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SCMP Reporter

NetScreen Technologies, six months after its debut on Nasdaq, is embarking on an expansion drive across Asia to challenge larger rivals Cisco Systems, Nokia, Nortel and Check Point Software in the region's fast-growing Internet security appliance market.

Backed by new products and several alliances, NetScreen plans to generate more than half of its sales from Asia over the next few years.

The company expected to post worldwide revenues of US$132 million to US$135 million in its latest financial year.

NetScreen president and chief executive Robert Thomas said the region made up 30 per cent of the firm's worldwide sales as demand for its products in Japan, South Korea and Greater China outstripped those made by competitors.

With its Asia-Pacific base in Hong Kong, NetScreen also hoped to make the mainland its biggest market in Asia soon.

The Silicon Valley-based company was co-founded by vice-president of engineering Feng Deng and chief architect Yan Ke, both graduates of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

NetScreen develops and sells scalable integrated security systems and appliances that combine firewalls, virtual private networks (VPNs), traffic management and other security functions into one box.

Mr Thomas said the company had kept prices competitive and sharpened customer support by using contract manufacturers such as Solectron to make hardware platforms and Toshiba to produce application-specific chips.

'Unlike some of our competitors, our focus has remained with large enterprises as we provide them with the highest level of security performance and capability at multiple points of their networks - from data centres to individual staff at remote locations,' he said.

NetScreen expected to distance itself from rivals this year with the release of the 5000-series Internet security appliances, which push the limit on handling high-speed network packet processing tasks for firewall and VPN functions.

The products promise firewall speeds of up to 12 gigabits per second and VPN speeds of up to 6Gbps.

The appliances are also geared to enforce security for new applications, such as voice-over Internet protocol and wireless communications, as well as gigabit Ethernet local area network and wide area network connections - features that allow users to tailor deployments to meet their network infrastructure requirements.

Jeff Wilson, executive director of research at Infonetics, said: 'One of the real growth areas for network security is in products that give customers deployment flexibility.'

He said large enterprises and communications service providers were trying to do more than just protect Internet connection. They wanted to segregate sensitive traffic, isolate wireless networks, protect data centres and build secure zones linked to customers and partners.

Mr Thomas said that NetScreen planned to broaden a United States-centric alliance with IBM Global Services to include the Asia-Pacific in the next few months.

He also said technology and co-marketing alliances with anti-virus software maker Trend Micro and networking gear vendor Foundry Networks were supporting NetScreen's Asian expansion drive.

Research firm International Data Corp estimated global sales of gateway security devices that combine hardware, software and networking technologies would amount to US$4 billion by 2005.

It also forecast sales of gateway security appliances in the Asia-Pacific would reach US$236.3 million this year and US$522.7 million in 2005.



NetScreen in Asia expansion drive