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Purewire Develops Two-Tier MSP Strategy

Purewire, a pioneer in cloud-based Web filtering and security monitoring services, is expanding the availability of its technology by making it available to managed service providers through two-tier reseller agreements with hosted security service providers. The Atlanta-based company recently signed Reflexion and Proofpoint, both providers of hosted e-mail and security services, as the first distributors […]

Written By: Lawrence Walsh

Sep 11, 2009

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Purewire, a pioneer in cloud-based Web filtering and security monitoring services, is expanding the availability of its technology by making it available to managed service providers through two-tier reseller agreements with hosted security service providers.

The Atlanta-based company recently signed Reflexion and Proofpoint, both providers of hosted e-mail and security services, as the first distributors of its security services to managed service providers that service the SMB marketplace.

“We’re looking to push through existing channels that have a number of existing customers to either resell or white label our service to the market,” says Mike Van Bruinisse, president and CEO of Purewire.

Purewire, a company that’s little more than a year old, is the brainchild of security veterans Van Bruinisse, CTO Paul Judge and sales vice president Mark Caldwell. The team building Purewire is the same group that built CipherTrust, a pioneer and one-time market leader in e-mail security appliances that was sold to Secure Computing in 2006. The technology now resides in McAfee’s portfolio, which acquired Secure Computing last year.

Rather than developing another on-premise Web filtering software or appliance package, Purewire approached Web security from a cloud computing perspective. It built cloud-based scanners and filters that compete against security powerhouses such as Symantec, Google, Websense and Trend Micro. In the year since its launch, Purewire has reaped numerous awards for its technology innovation and go-to-market strategy.

In the channel, Purewire is still a neophyte. Primarily a direct sales company, Purewire is slowly developing its channel strategy. It’s developed reseller relationships with such security integrators as FishNet Security and Accuvant. The relationships with Reflexion and Proofpoint are different in that it’s more of a two-tier model in which the Purewire services are made available to managed service providers as part of the package provided by the hosting companies.

“By partnering with Purewire, our customers can extend that protection to the Web, with the same high level of service quality and support to which they are accustomed. Together we bring enterprise-caliber solutions to the SMB market,” says Scott Barlow, vice president of sales at Reflexion, in a statement.

Van Bruinisse says Purewire plans to develop and expand its two-tier model by signing up more master service providers and hosting companies such as Reflexion and Proofpoint that make security services more accessible to small and midsized business technology consumers.

Purewire Develops Two-Tier MSP Strategy

Lawrence Walsh

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