8e6 Technologies appoints Wick Hill for UK insecurity offensive

US WEB-FILTERING outfit 8e6 Technologies, yesterday announced its UK expansion plans with the appointment of distributor Wick Hill.

8e6 Technologies makes boxes that monitor web traffic into an organisation. It reckons the time is ripe for flogging its boxes in the UK, especially since Websense acquired Surfcontrol in October 2007.

Eric Lundbohm, 8e6 Technologies' marketing, veep told the INQ that 8e6 had had its eyes on the UK market for some time. But he feels that the " coincidental" moves over at SurfControl hand it an even tastier proposition.

Through Wick-Hill, 8e6 expects to sign up around 40 UK resellers this year, who will go out and flog the kit.

"The opportunity is there for the channel to provide an exceptional and well-proven solution from a web filtering pioneer," proclaimed Lundbohm.

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman Wick Hill Group, spoke of throbbing margins and exciting opportunities. He reckons that in some areas the channel has been experiencing "margin degredation". And there's nothing a reseller hates more than having his margins degraded.

The strategy is to is to build a reseller network to raise the profile of 8e6 in the UK, as essentially no-one's heard of it here. If they can do a couple of million quids' worth of business this year, the operation will be on track.

"We're a subscription business," said Lundbohm, "Every dollar that renews brings in a dollar 33," he said.

Here's a pretty favourable look a 8e6 Technologies's flagship product, the R3000. µ