Enterasys Names New Head Of Americas Channel Sales

Jim Harold joined Enterasys this week as vice president of partner sales for the Americas, a newly created position that oversees partnerships with VARs, integrators and distributors as well as with other technology vendors, an Enterasys spokesman said. Previously vice president of channel sales and alliances at InfoBlox, a security appliance vendor, Harold will report to Michael Rivers, Enterasys' top sales executive.

Rivers serves as executive vice president of worldwide sales and service at Andover, Mass.-based Enterasys. He joined the company in March as the first of a series of planned additions to the company's sales management team. Enterasys soon expects to name new executives to lead federal sales and its North American direct sales, the company spokesman said.

Enterasys saw the need to change its sales team after it realized that financial results for its first quarter, ended April 3, would fall short of expectations, the spokesman said. Last month, the networking vendor reported a 17 percent year-over-year sales drop in the quarter as well as a loss that more than doubled the loss it posted a year earlier. In addition, the company said it plans to lay off 200 employees, or 14 percent of its workforce.

To help kick-start channel sales efforts, Enterasys plans to introduce new functionality in its Matrix N-series switches next week at the NetWorld Interop conference in Las Vegas. The move is designed to bring security features deeper into the network. With version 4.0 of Enterasys' operating software, the switches can identify, authenticate and manage traffic from individual users, even if they are placed at the distribution layer instead of at the network edge. That gives customers with multivendor infrastructure environments access to Enterasys security features without having to rip out and replace their existing edge switches, the company said.

"You're not going to go into a lot of Cisco shops and say, 'We've got this great technology. Rip out what you have now,' " said Steve Thorpe, president of Adaptive Communications, a solution provider in Portsmouth, N.H. "It's a different story if we ask them if they would like to add [the security features] to their existing network," he said.

Enterasys also is rolling out NetSight Atlas Automated Security Manager, a new module for its Dynamic Intrusion Response solution that also links with the Enterasys Dragon Intrusion Defense System. Together, the products can identify security threats and locate the device on the network that sourced the threat, enabling users to quarantine infected traffic. Available now, pricing for Netsight Atlas Automated Security Manager starts at $17,000. N-series switches also are now shipping with the new operating software. Free upgrades are available for customers with maintenance contracts.

In other news, Enterasys said it plans to announce that Radware, a Mahwah, N.J.-based application switch vendor, has joined its Secure Networks Certified Partner Program. Through the partnership, Enterasys has certified Radware's FireProof Security Application Switch for interoperability with its own Dragon Intrusion Defense product line. Enterasys also aims to provide best practices to solution providers implementing the two product lines.