Verio Expands Managed VPN Service

The new SafeGuard Plus VPN complements the company's existing portfolio of managed VPN services and is available to Verio channel partners immediately.

Lloyd Kiltz, director of technical sales at the Englewood, Colo.-based vendor, said the new service delivers a much broader footprint than several of the company's other offerings, enabling resellers to provide any number of services on top of managed VPNs.

"This isn't so much a new service as it is a new way of providing a service we've done all along," he said. "With SafeGuard Plus VPN, our resellers can offer customers just about any service they desire, regardless of who those customers are currently using for their IP provider."

Specifically, the new service offers full-time appliance management, IPsec tunneling aggregation, hardware provisioning, traffic prioritization and high-availability router configuration options. Coupled with some of the vendor's other managed security services, the new suite provides customers with multiple layers of network protection, including firewalls, VPNs and intrusion-detection systems.

All of this new functionality was good news for solution providers who participate in Verio's renowned viaVerio channel program.

Rick Stern, president of Network Innovations, Chicago, said he expected the new managed VPN services to enable him to bag new customers and reap additional revenue from existing ones.

"This new product is 10 times more vast than the stuff they used to sell," Stern said. "With these changes, Verio will be able to offer greater capacity as far as network availability is concerned, which will allow us to make our current customers happy and open doors to more customers."

Pricing for the new SafeGuard VPN services, which varies by service, starts at $350 per month. Basic VPN service includes on-site installation, support and online Web reporting, as well as full-time router management, monitoring and technical support.