SonicWall Beats Financial and Operational Goals with Three Consecutive Double-Digit Top- and Bottom-Line Growth Quarters with More than $330 Million in New Pipeline

Bangalore: SonicWall, the privately held network security company owned by Francisco Partners and Elliott Management, announced today that it has exceeded aggressive financial and operational metrics set across sales, partner engagement and support for the third consecutive quarter this year. This continued momentum has been complimented by more than 21 key industry awards and recognition that re-establishes SonicWall’s network security leadership.

“We have stood as our own stand-alone company for less than a year, and we’ve already reached record financials that are significantly ahead of plan and accelerating,” said Bill Conner, SonicWall President and CEO. “The entire SonicWall team has worked tirelessly to meet and exceed the lofty goals we outlined on day one, and these results demonstrate the strength of our channel partners, the global SonicWall team, and our world-class portfolio of products and support services.”

“This is a new SonicWall. Bill Conner has aggressively taken this company to the leading edge of the security space and we are all in! Between Capture, SECaaS and the new wireless innovations, they're giving us tools that go well beyond the firewall and are equipping us to tackle the very real security challenges that we're all facing. We're simply not seeing this level of innovation from the other security players and it reinforces our longstanding commitment to this brand,” shared Daniel Lansen, Partner with Compufit.

SonicWall Partner Program Sign-ups Continue to Rise
SonicWall’s strong relationship with the partner community has been a critical component of the company’s success since becoming independent in November 2016. SonicWall continues to regularly introduce innovations to the partner community, such as the SecureFirst Partner Program for resellers, integrators, managed security service providers and security consultants. Since the launch of the program in November 2016, SonicWall has experienced a surge in registered partner growth and sales:
· Over 18,000 channel partners from more than 150 countries have registered for SecureFirst
· 5,000 of those partners are new to SonicWall

“We are thrilled with the positive changes that been made at SonicWall since the company became independent last year. This team truly understands the needs of partners and resellers, as well as the end customers. The combination of great products and industry-leading training programs have been central to enabling our business,” shared Giordano Zambelli, CTO of Verxo.

SonicWall University Administers More Than 51,000 Cybersecurity Exams
In March 2017, SonicWall introduced SonicWall University, a real-time digital and role-based curricula, driven by intelligence gathered from SonicWall’s Capture Labs and threat researchers who analyze real- time data analytics derived from more than 1 million sensors around the world.

Partners continued to gravitate to SonicWall University for training and certifications:
· SonicWall University has more than doubled the number of hours of online training provided since Q2, having now provided over 25,000 hours of online training and administered more than 51,000 successful exams
· Participants continue to complete specializations focused on key areas such as ransomware, email threats and encrypted threats

“The outstanding growth we’ve seen in partner deal registration has driven top-line performance and brought in an additional $80 million in new pipeline, just since end of the second quarter,” said Steve Pataky, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Channel and Chief Revenue Officer. “By transforming into a 100 percent channel-focused organization, SonicWall has achieved outstanding success. We remain fiercely committed to ensuring that each and every partner we work with has access to the industry-leading support and educational opportunities.”

SonicWall SecureFirst Partner-Enabled Security Services Program
Taking partner support to the next level, SonicWall is rolling out its Partner-Enabled Security Services Program for select partners that will offer design, implementation, configuration and training to optimize their customers’ SonicWall investments and support their unique network infrastructure and business security needs. This allows partners to increase their profitability through high-margin service offerings.

“We’ve seen a dramatic turn-around since the end of last year, in product quality, service, marketing air cover and training. Our team appreciates that the training we’ve received is influenced by real-world threat intelligence in real time, which in turn enables us to deliver superior service to our customers,” said Matt Wiertel, Director of Sales and Marketing with Velocity Network.

SonicWall Surpasses Sales and Customer Support Benchmarks
SonicWall and the channel partner community continue to achieve significant growth together:
· Partner Deal Registration has exceeded 50 percent since the company became independent and launched the SecureFirst Partner Program in November, reflecting over $330 million in new pipeline
· While SonicWall does not disclose its sales numbers as a private company, according to independent market research firm NPD Group as reported in CRN, SonicWall leapfrogged key competitors and jumped to No. 2 in the rankings of vendors in terms of network security appliances sold in the first quarter of 2017, reporting over 55 percent year-over-year growth

In addition to this strong growth, SonicWall increased its focus on improving customer service and support:
· SonicWall reduced the average queue wait time by 80 percent since January 1, 2017
· The company shortened the longest queue wait time by 63 percent
· Exceeded an 85 percent renewal rate in Q2
· Posted the top performance score in product quality and reliability along with the most improvement across the service indicators among next-generation firewall (NGFW) providers in the recently released ARC ’17 scorecard

SonicWall Wins Unparalleled Third-Party Validation
Since becoming an independent company, SonicWall has earned more than 21 awards for its business and leadership. A few of SonicWall’s notable achievements in the third quarter include:

· SonicWall’s President and CEO Bill Conner was awarded the inaugural SC Media Reboot Leadership Award. He is one of only six other elite executives honored in the publication’s top management category

· Conner was named to the CRN list of the 25 Most Influential Executives of 2017

· SonicWall’s Chief Revenue Officer Steve Pataky was named to the CRN list of the 25 Most Influential Sales Executives of 2017