Symantec Rolls Out Small-Biz E-Mail Appliance

The company&'s new 8220 appliance protects e-mail from viruses, spam and phishing through embedded applications of Symantec&'s antivirus and BrightMail antispam software. It is a scaled-down version of its existing 8240 and 8260 appliances, designed for larger companies.

Small businesses have the same security issues as larger companies, but most of Symantec&'s products for small businesses were closer to its consumer offerings, said Julie Parrish, vice president of global channel sales and strategy at the company.

But the Cupertino, Calif.-based security giant is recognizing that it needs to address the small-business market with the same technologies it sells to larger businesses, Parrish said.

“Consumers are different from small-business customers,” Parrish said. “We needed to do a much better job of making it clear what we have and the opportunity for our channel partners."

That works for Jeffrey Tye, co-owner of Symantec partner GMP Networks in Tucson, Ariz. Tye said he is excited about being able to offer small-business customers the same Symantec products he sells to larger enterprise customers.

“Smaller companies have the same, if not higher, risk profiles,” Tye said. “They need these types of solutions.”

Other VARs agreed that there is a need for small businesses to arm themselves with the same security technologies that larger enterprises use, but not all are sure that Symantec&'s new appliance is the answer.

Symantec is venturing into a space dominated by lower-priced unified threat management vendors SonicWall and Fortinet. And at $995 plus as much as $34 per user per year in software licensing fees, the 8220 appliance is priced too high, said Darrel Bowman, CEO of AppTech, a solution provider in Tacoma, Wash.

“Symantec has always been good to the channel, but they&'re not quite there with the price point,” Bowman said. “The channel has to have incentive to sell it.”