Life after Dell: Inside newly independent cyber security company SonicWall
At Dell World 2015, discussing the acquisition of EMC, Michael Dell said that the major benefits would include being the only end-to-end IT provider and the scale that the buy-out would bring.
However, to fund the acquisition, Dell spun off its software business to Francisco Partners and Elliott Management. The business comprised Quest, an IT management software provider, and SonicWall, a cyber security company.
Now SonicWall, acquired by Dell as recently as 2012, is relaunching as an independent company with new leadership and ambitious plans for growth.
SonicWall is a network security provider, offering network firewalls, Unified Threat Management, VPNs, backup and recovery, and anti-spam for email. The company is the North American market share leader in the small and midsized enterprise Internet Security Appliance market.
In terms of growth, the company wants to expand its success in the firewall market beyond the SMB sector which it has been most successful in.
There are four key vertical markets that the company is focusing on as a vendor: retail, education, healthcare and public sector.
For Malecki, there is a sense of gravity to independence, coming as it does on the 25th anniversary of the company’s launch.
“We wouldn’t have survived for 25 years without making the right investments,” he says.