Elitecore to focus on SOHO, SMB segments for Cyberoam

Banking on the small and medium businesses' (SMBs) demand for low-cost multi function threat protection offerings, Ahmedabad-based Elitecore Technologies Ltd is planning to launch two to three variants of Cyberoam in the network security segment.

The company is eyeing both the small office small home (SOHO) and SMB segments for its identity-based unified threat management (UTM) appliances. "As against 2005 when we had launched network security offerings, SMBs now are more dependent on internet and it is increasing day-by-day. There is a lot of awareness on viruses among these units. In fact, the world over network security players are following up on the segment. Both SOHO and SMBs are going to drive the network security market and we would like to focus on them as we see huge potential of growth there," said Hemal Patel, chief executive officer of Elitecore Technologies Ltd.

According to Patel, Elitecore will be successful in tapping both SOHO and SMB segments since it provides cost effective products. "During the downturn, two things helped us in initiating a focus on SMBs. Firstly, people in the sector started looking at multi function threat protection providers like us instead of single offerings by bigger companies. Secondly, our solutions are cost effective, buoyed by which we will be bringing up more versions integrated with network security. For this, we will be investing around $ two million (Rs 9.6 crore approx.) in R&D," said Patel.

While currently the company offers its CRi series of network security products under the brand name 'Cyberoam' for SMBs carrying a staff strength in the range of 15 to 1,500, Elitecore is planning to add more products to its kitty. Moreover, recently Gartner featured Cyberoam as one of the multi function firewall providers for SMBs in its report titled 'Magic Quadrant for SMB Multifunction Firewalls'.

Elitecore is pushing for a turnover target of $ 15 million (Rs 72 crore approx.) for the financial year 2009-10, it expects to earn around $ 10 million of it from SMBs and the rest from large enterprises.