Westcon Adds ArcSight to Global Security Lineup

Westcon Group Inc. said that it will distribute ArcSight Inc.’s security software products through its reseller network in North America, expanding an existing arrangement the two companies have established in Europe.

Last September, Hewlett-Packard Co. bought ArcSight for $1.5 billion. While ArcSight operates as an HP company the parent did not have a hand in this deal, Westcon officials said.

The agreement is ArcSight’s first with a North American distributor and gains Westcon’s channel partners immediate access to the security vendor’s Enterprise Threat and Risk Management (ETRM) platform to monitor external and internal threats, application flaws, configuration changes and compliance issues.

Westcon also said that it will expand its existing distribution presence for ArcSight in Europe--which currently extends to Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg and has been operational for about two years-- to include new markets in Finland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Lynn Murphy, Westcon senior vice president, U.S. and Canada, said that the ArcSight agreement “acknowledges our position in the market and the strength of our security portfolio as best-in-class for the channel.”

Murphy said that the depth of Westcon’s security portfolio is central to the distributor’s strategy.

“The trend in the industry, especially in security, is to single sourcing,” Murphy said. “End customers don’t want to split orders up among several suppliers so we have to have a broad and comprehensive portfolio for our channel partners,” she said.

Murphy said that because Westcon’s security channel partners are tasked with helping their end customers “protect corporate assets," they must have a "best-of-breed toolkit to meet customer requirements."

Westcon lists 19 vendors in its security portfolio, including EMC Corp.’s RSA security division, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., Blue Coat Systems Inc., IBM Corp.’s security solutions, Cisco System Inc.’s IronPort Systems Inc., Trend Micro Inc., and others. In September, Westcon added Palo Alto Networks to its security folder.

“All of the changes in the industry from a technical perspective are driving security strategies in general,” Murphy said. “Virtualization, the cloud, the proliferation of security attacks, compliance requirements, the explosion in mobile devices, it all presents a complex set of security challenges that channel partners must help clients address,” she said. “It’s why security is so important to us.”