Radware Racks Up Asian Deals

Increasingly, security vendors are looking to the lucrative, yet demanding, Asian telecom market as a launchpad for success in the U.S. Today, for example, Radware Ltd. (Nasdaq: RDWR) announced deals with South Korea's KT Corp. and Taiwans Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd. (see Radware Secures Deals in Asia).

Telecom firms in Asian countries, particularly those in broadband-happy Korea, have a serious need for network security, according to Peter Firstbrook, program director at analyst firm Meta Group Inc. “More homes in Asia are hooked up to broadband than anywhere else in the world, and, additionally, a lot of the [computer] viruses come from there,” he says.

Cracking a market as tough as this provides great entrée into the U.S., he adds. “Telecom firms are really risk averse, and [security] vendors really need to prove that their products are scaleable and robust -- once they do that, it gives them a great inroad into the U.S. market."

Radware’s big break at KT came in response to the SQL Slammer worm back in January 2002, when the carrier deployed the vendor’s Application Switch III. With this latest deal, KT has rolled out Radware's DefensePro intrusion-and-prevention product on top of the switches.

Although the value of the KT and Chunghwa Telecom deals has not been revealed, a spokesman for Radware asserts that “more than 100” of the vendor’s devices have now been deployed in each company.Cindy Borovick, program director at analyst firm IDC, believes that this will prove beneficial to Radware when it attempts to sell its products back in the U.S. “I think that it helps with overall credibility,” she says. “It certainly gets Radware in the door.”

But Radware is not the only vendor making it big in Asia. Borovick cites Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) and NetScaler Inc. as examples of companies making inroads in the Asian service provider market, as well as more established vendors such as Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT).

Startup NetScaler only launched its Korean operation six months ago, but has already clinched deals with Korea Telecom Freetel and the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association. The San Jose, Calif.-based firm has also won a contract with China’s SINA Corp. (see NetScaler Launches in Korea, KTF Opts for NetScaler, and Sina Deploys NetScaler Devices).

Of course, there is an additional incentive to win market share in the Far East: Whereas U.S. telecom firms been struggling in recent years, their Asian counterparts have money to burn. But this may be about to change.

”We’re assuming that the U.S. telecom firms will start to spend again, and the similar spending patterns that we see in Asia will be repeated elsewhere,” says Borovick.When this happens Stateside, managed services will be the sweet-spot for security vendors, according to Meta Group's Firstbrook. “They are primarily spending money on their infrastructure, but we do see emerging managed security services."

But Borovick warns that winning market share among U.S. telecom firms will not necessarily be a “slam dunk” for the security vendors: “Service providers are very sophisticated network experts -- they are interested in performance."

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum