Security vendor Celestix is hunting for new partners as it branches out from its core
Microsoft appliance business. The vendor has produced appliances for Microsoft
security software since 2004 and this activity generated 85 per cent of the firm’s
revenue last year. However, Celestix is looking to establish its own brand in the Identity
and Access Management market with their range of ID management, authentication
and user provisioning solutions, and expects to see a commensurate broadening in its
reseller base. Tim Ager, Celestix CEO, emphasises that Celestix branded products are
meant to enhance their Microsoft products, rather than replace them. “We’re selling
integrated solutions now.”
Founded in 1999, Celestix Networks has delivered solutions to thousands
of corporate and government
organizations worldwide. The company
is headquartered in Fremont, California
with offices in Singapore; Reading,
UK; Chennai, India; Tokyo, Japan and
Shanghai, China. Mr. Ager joined
Celestix in 2006 and was promoted to
CEO in December 2010. Prior to Celestix,
he was responsible for sales at pan-European security distributor Allasso.
He also held executive positions at
Bottomline Technologies where he grew
sales of their payment security solutions
to overseas markets before managing
the export division.
Mr. Ager explains that Celestix initially
served as a manufacturer of security
applications for small and medium sized
businesses, with Checkpointas its main
partner. Having built a successful
business in that, they were approached
by Microsoft, in 2003. “Microsoft
wanted to become more active in the
security space and were about to launch
ISA server 2004. They asked us to
develop an appliance for it and we saw
an opportunity there.“
Celestix’ Microsoft appliances continue
to sell well, he emphasises, and there is
in fact still growth in this market.
“When compared to the early days,
Microsoft is now much more accepted
as a brand in security.” Still, they’re now
also looking to expand beyond the
Microsoft space. To that end they’ve
teamed up with Sunfive S.A., the creator of Boole Server security
platform. Together they announced the
global availability of Celestix Boole
Server Appliance (BSA), earlier this year.
Celestix BSA is said to combine
information rights management, 2048
bit file encryption and managed file
transfer in a hardware appliance form
factor to deliver unified data-centric
security. With BSA, organizations can
share sensitive information with users
inside or outside the corporate
network whilst ensuring persistent
controls are applied to their data files.
“The challenge facing businesses today
is not how to share files with users
across the globe, but securing their
collaboration and preventing data
leakage caused either by malicious
actions or human error,” says Mr. Ager.
“BSA is a unique solution that allows
data owners within a business to
control their sensitive files and create
their own policies for categorizing data
and how it will be viewed by other
users. The policies for protecting
sensitive information and intellectual
property are based on the individual
needs of the data owner.”
To ensure data integrity, BSA encrypts
files at rest and in transit with militarygrade
2048 bit technology. Whether
data is sent by email, portable USB
drive, instant message or any other
method, files cannot be accessed
without the relevant permissions.
Additionally, BSA prevents data leakage
through controlling who can access
files, what they can do with the data,
and for how long they can view it. The
ability to edit, copy, print or use a screen
capture tool can be restricted along with applying permanent watermarking and
anti-photo capabilities. Using the BSA
solution allows businesses to not only
comply with but exceed regulations
for data handling. “The joint solution
provided by Celestix and Sunfive is the
most feature rich product on the market
today for secure data exchange,”
continues Mr. Ager. “By offering a
preconfigured optimized platform,
customers can easily deploy the Boole
Server technology with little integration
work. The BSA appliance is a
revolutionary step forward on how
organizations can protect their most
critical asset, their confidential data.”
Mr. Ager again emphasises that he sees
the BSA solution as complementary to
their Microsoft appliance market. “It is
very much about enhancing Microsoft
solutions, rather than replacing them.
Introducing our own products now is
the result of an organic process. We
have built up a wealth of intellectual
property over the years and now we
want to bring it to the market.” He adds
that under their own brand, Celestix will
also be touting a tokenless 2FA product
called Hotpin and a single-sign on cloud solution called SSO Works. “This is a
very exciting product as it allows you to
authenticate and provide SSO to users
of cloud-based applications.” He admits
that addressing new markets also
creates a need for broadening their
partner and reseller network. Celestix
has traditionally worked with security
resellers. “We already have a strong,
global channel partner network with
some of the world’s big name resellers
and system integrators. Now we want to
make those resellers understand that we
sell integrated solutions that make their
job easier really.”
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