NetContinuum Enters Japanese Market Through Strategic Partnership With Sumitomo
SANTA CLARA, Calif. Oct. 21, 2003 NetContinuum, a leading provider of ASIC-based web and application security appliances, today announced a master distributor partnership with Sumisho Electronics Co., Ltd. ( SSE ), a subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation one of the largest technology distributors and resellers in Japan. With a long, proven history of successfully introducing new technologies to the Japanese market, this partnership represents a significant business opportunity for NetContinuum in the Asia-Pacific region and demonstrates the growing need for web and application security solutions around the world.
Moving business applications to the web to reduce costs is a rapidly accelerating trend in Japan, said Kenji Mukai, President of SSE s Network Solutions Unit. Security concerns have held back broad adoption of web applications at many Japanese companies, creating a very strong market opportunity for web application security products. Through its partnership with NetContinuum, SSE is now in an excellent position to lead the emerging web application security space and help enable Japanese companies to move critical business processes to the web.
After identifying web application security as one of the most promising new business opportunities in Japan, SSE conducted an extensive investigation of the security marketplace in search of the best solution. The company conducted more than six weeks of rigorous technical tests on numerous products before ultimately selecting NetContinuum.
Masaaki Futagi, General Manager of the Security System Engineering Division, supervised technical product evaluations for this project. After testing all the leading web application firewalls, it became clear that there are large architectural differences in the way many of these products have been designed. Underlying platform differences will have a huge impact on security effectiveness and will greatly impact the ultimate success of these products in the security market.
SSE chose NetContinuum s deep inspection web application firewall due to the product s innovative ASIC-based architecture and unique combination of multiple web security technologies such as SSL encryption, web attack prevention, and traffic management available in a single, tightly integrated appliance. Our tests showed that NetContinuum offers by far the highest degree of security, reliability and scalability of all the web security products we evaluated, Futagi said. NetContinuum s feature set will also allow us to provide our customers multiple services in one appliance, which will offer tremendous cost savings and value to Japanese resellers and enterprises.
NetContinuum s CEO Gene Banman said he feels the Japanese market holds tremendous revenue opportunity for the company. SSE s extensive expertise in networking and security technologies, coupled with their market leadership in deploying mission-critical web applications, makes this partnership an ideal fit for NetContinuum. Sumitomo is a very high-profile company and will be a tremendous asset in raising market awareness in Japan that a fundamentally new type of web security solution is now available.
NetContinuum develops deep inspection firewall appliances that ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of web applications. The NetContinuum NC-1000 web security gateway is an inline security device that conducts deep inspection of both inbound and outbound web traffic, blocking attacks, malicious content and illegal requests without relying on signature databases. As a result, web applications are protected from known and unknown attacks at both the network and application layer.
Powered by the largest security ASIC ever built, the NC-1000 combines all critical web security functionality into a single, high-performance appliance to completely secure web resources at a much lower cost than alternative security technologies. Primary product features include full website cloaking to hide application details, comprehensive web attack prevention to fully protect applications from compromise, built-in SSL encryption to secure data in transit, and integrated load balancing and caching to ensure application availability and optimize performance.
About Sumisho Electronics Co., Ltd
Sumisho Electronics Co., Ltd. (“SSE”) www.sse.co.jp, an integral part of Sumitomo Corporation s www.sumitomocorp.co.jp information technology group companies, has been introducing and providing the most advanced systems with first-rate technical support since its inception. SSE is dedicated to providing its clients with comprehensive system solutions in three primary business areas: Engineering Solutions, to create integrated digital manufacturing; Business Solutions, to support innovation in corporate management systems; and Network Solutions, to enhance corporate information infrastructure. Founded in 1975, SSE is one of the top IT Solution Providers in Japan with publicly traded stock on JASDAQ. SSE has 841 employees as of March 2003 and Consolidated Gross Revenues of JPY48.7 billion in fiscal year 2002.
About NetContinuum, Inc.
NetContinuum is a leading provider of enterprise-class web security gateways next-generation web security appliances designed to secure applications and protect against web attacks. NetContinuum is listed in the visionary quadrant on Gartner s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Firewalls and was named a Top 10 Start-up to Watch by Network World Magazine. Privately held, NetContinuum has secured more than $55 Million in funding from blue-chip venture capital firms and investors, including Palomar Ventures, Menlo Ventures, NIF Ventures/Daiwa Securities, Adams Street Partners, Invus Group, MKS Ventures, and Siemens. For more information, please visit www.netcontinuum.com or call 408-961-5600.