All together now – SonicWall’s Web API hooks popular PSA program

Last week I covered a major industry event in Orlando, the ConnectWise Summit. SonicWall was there and I had the chance to chat with Jan Sijp, a systems engineer. I really appreciated his private briefing – down to a rich technical level – about this Web-based API connector that hooks ConnectWise’s PSA product.

See my interview HERE when I chatted with Jan.

You can also read the details in the SonicWall press release below.

cheers…harrybbbb

SonicWALL and ConnectWise Raise Bar With Enhanced Integration

Management ecosystem upgrade delivers significant breakthroughs in ease-of-use and process automation, enabling tighter integration between SonicWALL and ConnectWise management applications

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNWL) , a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced the company is working closely with ConnectWise towards deeper integration between the SonicWALL Global Management System (GMS) and ConnectWise Professional Services Automation (PSA) Software.

ConnectWise PSA will leverage the Web Services Application Programming Interface (API) which is part of the upcoming 6.0 release of SonicWALL GMS. GMS 6.0 is tentatively scheduled for release later in the fourth quarter of 2009. The required update to the ConnectWise PSA product is tentatively scheduled to be available sometime in the first half of 2010 at which time customers will be able to benefit from the enhanced integration options.

Via the Web Services API, SonicWALL GMS will serve up additional periodically scheduled SonicWALL-specific XML reports to ConnectWise PSA, which will associate the reports to specific customers, bundle SonicWALL reports with reports from other sources, thus – delivering key insight into network usage behavior to the customer.

In addition, SonicWALL GMS will provide detailed company and device information to the Customer Relationship Management portion of ConnectWise PSA allowing the IT solution provider customer to easily tie SonicWALL devices to company accounts. IT administrators will also be able to automate the retrieval of service contract levels and expiration dates from GMS for use in the warranty/ service renewal parts of ConnectWise PSA.

Thirdly, it will be possible for SonicWALL GMS alerts to trigger the automatic creation of trouble ticket in the Service Board part of ConnectWise PSA. GMS can generate many different types of alerts. For example, the administrator can create alerts for devices going offline or VPN tunnels going down.

“SonicWALL understands that customers do not use the Global Management System in a vacuum. In fact, many customers use a wide variety of software consoles to manage, report on, and monitor their IT infrastructure for either themselves or, in the case of Managed Service Providers, their customers. Customers also typically use a number of enterprise applications. Managed service providers and other IT solution providers use Professional Services Automation tools, such as ConnectWise PSA, to improve efficiencies in the operations of their business,” said Jan Sijp, Director of policy and management for SonicWALL. “It is important that SonicWALL GMS interoperates with these other applications and this is why we developed the new Web Services API. We are confident that the upcoming tighter integration between SonicWALL GMS and ConnectWise PSA will benefit many of our IT solution provider partners who deploy SonicWALL equipment and use both SonicWALL GMS and ConnectWise PSA.”

Expanded Multi-appliance Management and Reporting

The Web Services API is one of many new features available in the upcoming SonicWALL GMS 6.0 release. With GMS 6.0, SonicWALL extends appliance management beyond Network Security and Secure Remote Access to encompass Email Security and Continuous Data Protection, thereby enabling enterprises and MSPs to centrally manage an entire distributed SonicWALL security infrastructure. Features added in GMS 6.0 may include but are not limited to:

  --  With GMS 6.0, GMS administrators can define and push policies for
      Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and Email Security appliances at the
      device, device group, or global level. Expanding granular management
      coverage to the CDP and Email Security product lines greatly enlarges
      the applicability of GMS
  --  Application Firewall reporting for greater visibility into the impact
      and effectiveness of application firewall policies and thus increase
      employee productivity and efficiency of network usage
  --  Ability to run custom reports for secure remote access devices that
      allow administrators to use the raw logs collected from Aventail and
      SMB SSL VPN devices under management
  --  Support for SonicOS 5.5 extends GMS capabilities to a wider range of
      UTM appliance features, making the GMS administrator more productive

  --  An enhanced Web services API to facilitate integration between GMS and
      other management consoles and enterprise applications, greatly
      increases the productivity of the internal IT staff


  For more information please visit: http://www.sonicwall.com/.

Story 2: He’s Everywhere – SonicWALL VP Patrick Sweeney announces SonicWALL updates

Coming after a successful speech at SMB Nation Fall09, it appears my friend Patrick Sweeney returned home to SonicWALL’s HQ in the Silicon Valley and got busy! In a press release today, Sweeney is announcing upgrades to SonicOS in the network security and e-mail area. My question is – does this guy take a day off? Read the full reports below.

cheers….harrybbbb

SonicWALL Raises Bar for Network and Email Security

Consolidated multi-threat platform delivers significant breakthroughs in performance, comprehensive protection and manageability

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNWL) , a leading secure network infrastructure company, has released updates to its advanced network and email security solutions with the announcement of SonicOS 5.5 for Unified Threat Management (UTM), Email Security 7.2 and Global Management System (GMS) 6.0. Keeping data and voice networks secure should not grind performance to a halt and many so-called “best-of-breed” security solutions may compromise throughput for security. SonicWALL is redefining the limits of security and scalability by delivering superior protection against emerging threats and enabling broader manageability without compromising performance.

