Avanton Arms Security VARs

Targeted at the much sought after SMB market, the ReadyARM appliance offers functionality such as network monitoring, intrusion detection alerting and reporting, vulnerability scanning, and report correlation, said Richard Knapp, president and CEO of Avanton, Manhattan Beach, Calif. The addition of anti-virus functionality is expected by the end of the year, Knapp said.

Built to handle environments with clients counts ranging from 100 to 1,000 seats, ReadyARM is priced at $9,995. "It's kind of the Honda Accord of the industry," Knapp said.

Without needing any form of Avanton technical certification, VARs can become authorized Avanton resellers by simply purchasing one appliance at half price and agreeing to hit one of four sales goals, which determines the reseller's margin, Knapp said. Discounts as high as 40 percent are being offered by Avanton to resellers that achieve the highest sales goal. Resellers that choose not to commit to a sales goal will earn at least a 15 percent discount, Knapp said.

Kevin Connell, CTO of Endurics, a VAR in Beaverton, Ore., said he found the perfect customer for ReadyARM in the form of a cash-strapped local municipality. "This municipality is tied to the city, which had been getting a lot of state funding but that's been cut. So the muni was at the end of many budget cuts but needed added security at the network level," Connell said. "We had originally approached them with another product for desktop management, but it was the ease of use and price of ReadyARM that closed the deal."

Connell said the municipality also was burdened by network bandwidth problems. ReadyARM's bandwidth monitor addressed this problem as well by pinpointing and mapping how network resources were being used.

Managed technical support from Avanton--which includes available updates, upgrades, backups and support services--is available at an additional cost of less than $2,000 annually.