SonicWall Enhances Firewall Line Feature Set

The company also welcomed back a former channel executive, Dave Crilley, as director of channel marketing.

The SonicWall Pro 3060 and 4060 are rackmounted systems that include higher port counts than previous products. More notably, they both come with SonicOS 2.0, a major update to the company's firewall software platform.

In general, SonicWall appliances have been by far the easiest firewalls to manage, but the new products offer a much more mature feature set, said Rich Forsen, president of Network Depot, a Herndon, Va.-based security solution provider. As evidence, he pointed to SonicOS 2.0e, an enhanced version of SonicWall's OS that offers policy-based management, as well as the router-based configuration of the new products.

The new OS comes in two editions: SonicOS 2.0s, which offers a set of standard features such as easy network discovery and rapid setup; and SonicOS 2.0e, which adds support for multiple interfaces, WAN ISP failover and load balancing, among other things.

"What it really does is put [SonicWall] into more medium-[size] to large businesses," Forsen said.

Douglas Brockett, vice president of worldwide marketing at SonicWall, said the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company is gaining momentum among retail operations supporting multiple locations as well as the education market. "We're getting pulled more and more into very broad network deployments that include systems integrators," he said.

SonicWall Pro 3060, priced at $2,795 with SonicOS 2.0s in a base configuration, is being touted as the company's offering for 100-MBps VPNs. The appliance can be upgraded to include SonicOS 2.0e plus 8x5 support for another $695. SonicWall Pro 4060, priced at $4,995 with SonicOS 2.0e, is being targeted at more complex VPN installations.