“SonicWALL is committed to developing industry leading, award-winning technology that best meets the needs of our customers that transform the historical tradeoff between network performance and security,” said Patrick Sweeney, Vice President, Product Management, SonicWALL. “Today we are announcing innovative features not found elsewhere in the market that make networks faster, more secure and less expensive. These announcements include new firmware for the UTM Firewall line, a major series of enhancements to our email security product line, and a new release of our Global Management System.”

Comprehensive Protection and Performance

SonicOS 5.5 for the firewall product line features SonicWALL’s new Active/Active UTM, enabling a higher level of redundancy and security by providing full state synchronization for all network flows between both appliances. Unique to SonicWALL, the implementation is also able to intelligently utilize the secondary appliance’s computing power to increase total network throughput, thereby allowing the SonicWALL solution to process more total traffic, deal with traffic spikes and improve overall productivity. In the event of a single unit failure, all of the traffic flow is maintained while the system gracefully transitions traffic to the remaining active appliance. Utilization of the addition CPU cycles on the secondary active appliance increases throughput for Intrusion Prevention, Gateway Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and other security functions by up to 75 percent(1). Additional enhancements of SonicOS 5.5 include:

  --  Multi-WAN capability allowing up to 4 WAN interfaces to be configured
      on any TZ, Network Security Appliance (NSA) and E-Class NSA appliance
      thereby providing additional Internet redundancy along with outbound
      load balancing
  --  Single-Sign-On (SSO) Scalability improvements increasing the number of
      authenticated users supported by SonicWALL NSA and E-Class NSA
      appliances
  --  Route-based VPN allowing administrators to configure and treat VPN
      tunnels as network interfaces.  This configuration then allows route
      look-ups to determine the available paths to use for VPN traffic

  --  Solera Networks Deep Forensic Analysis providing logging format
      changes to support complementary data capture solution

“SonicWALL Unified Threat Management (UTM) already provides The Township of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, with secure, robust performance and will now run even faster with new Active/Active UTM capabilities installed,” said Joshua Simon, Technical Services Specialist of MSI Technologies, LLC, a SonicWALL partner.

“By consolidating UTM security, Application Firewall, Clean VPN, Clean Wireless, and Comprehensive Anti-Spam onto one easy-to-use, affordable, high-performance-architecture UTM appliance, SonicWALL has helped us optimize Lyndhurst’s productivity while reducing the expense and complexity of acquiring, deploying, operating and administering separate single-point products,” continued Darren Sammartino, Technical Services Partner for MSI Technologies.

Powerful Anti-Spam and Email Protection Against Increasingly Evolving Threats

SonicWALL Email Security (SES) delivers best in class effectiveness against newly emerging and advancing threats. Spammers have shifted tactics to sophisticated, multi-vector “Spam 2.0” attacks, elevating spam from a mere annoyance to a serious security threat. Enhanced features to the new SonicWALL SES 7.2, available November 3, 2009, include:

  --  SonicWALL's enhanced Advanced Reputation Management system leveraging
      email, Web and network security solutions to block these threats
      before they enter the network, minimizing bandwidth consumption and
      improving system performance

  --  Easy to install and use, SES is available as an appliance, Windows
      server-software, as a cloud-based solution through SonicWALL partners,
      or as a hybrid-cloud solution with the Comprehensive Anti-Spam Service
      on TZ, NSA and E-Class NSA network security appliances

  Expanded Multi-appliance Management and Reporting

With Global Management System (GMS) 6.0, SonicWALL extends appliance management beyond Network Security and Secure Remote Access. GMS 6.0 will also encompass Email Security and Continuous Data Protection, thereby enabling enterprises and MSPs to centrally manage an entire distributed SonicWALL security infrastructure. The new SonicWALL GMS feature and functionality release is scheduled to be available before the end of 2009, and will include:

  --  Application Firewall reporting for greater visibility into the impact
      and effectiveness of application utilization on networks allowing IT
      managers to determine specific policies for application usage and
      bandwidth consumption across distributed networks
  --  GMS customers typically use several other enterprise applications to
      manage their business including professional service automation
      consoles, network management tools, and accounting and CRM systems.
      GMS 6.0 includes a new web services Application Programming Interface
      (API) that facilitates integration between GMS and other enterprise
      applications allowing for the exchange of critical data and increasing
      the productivity of the internal IT staff and the efficiency of the
      overall business.

  --  Using customer reports for both SMB and Aventail Secure Remote Access
      devices, GMS customers can now create granular reports on who accessed
      what applications over remote SSL VPN connections and at what time for
      forensic analysis, troubleshooting and ensuring compliance with data
      privacy mandates.  Data from these reports can be used to increases
      employee productivity and network uptime.

  For more information please visit: http://www.sonicwall.com/.

The conversation is changing – SonicWall is GOLD at SMB Nation Fall09 with a couple new stories to tell

Talk about a trusted brand! SonicWall has been around forever and has a loyal following. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this group for 5+ years and watched it grow internally and via merger in our SMB space. So it’s with great pleasure I can report that SonicWall has committed as a GOLD sponsor at the SMB Nation fall conference (Ctober 2-4, Las Vegas).

More importantly – I’m thrilled that SonicWall has shared with me it’s on-going improvements and developments in the security area. For example, SonicWall is starting to engage in the VoIP security conversation. I, along with SonicWall and others, truly believe that telephony security matters are the next level of conversation to be had – this threat is coming to a VoIP telephone near you soon.

You can stop by the SonicWall booth to discuss this and other security related conversations. Tell them Harrybbbb sent ya!

cheers…harrybbbb

Harry Brelsford

CEO, SMB Nation

http://www.smbnation.com