Pedestal Pulls In Partners

The main driver of products such as Pedestal's is compliance with federal regulations such as HIPAA and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, said Tom Meusel, vice president of sales at the Newton, Mass.-based company. In addition, large companies want to prevent internal and external security breaches, he said.

"Companies are extremely diligent now about how they lock down systems against a variety of threats," Meusel said. "New threats are coming out every single day, and one of the biggest challenges is automating the systems security process. %85 Companies are recognizing that they need tools to allow them to automate the process."

Pedestal's SecurityExpressions, an agentless policy management solution, assesses, verifies and audits policy requirements within desktops, laptops and servers to make sure the systems meet security policies established by the corporation.

"Where partners are going to make most of their money with us is in the ability to wrap value-added services around our offerings," Meusel said. "We're taking a quality, not quantity, approach to partnering because we want to make sure our partners can make money."

Paul Klahn, director of assessment services at FishNet, a Kansas City, Mo.-based solution provider that recently signed on with Pedestal, said, "We have countless vendors courting us, but we took on SecurityExpressions as a new product, and so far the customers we've demonstrated the product to have been blown away. Assessment and compliance are real pain factors for companies."

Other businesses that recently teamed up with Pedestal include Assured Networks, IDXOnline, Intelligent Decisions, NTG Clarity, Programmatic IT and Softek Excellence.