Emerging Vendors

July 15, 2009

Company: Barracuda Networks

Headquarters: Campbell, Calif.

Technology Sector: Security

Key Product: Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall

Year Founded: 2004

Number of Channel Partners: 1,500 in North America; 3,000 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: SMB-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: As technology becomes more and more sophisticated so do rogues who want to invade and bring down networks.

The Lowdown: Like the vicious fish it's named after, Barracuda aims to sink its teeth into its prey: the bad guys who threaten to climb over firewalls and wreak havoc on IT systems.

Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall 300

The vendor's security portfolio includes its Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall, Barracuda Web Application Firewall and Barracuda IM Firewall. The company has offices in 10 global locations and distributors in more than 80 countries. In addition to targeting SMBs, several large enterprises use its products, including IBM, Coca-Cola, FedEx, Harvard University and L'Oreal.

Less well-known but gaining in popularity are the company's other two product lines, storage and networking.

"Security is our base, but storage is our fastest growing segment," said Ezra Hookano, vice president of sales, North America. "We've grown three to four times since January."

Barracuda Backup Service provides on- or off-site backup and data de-duplication. Those services provide must-have technology to a wide range of sectors, including SMBs, enterprises, healthcare and the government.

The company is also seeing wins with its Barracuda Message Archiver, which indexes and preserves e-mails, an especially crucial function for organizations that may be in disparate locations.

"There is a lot of spending in consolidating operations," Hookano said. "Look at bigger banks buying out regional banks---they may not have the same solutions in place and we can provide them with that."

Barracuda has a tiered channel program at diamond, platinum and standard levels.

"We work with partners and give them leads to generate new business and have a solid marketing kit that really helps get leads," he said. "We also run seminars to develop local resellers and to increase their customer base. Our products are extremely easy to sell."