SecurityBrief New Zealand - Technology news for CISOs & cybersecurity decision-makers
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Soft Solutions rolls out new WatchGuard billing system for NZ
Wed, 14th Apr 2021
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Soft Solutions, headquartered in Auckland, has launched a zero upfront payment, monthly billing firewall subscription service for WatchGuard solutions throughout New Zealand.

Building upon the existing relationship between the two companies since the partnership began in 2019, Soft Solutions is now the third distributor in ANZ and the first distributor in New Zealand to offer WatchGuard's Pay-as-You-Go subscription billing as part of the vendor's FlexPay program.

This gives Soft Solutions resellers and their customers the purchasing flexibility that best matches different requirements, and provides the ability to scale-up and down their service as their business requirements fluctuate, the company states.

WatchGuard's Pay-as-You-Go subscription service was designed to avoid time-consuming, costly and manual processes for purchasing or leasing security solutions up front, and traditional fixed-term contracts that limit scalability, the company states.

It also aims to remove up-front expenses and long-term commitments for hardware, and allow managed security service partners to suspend, activate, reassign and scale various security services as customer needs change and grow over time.

The combination of the WatchGuard product portfolio and the new subscription platform will also enable resellers to seek out new business opportunities among customers who have a firewall in place but want to take advantage of some of the new software offerings WatchGuard is bringing to market, according to Soft Solutions.

Soft Solutions managing director Chris Fitzgerald says, “The concept of monthly billing for software has been with us for a few years but for hardware it's been a different story.

"More and more enterprises today need flexibility in their technology infrastructure and COVID-19 only accelerated this trend with companies having to provide security for a distributed workforce and handle rapid fluctuations in the number of staff working remotely.

Fitzgerald says, “Businesses simply don't want to be locked into long-term infrastructure and the new Pay-as-You Go service from WatchGuard supports customers in an uncertain business environment and removes risk for resellers who can now offer a flexible billing structure.

“It's truly innovative and simplifies security delivery and we're delighted to provide this to our resellers and their customers.

WatchGuard Technologies regional director Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, Anthony Daniel, says, “We are delighted that Soft Solutions has made it even more attractive for resellers to generate incremental recurring revenue and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace by offering our Pay-as-You-Go finance option.

"This flexible procurement model builds upon our partner first strategy, supports companies in their cloud transformation and allows them to benefit from increased protection and the flexible, scalable IT infrastructure needed to keep pace in today's business world.