Especially in the security space, new technologies directly influence what customers require in a product. Ever-changing technology leads to a high feature turnover rate – something that was extremely hot last year, but does not look so exciting now because it is either required and assumed in all security solutions or it has fizzled out. While trade shows and industry musings do have an impact in development, Astaro tends to focus directly on the customer and partner as opposed to volatile market fads.
Astaro recently introduced the Astaro Feature Request Site, which allows partners, customers and employees to make suggestions for improvements and enhancements. As a testament to Astaro's commitment to providing the features its customers need, more than 70 percent of the features requested on the request site were included in the recent release of version 7.5 of the Astaro Security Gateway.
Astaro's mission is to help small- and medium-sized businesses secure their networks and to meet the business needs of SMBs. Introducing the Feature Request site has allowed Astaro to better understand customer needs, and with the introduction of the Astaro Security Gateway 625 model and version 7.5 of the Astaro Security Gateway, the company is meeting the needs of partners and customers even better than before.
According to estimates, such as those provided by firms like IDC, and internal sales analysis, Astaro Security Gateway currently enjoys a seven percent market share worldwide in the UTM space.
Astaro offers 24/7 call-in customer support. Additionally, Astaro offers a central repository of all manuals, technical articles and other helpful documents; an Up2Date service, which provides information about the latest Astaro technical updates; a quick-start guide to help organizations install and configure their Astaro Security Gateway; a hardware compatibility list; and a tool that enables users to check any URL and verify its categorization via Astaro's Secure Web feature.
Astaro has achieved 26 percent quarter-over-quarter growth for the second quarter of 2009. This growth also represents a 16 percent increase in revenues over the second quarter of 2008 and marks Astaro's 14th consecutive quarter of growth, as well as the company's third most profitable quarter to date.
Finalists 2010
- Astaro Internet Security for Astaro Security Gateway
- Imprivata for OneSign
- Kaspersky Lab for Kaspersky Open Space Security
- Reflexion Networks for Reflexion Total Control (RTC)
- Sentrigo for Hedgehog Enterprise
- WatchGuard Technologies for Firebox X Core
