Sophos Plots Full Cloud Security Push

Sophos is hoping to have a cloud version of all of its products within the next two years, TechWeekEurope understands.

During a security roundtable yesterday, the UK-based security vendor said it wanted to have all of the delivery models covered, from direct, to channel, to cloud.

According to the vendor’s network security specialist Antony Gibson, the cloud move has been pushed by Sophos CTO Gerhard Eschelbeck, who only joined the company in 2011, but is evidently planning big things.

When asked whether he thought Sophos was late to the cloud-delivery model, Sophos’ area vice president for EMEA, Gunter Junk, said the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) security market had not yet gained much traction.

A promising market

Nevertheless, the industry is a “promising” one, according to Junk, who said there would be no compromise on the level of security between cloud and non-cloud offerings. “From a cloud perspective, it’s not different security, it is different delivery.”

“Whether it is a small box, a big box, or running from the cloud, it needs to run the same way,” Gibson added. “A lot of these cloud bits we will build out in a year or two.”

The hope is that this cloud delivery model will make things far simpler for IT teams. “We hope it will mean people can just click a button, send an invoice and then it’s done,” Gibson said.

Rival security firm Qualys, which has been running its products from the cloud for years, will be pleased others are seeing the potential of delivering products as a service. In the ‘risks’ section of its IPO filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week, Qualys warned that if the market for cloud solutions for security did not meet its expectations, its revenues might not grow.

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