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MSP-focused security provider Barracuda Networks announced on Monday virtual and public cloud versions of its Barracuda NextGen Firewall – Intronis MSP Edition. The offerings are sold in a subscription model and can be used to protect customer VMware, Citrix XenServer, KVM and Hyper-V private clouds and workloads hosted offsite in Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

The offerings join virtual versions of the company’s backup appliance.

Customers still using traditional firewalls can be better protected with a next-generation firewall, characterized by the inclusion of SSL interception and an IDS, and an ability to analyze encrypted traffic, access cloud-based threat intelligence feeds rather than relying on signatures, and enable granular control over applications.

Barracuda NG firewalls may also bundle WAN optimization, email gateways and spam filtering, advanced threat detection and other functionality.

Neal Bradbury, senior director of business development for Intronis MSP Solutions by Barracuda, told Channel Partners that the offerings are in demand based on a recent survey of MSP partners that showed most are supporting cloud-based workloads.{ad}

“Barracuda is one of the few that has a virtual firewall in Google, Amazon and Microsoft,” said Bradbury. “That simplifies the firewall-as-a-service offering.”

The rebrandable virtual firewalls can be managed through a control center or from Intronis’ ECHOplatform, a single console that allows MSPs to administer all of the company’s security and backup products, including generating reports. Pre-configured policy classification guidance and templates are built in, enabling MSPs to develop security policies and propagate them across multiple firewalls and customer sites.

Bradbury said that, in most cases, the discussion of delivering services in a virtual versus a physical appliance is one MSPs have already had with customers. Virtual appliances offer scalability, flexibility and speed of deployment.

“In an on-prem virtual environment, if someone is already invested in Hyper-V, they don’t want to buy another box, so they’ll just light up a virtual edition,” he said. Fixed-fee pricing simplifies budgeting, and virtual appliances reduce the management associated with physical hardware, such as shipping costs, upgrades and replacement.

As to cost, Bradbury says Intronis does not release subscription pricing on any of its products, leaving those conversations for MSPs to have with customers, but he says the offerings are extremely competitive.

Channel Partners went on site at Intronis’ Boston area offices in September, a year into the company’s acquisition by Barracuda. At that visit, Richard Delahaye, senior director of marketing, said Intronis was an attractive acquisition target for Barracuda because of its MSP expertise and the synergy between security and backup. Bradbury echoed that sentiment, saying the new firewalls are a natural extension to the company’s history with data protection.

“We’ve seen a lot of interest from new and existing partners,” he said.

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