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SEATTLE – September 13, 2011. WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, today announced that WatchGuard received the 2011 "Customer Value Enhancement Award, Unified Threat Management" from Frost & Sullivan.

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer Value Enhancement is presented each year to the company that demonstrates excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for their customers with a focus on improving the return on investment. The award recognizes the WatchGuard's inordinate focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and ultimately customer base expansion.

"For a long time, industry analysts have considered WatchGuard to be a top competitor in the UTM market, and this prestigious award further solidifies that leadership position," said Eric Aarrestad, Vice President of Marketing at WatchGuard. "WatchGuard's success is due to its unparalleled ability to deliver the greatest customer value through its security products and services."

WatchGuard's focus on customer value has propelled the company's growth in recent years, as the company has achieved record revenue growth in consecutive quarters.

Significance of the Customer Value Enhancement Award

Frost & Sullivan points out that the UTM market continues to grow, but competitors face difficult challenges, as evidenced by new threats, increasing competition and elevated customer expectations. By enhancing their value to customers, Frost & Sullivan acknowledges that UTM vendors can advance their position in the marketplace by offering products, features and services that present the strongest value proposition to customers. Vendors, like WatchGuard, must address new technologies and attack vectors in order to provide valuable services to customers.

WatchGuard Award Factors – Extensible, Tailored UTM Solutions

WatchGuard's line of extensible threat management (XTM) security solutions consolidate essential security functions, such as stateful packet firewall, VPN, anti-spam, anti-spyware, anti-virus, content filtering and intrusion prevention in one easy to manage appliance. The consolidation of these requisite security functions simplifies the security and compliance goals by reducing costs and time to deploy and manage. Due to their extensible and customizable design, customers can select security functions that best meet their network and IT environment.

Next-Generation Firewall Technology

WatchGuard has developed next-generation firewall capabilities that are essential to protect against new forms of attack. WatchGuard XTM solutions now offer the ability to identify applications and provide granular control based on individual users or groups. This gives administrators full contextual awareness and understanding of their networks, services, applications and user activities, which facilitates high security and accurate and effective policy enforcement.

Value-added Features

WatchGuard offers several services, features and products that further enhance customer value. For example, the WatchGuard Reputation Enabled Defense is a cloud-based security service that eliminates network threats before they ever get the chance to hit a corporate network, which increases customer productivity while reducing risk. Adding to this, WatchGuard offers features and products that promote user connectivity and secure mobility, as well as advanced security features, such as VoIP security, in order to enhance and protect IT investments.

Conclusion

Frost & Sullivan conclude that WatchGuard has a strong record of developing and delivering new and cutting-edge security capabilities. The company's market strategy focuses on improving customer value, which has directly resulted in the company's position as a market leader. This strategy focuses on improving its products and services in a way that imparts the greatest value to customers. Frost & Sullivan recognize that WatchGuard's on-going commitment to excellence in customer value will continue to propel WatchGuard's success in the security industry.