Guardent Signs $27M Security Deal For Latin America

The agreement represents Guardent's biggest contract to date, and the Waltham-based security solution provider believes it is the largest-ever publicly announced managed security services deal, said Dan McCall, general manager of Guardent's managed services division.

Under the terms of the pact, Convergence will resell in Latin America Guardent's 24x7 managed security services,including firewalls, VPNs, virus scanning and intrusion detection,along with its broadband services.

Based in Sunrise, Fla., Convergence provides broadband and other services to more than 1,700 Latin American customers, most of which are corporations.

Amaury Rivera, vice president of strategic marketing and sales at Convergence, said data security is becoming a top issue in Mexico, among other countries. "The viruses that affect U.S. businesses are showing up here in Mexico," he said.

Latin American businesses up until now have focused on deploying bandwidth services, but they're realizing the need for security, Rivera said. "Security is becoming a key factor in their decision for getting services," he said.

Service providers are increasingly considering security to be a primary component of their IP-based offerings, and they are partnering with security providers to offer these capabilities, said McCall. To date, Guardent has signed deals with more than 50 service providers that plan to resell the firm's managed security offerings, he said.

Latin America represents a huge opportunity for security services, McCall said. Guardent also offers managed security in Canada and is considering bringing pilot services to Europe, he said.

"We're being somewhat opportunistic everywhere," McCall said.

In the United States alone, the market for managed security services is projected to grow to $2.4 billion in revenue by 2005, said Allan Carey, an analyst at market research firm IDC.

Carey said Guardent's deal with Convergence is "significant," but that it is difficult to compare its size to other contracts in a market where there are few published dollar amounts for customer wins.