John Lochow (News - Alert) joined Sipera as president and chief executive officer this past February. Lochow is a strong believer in a channel strategy, and he believes that a successful growth plan for Sipera would necessarily include growing the channel base and bringing on a set of strategic partners.

 

With a history of employment that includes a stint at Tech Data (News - Alert), this should not come as a surprise.

 

Well, the first step towards growing that channel program is becoming a reality today as Sipera has announced its Sipera Partner Network, providing technology partners, distributors and resellers an opportunity to add VoIP and unified communications (UC) security to new and existing implementations.

 

Partners who sign up with Sipera will gain access to Sipera’s IPCS appliances and VIPER Lab.

 

Sipera’s VIPER (Voice over IP Exploitation Research) Lab staffers track and identify potential security threats and vulnerabilities that can be launched against SIP, IMS, and UMA networks. Once identified, these vulnerabilities and exploits in VoIP protocols, VoIP equipment and phones are published as VoIP Threat Advisories. Common threats include fuzzing, reconnaissance, floods and distributed floods, spoofing, stealth attacks and spam.

 

Sipera Partner Network members have access to specialized training for securely and effectively deploying VoIP and UC solutions. Partners also receive sales leads, marketing collateral, technical support and bulletins, a dedicated Web site, and streamlined order and fulfillment.

 

In April, Sipera’s IPCS line of security appliances was designated a Nortel Select Product, which means that Nortel Partner Advantage resellers can order Sipera IPCS products and support directly through Nortel, giving Nortel customers direct access to Sipera IPCS products as a recommended third-party product via Nortel channel partners.

 

Current distribution partners include Mitsubishi (News - Alert) and Westcon, while Belltech, INSI, Shared Technologies and Vigilar are reseller partners.

 

“These partnerships are critical to customers’ networks so we developed a partner program that focused on their VoIP/UC needs beyond deployments and normal operations,” said Eric Winsborrow, Chief Marketing Officer for Sipera.

 

Sipera solutions have been proven to interoperate with systems from Avaya (News - Alert), Cisco and Nortel. According to the company, this upfront compliance allows partners to sort through any issues associated with VoIP and UC deployment and get their products to market quickly.

 

“As more enterprises deploy VoIP and UC, we anticipate an increase in both security awareness and emerging threats. With access to Sipera products and VIPER Lab, we can ensure our customers stay ahead of vulnerabilities inherent in these networks, and proactively safeguard critical business communications,” said Jeff Graham, CTO at Shared Technologies.

 

The Sipera IPCS products offer threat prevention, VoIP/UC policy compliance and secure VoIP/UC access in a single device. The IPCS products combine VPN, Firewall, SBC, Intrusion Prevention, Compliance and Troubleshooting functionality for VoIP/UC systems. The product family spans four appliances supporting 200 to 50,000 users with throughput from 10 Mbps to 2 Gbps.

 

For more information about the Sipera Partner Network, visit www.sipera.com/partners.