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Record growth for WatchGuard Technologies
WatchGuard Technologies enjoyed record growth despite the effects of the world recession. Viet Nam News reporter Thu Ngan speaks to CEO Joe Wang about the company’s product and rapid growth.
Would you please give readers some information about your company?
WatchGuard Technologies is a network security company.
The company was established in 1996 and was publicly listed in 1999. Two years ago, it became private.
The company began as a pioneer in providing firewall products. For several years, we have changed our focus to UTM (unified threat management) products.
As a global company, about half our business comes from America, 38 per cent from the EU and the remainder from the Asia Pacific region.
WatchGuard was named the leading company in supplying network security products in the US$15,000 to $50,000 price range.
We don’t focus on the individual consumer. We provide solutions for corporations, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Last year, most companies worldwide saw a decline in business. They also saw revenue falling in the first quarter of the year. Meanwhile, last year was a record year for Watch Guard. We grew a lot. In the first quarter of this year, we continued to see growth.
Recently, there has been a surge of companies providing network security across the globe. Who is WatchGuard’s biggest competitor and how does your company boost its competitiveness?
You are correct. Recently there has been an increase in security companies and security products in the world market.
Each company offers different solutions. We focus on UTM products, which include a complete security capability.
So, basically, it is a barrier between a company’s internal network and external internet. We are in the middle and can protect against all attacks and threats.
All technological functions are provided in that one barrier.
In the world in general and in Viet Nam in particular, our biggest competitor is CISCO, which has many kinds of security products.
However, in the UTM market, CISCO does not provide all the necessary functions in one appliance like we do.
Because all functions are provided in one item, we can provide our customers with a better price.
In 2008, our growth in UTMs increased by 95 per cent from 2007.
How important is Viet Nam to your company?
Viet Nam is important to WatchGuard for several reasons. We have been doing business here for four years now, with notable success in the government sector, which is a key vertical market for us.
The Binh Duong Post Office is a good example of a government organisation that was concerned about connecting its workforce in the main post office with smaller outposts across the province.
They chose WatchGuard from a host of competitors to ensure a secure network with our unique infrastructure and security architecture for easy installation, efficiency and reliability.
Viet Nam is also important to us given the market’s high growth in network deployment and Internet usage.
We are working closely with our distributor, Blitz IT, to recruit more resellers to ensure we have sufficient sales and post-sales technical support to capitalise on Viet Nam’s growth.
We just held our APAC Distributor Conference in Ha Noi with five of our executives from our headquarters in Seattle, Washington (USA) and some 60 distributors and staff from throughout the region.
Our decision to hold it in Ha Noi was made to familiarise our team with Viet Nam and give them a chance to visit this high-growth, high-potential market and witness Ha Noi’s vibrancy.
What are the company’s plans to expand the market in Viet Nam in the next few years?
We manage Viet Nam with a local distributor and our sales and technical team based in Singapore.
As Viet Nam grows, we would expect to open an office here as we already have in our larger markets like Australia, mainland China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore.
In the meantime, we will recruit more resellers across the country to ensure we have the geographical and vertical market coverage necessary to capture Viet Nam’s growing awareness of network-security threats and the need for protection.
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