SonicWall is now officially owned by two private equity forms -- Francisco Partners and Elliott Management -- the security company confirmed this morning. Next up: SonicWall, formerly owned by Dell, is launching a renewed channel partner program initiative called the SecureFirst Partner Program.
Amid the change of ownership, Bill Conner is now president and CEO of SonicWall. Conner previously was CEO of Silent Circle, CEO of Entrust, president of Data Networks and president of Enterprise Networks at Nortel Networks. He'll focus the company on SonicWall's branded Capture Advance Threat Protection Service -- essentially is an advanced threat protection and sandboxing approach to stopping zero-day attacks.
Conner offered up these comments to employees, partners and customers:
Meanwhile, the new SecureFirst Partner Program features improved partner rewards, deal protection and expanded technical enablement on the SonicWall portfolio, the company said. Dell EMC also will continue to resell SonicWall's entire portfolio.
Even ahead of the deal, SonicWall says it has achieved several milestones on the technology and channel fronts. They include:
- The number of new partners offering SonicWall’s solutions grew by 20 percent in the last year, SonicWall claims.
- For the eighth straight year, SonicWall is the North American market share leader in the small and midsized enterprise Internet Security Appliance market, the company assets.
- SonicWall’s Capture Advanced Threat Prevention Service has analyzed more than four million suspicious files since the service’s launch in August, the company said.
Still, SonicWall in some ways is making up for lost time. During a partner conference in August, the company conceded that its partner communications were occasionally slow and/or challenging under Dell's former ownership. Also, the company conceded that it needed to close the feature-function gap on a few items.
Note: Stay tuned for a ChannelE2E interview with SonicWall's executive leadership later today.
