ForeScout eyes NZ for growth

Traditionally targeting medium-sized businesses and enterprises, ForeScout is now aiming at smaller customers

By Vera Alves, Auckland | Friday, 25 January 2013
If all goes according to Marc Fernandez's plan, we will all be hearing a lot more about ForeScout this year.
The company's regional vice president for the APAC region, based in Hong Kong, visited New Zealand at the end of last year for a "soft relaunch" of its networking technology. The company has been represented by Packet Technologies in the country for the last three years and the situation will remain the same but, according to Fernandez, ForeScout is changing its technology focus to better suit the needs of the market.

"It's good timing," says Fernandez talking to Reseller News in Auckland. "It's the convergence of the maturing of the product and the maturing of the market. The need is now rising to the capability of the product," he adds.

Traditionally, ForeScout customers have ranged between medium-sized businesses and enterprises with high compliance policies. "Now BYOD and the consumerisation of IT is bringing us into the small business space," says Fernandez, adding that no company can afford to ignore these trends.

"This is not necessarily a relaunch but we are focusing on BYOD and virtualisation. Both need a secondary device to check security and level of compliance. That is where we come in. We can do it agentless," says Fernandez, who hopes to engage with more resellers and MSPs in the country, via Packet Technologies.

"We want to wave a big red flag at resellers. Compliance tends to be the motivating factor (especially in industries such as medical, financial or legal)," says Frank Ollie, general manager of Packet Technologies. "New resellers should have another look at ForeScout," he adds. The company will start training resellers on ForeScout's product portfolio this year.

The company has been endorsed by McAfee through a partnership deal which, according to Fernandez, puts it on par with networking giant Cisco. "Why would we buy ForeScout and not Cisco? That endorsement takes that question off the table. It has really turned into a two-horse race."

ForeScout's automated security control solutions are network and vendor agnostic and sit at the core of the network. The company is channel-focused with about 85 to 90 percent of business going through the channel.