Charlene O'Hanlon

August 18, 2011

2 Min Read
Westcon Adds Blue Coat Technologies to Virtual Demo Lab

Hoping to drive more sales of Blue Coat technology from its partners, Westcon Group’s Security division is now offering Blue Coat’s secure web gateway and cloud services in its virtual demo lab environment.

The virtual lab provides partners the ability to test drive the Blue Coat solutions in real time and demonstrate the value to their customers prior to making the purchasing decision, said Sean Simmons, Blue Coat product manager at Westcon Group. Partners utilizing the virtual demo lab also have access to Westcon’s sales engineers, who are well-versed in the Blue Coat technology and can answer any number of technical questions from both the partner and the end user perspective.

“For partners, the real value is utilizing our sales engineers’ expertise and allowing our partners to rely on us for that knowledge base,” he said.

The virtual lab environment also can be used as a training tool for partners, he said. “If you are a Blue Coat partner you can invite your sales team to a demo and give training to that sales force so they are better-equipped to sell the Blue Coat line down into their customers,” Simmons said.

Nick Gialiris, Westcon Security manager of technical services, noted the virtual lab also incorporates Blue Coat’s MACH5 WAN optimization appliance “so during their conversation with customers and while they’re showcasing the solutions partners can also talk about the [Blue Coat] acceleration along with these solutions. Depending on the customer’s intentions, [the demo] could expand into the acceleration portion, so it is much more encompassing than just the web gateway and cloud services.”

Virtual lab demos are done online, wherein participants log in to a WebEx portal and a Westcon Group employee walks the partner – and sometimes the customer – through the technology and answers any questions. “Participants are seeing the actual appliances on this virtual demo,” Gialiris said. “The idea is that they don’t have these devices to show their customers. If a partner brings the customer [into the virtual lab session] then they can ask specific questions on how it can address their particular pain point.”

The Blue Coat virtual demo lab is available to authorized Blue Coat partners working with Westcon Group. Information on signing up for a virtual demo is available on Westcon Security’s Blue Coat virtual labs page.

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