Cyberoam Sends U.S. VARs Through Distribution

Less than a year after inaugurating its North American channel partner program, Cyberoam is moving all its new partners to distribution.

The Ahmedabad, India-based vendor, with U.S. headquarters in Newburyport, Mass., has signed an agreement to distribute its UTM (unified threat management) technology exclusively through distributor Synnex.

Change has been in the air for months. In August Cyberoam's new director of U.S. channel sales, David Glenn, left the company to return to his previous role as vice president of sales for Creative Breakthroughs, one of Cyberoam's largest VAR partners. Glenn had been introduced as the company's channel chief when the company launched its channel program at the RSA conference in San Francisco in March 2007.

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The deal between Cyberoam and Synnex comes a few months after UTM giant Fortinet streamlined its distribution relationships, severing ties with Synnex and seven other distributors. It retained its relationships with Ingram Micro and Tech Data.

That left Synnex looking for a new UTM vendor at the same time that Cyberoam sought a North American distribution relationship.

"Our specialty is not logistics and distribution," said Joshua Block, vice president of North American operations at Cyberoam. "That is Synnex's specialty."

The new Synnex relationship does not cover Cyberoam's managed services partners. Only the reseller partners will go through distribution, Block said.

The deal also gives Cyberoam access to Synnex's more than 15,000 VARs in the United States, a hike from the 60 existing Cyberoam VARs. Farokh Lam, marketing and distribution manager at Cyberoam, said that number of partners has more than doubled from last year, when the company launched its program in the United States.

All U.S. partners will now go through Synnex, according to Block, but that can offer advantages to those partners, many of whom already deal with Synnex.

"As a vendor, Cyberoam has a limited amount of ability to be creative with our financing," Block said. "Partners may get much better financing terms with Synnex. Synnex is also able to provide partners with better logistics options."

Cyberoam also has a handful of partners in Canada, and the company is working to extend the distribution deal to include those partners.