telcos, we sell direct, and with the smaller Tier One telcos, and the Tiers two through four, that is a channel business. Today, about two-third of our business is telecom, and about a third is enterprise.”
The channel uses two tier distribution in all geos, and is fairly large as a result.
“We have several value-added distributors in each country, who have expertise in networking and security, and a long list of resellers behind them,” Sivan said.
Both networking and security expertise are important for Allot’s distribution, because Allot now plays in both areas.
“We started out purely in the networking space, and for years we sold that to telecoms and enterprises in financials, education, retailing and the public sector,” Sivan stated. “However, in the last several years, we did a transformation into cybersecurity as well, particularly into DDOS detection and mitigation. That brought us into Web security services, where we are a worldwide market leader to protect mobile devices, and the supplier of large telcos like Vodaphone and Telefonica. We provide them with the value-added service of security protection.”
Wearing multiple hats means that Allot competes on many fronts.
“In the telecom space, it’s the big gateway vendors like Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei, and in traffic management, it’s Sandvine, out of Canada, and in security, it’s Symantec and Fortinet,” Sivan said. “We also collaborate with endpoint security vendors like McAfee, and in this area – Fortinet.”
The Allot SSG
Allot has other distributors in North America, so Lifeboat is not their first, but Lifeboat has been engaged specifically to distribute the Allot SSG, which combines application-level visibility and control, with advanced web security, and strong DDoS protection.
“We are running a new initiative around this secure service gateway offering, with its bundled security component,” Sivan said. Lifeboat, which started out as a very software-centric distributor, has expanded its portfolio since then, and they are focused on both networking and security as part of their six core solution areas, so are a good fit for this product.
“We have a joint go-to-market with Lifeboat to recruit resellers to resell the Allot SSG, which we expect will significantly increase our business in North America,” Sivan indicated.
The Lifeboat agreement covers Canada as well as the United States.
