Firewall Maker Crosses The Pond To Expand Its Channel

For the second month running, U.K.-based SmoothWall’s sales in the United States have topped those in its native Britain, and the security company is looking to expand its American channel.

In the winter of 2000, the company’s founders developed an open-source firewall called SmoothWall GPL Open Source. Within a few months, over 70,000 copies of the software had been downloaded, and in October 2001, the company released its first commercial offering. To date, over 1 million copies of the open-source firewall have been downloaded.

SmoothWall’s Corporate Guardian 4 Web security and content-filtering software adds protection against Web browser exploits, spyware and phishing. The latest version also can integrate with Novell eDirectory system, Microsoft Active Directory and other LDAP authentication systems. With 50 channel partners in the United States, SmoothWall CEO George Lungley said he sees the company’s security product as a vehicle for selling services in addition to hardware and software.

“In the firewall market, one of the big changes that has happened over the past few years is that it has certainly become more commoditized. It’s harder for resellers to make money out of selling the firewall,” Lungley said. “That’s not the case yet in Web-content filtering, which is as big or a bigger market for us than the firewall marketplace.”

North East Ohio Digital, a Cleveland-based security solution provider, has been using SmoothWall’s corporate products in its security installations and has spent the past several months performing upgrades to clients’ software. When managing clients’ firewalls and running its own custom software began to take up too much time, NEO Digital decided to partner with SmoothWall.

The solution provider has used SmoothWall in installations ranging from police and fire stations to college campuses and car dealerships. NEO Digital President Pete DeLong said the upgrade’s integration with Microsoft’s Active Directory is a much-appreciated addition. “We had been asking for it for about two years,” DeLong said. “It makes it seamless between content filtering and domain networks from Microsoft. That’s something that NEO Digital probably pushes more than anything.”

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