Basingstoke, UK-based Marshal emerged as a spin-out from systems management vendor NetIQ Corp in December 2005. Its portfolio consisted of three filtering products (Mail-, Web- and IMMarshal) and two firewall reporting tools (Firewall Suite and Security Reporting Center, or SRC).
The filtering business was the result of NetIQ’s December 2002 acquisition of Auckland, New Zealand-based Marshal Software Ltd, and the reborn ISV continues to have much of its development work and its APAC office in New Zealand. The firewall reporting portfolio, meanwhile, came from WebTrends, the web analytics business NetIQ bought in 2001 and spun back out in 2005, minus Firewall Suite and SRC.
Marshal’s target market is mainly in large enterprise, the financial sector, and government, which is why it has never gone down the appliance route, which CEO Ed Macnair said he sees as an SMB play. He said MailMarshal represents about 70% of total revenues while WebMarshal makes up a further 25%. WebMarshal 2006 is the product that now offers a gateway-based anti-spyware capability, as well as the ability to plug in multiple RBLs.
Most of the competition in anti-spyware does the checking at the desktop, whereas we’re doing it at the gateway, Macnair said. We look at the types of commands that in the packets, as well as checking against RBLs, and now you can use blacklists from SurfControl, Websense and other leading players, so there’s no need to throw away something you’re already invested in to deploy WebMarshal.
A service provider edition of MailMarshal contributes about 10% of total revenue for Marshal, according to Macnair, who said it is in use by telcos and Sis in the US, Europe, and APAC. I’d like to see that figure more in the 30%-40% range, because it’s often the SI or telco that owns a corporate account, he said. A new release of Service Provider Edition is due out in September, when he said Marshal will be adding more content control and compliance.
Beyond that, Macnair predicted changes in the firewall reporting tools, with Firewall Suite over the next year or so becoming an SMB Edition of SRC, while the enterprise product will gain new capabilities in terms of reporting not only on firewall traffic, but on all edge security products, in order to strengthen Marshal’s ability to talk compliance. Over time, I see SRC being bundled into WebMarshal as a value add, he said.
WebMarshal 2006 is sold through Marshal’s channel partners and starts at $750 for a 25-seat license.
Content from our partners
