Currently, the vendor competes with the likes of Sterling Commerce Inc for business in the secure file transfer products sector, an area that reportedly produced 47% of Tumbleweed’s $15.1m revenue in its latest quarter. It competes with the likes of Ironport Systems Inc and Ciphertrust Inc in its core email gateway security market.

It also acts as a Validation Authority providing multiple certificate-authorization services, mostly to big US banks and government bodies.

Our market strategy could go a few different ways, and I should be able to announce where we are going to be taking the company in the next three to four months, said Scullion. It will involve product development to broaden out the market position, and maybe include some M&A activity of a business if that would accelerate that move. I am not interested in buying technology though. I have a charter to grow the top line, and the size of the market opportunity this company can tap. It is growing at 17% to 20% a year, but we should be able to do better than that.

Scullion moved to Tumbleweed in January 2006 after the Redwood City, California-based vendor had put out disappointing year-end results. The company faces intense competition in the email security space and has been experiencing declining average selling prices when it comes to security appliances. According to Scullion, the average deal size is now running at around $40,000 to $50,000 for its MailGate email security product.

We think we can leverage a lot more from our customer base by looking to integrate the file transfer and email security product lines, Scullion said, noting that customers increasingly want to see a secure channel for files, email, or instant messages that can also handle multi-protocol filtering to secure both inbound and outgoing messaging.

Its SecureTransport file transfer system is used by corporations as an alternative to FTP or email when sending sensitive data, or when they need to transfer multi-gigabyte files such as CAD drawings, clearing and settlements records, or medical images. It is said already to be in use at about 20,000 sites around the world, and supports HTTPS, FTPS, SHH, SFTP, PGP, and AS2.

The 330-strong company has cash and equivalent reserves of about $27m, Scullion said.