SonicWALL Expands Horizons With New E-Class Initiative Signaling Intent to Grow Share in Enterprise

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNWL) , a leading secure network infrastructure company, today launched a new initiative intended to accelerate SonicWALL's ongoing move into the enterprise market. The broad-based global initiative is based around SonicWALL's E-Class solution set, a premium-performance line of secure networking, email security and remote network access offerings engineered to drive down the cost and complexity of deploying a secure infrastructure. Igniting this initiative, SonicWALL today launches a new family of multi-core processor firewalls that combine enterprise-class protection and performance in a single appliance: the NSA E7500, the NSA E6500 and the NSA E5500.

As the cybercrime economy continues to flourish and threats become harder to detect, security is now a mainstream focus for all network administrators. The need for enterprise network traffic inspection continues to grow to protect against more intensive, application layer threats, increasing security processing load and protection requirements. The majority of current network infrastructure options are complex and costly, forcing IT administrators to engage in a constant trade off between network speed and security.

SonicWALL's growth has been fuelled by four acquisitions in less than two years: SSL VPN niche player EnKoo, data backup and recovery startup Lasso Logic, enterprise email security company MailFrontier and most recently Aventail, the leading provider of enterprise class secure remote access solutions. An acknowledged leader in the small to mid-sized IT security market, SonicWALL continues to expand its range with more sophisticated solutions for distributed enterprises and large networks.

SonicWALL's E-Class offerings comprise: the SonicWALL Aventail range of SSL VPN secure remote access products; SonicWALL Email Security 6000 and 8000 solutions for 1000 users and above; the award-winning Global Management System policy and management software that enables central management of devices from few to tens of thousands; and the newest appliances in SonicWALL's network security line, the NSA E-Series firewalls.

SonicWALL's Network Security Appliance (NSA) Series appliances deliver file and content-based threat prevention at gigabit speed. Combining a powerful real-time and reassembly-free deep packet inspection firewall with multiple layers of protection technology and a suite of high-availability features, the NSA series appliances are designed for the most demanding deployments including distributed enterprise environments, campus networks, data centers and small-medium businesses where bandwidth considerations require high-performance solutions. These appliances support a suite of services including intrusion prevention and detection, anti-virus, anti-spyware and content filtering.

"SonicWALL's NSA E7500 firewall is a great alternative to the premium-priced solutions from vendors such as Cisco," said Jeff Parker, offsite systems manager at Carriage Services. "With the NSA E7500, there's no trade off between functionality and value. With the NSA E 7500, I don't have to compromise performance or security to fit into my budget. I know I'm protected while my network runs at gigabit speeds, and managing my security infrastructure has never been easier."

The NSA Series multi-core architecture is a parallel performance design delivering ultra high-speed threat protection and deployment scalability. SonicWALL Application Firewall, a set of customizable protection tools, offers administrators precise control and inspection capabilities over their network traffic. A suite of high availability features at the hardware and system level deliver operational reliability and measurably improved uptime. The NSA series offers enterprise customer an extensive array of advanced network and configuration flexibility features, ease of integration, and deployment flexibility designed to provide lowered management complexity and exceptional value.

The NSA E7500 is designed to serve central enterprise sites with distributed networks in environments such as web or application hosting, ISP managed services head end, or ASP infrastructure. The NSA E6500 is intended as a corporate central site appliance for mid-sized organizations, while the NSA E5500 is intended for local branch office or standalone mid-sized enterprises.

"The new E-Class product offering demonstrates SonicWALL's continued investment and commitment in making the industry's easiest to manage, ultra-high speed security appliances," said Tom McDougall, president and CEO at High Point Networks. "SonicWALL is taking its product innovation and expertise from the SMB market and applying it to the enterprise market by delivering a solution that uniquely addresses the needs of large, distributed networks."

With the foundations of its business in the small to mid-sized business space, SonicWALL designs its technology for sophisticated performance combined with ease of deployment. SonicWALL has also developed a successful services delivery model which supports the outsourcing and managed services needs of IT organizations of all sizes.

"SonicWALL's enterprise customers tell us they are tired of overpaying for complex, underperforming, proprietary solutions," said Matt Medeiros, president and chief executive officer at SonicWALL. "In contrast to the majority of offerings in this maturing industry, SonicWALL E-Class solutions have been designed to drive enterprise performance and productivity gains by engineering cost and complexity out of the secure infrastructure. We start from the premise that the majority of businesses face a shortage of IT personnel and time. SonicWALL's focus on practical effectiveness resonates not only with our worldwide channel base and millions of SMB users, but increasingly with the needs of enterprise IT professionals."

"We're looking forward to working with SonicWALL on bringing their latest products to market," said James Carter, CTO at The Integration Works. "Based on SonicWALL's proven track record for product innovation and commitment to creating an outstanding experience for its customers, we anticipate high demand from the enterprise marketplace for the new E-Class product offering."

The NSA E7500 is available immediately. The E6500 and E5500 firewalls will be available later this quarter.

About SonicWALL, Inc.

SonicWALL's business is to keep people and companies safe and in control of the data on their networks. SonicWALL is committed to improving the performance and productivity of enterprises of all sizes through its value innovation approach, engineering the cost and complexity out of deploying secure networking infrastructure. Over one million SonicWALL appliances have been shipped through its global network of 10,000 channel partners to protect tens of millions of computer users in businesses worldwide. For more information, visit the company web site at http://www.sonicwall.com/.

Safe Harbor Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements include but are not limited to statements regarding SonicWALL's intent to grow share in enterprise; the performance and protection capabilities of its product set; the cost or complexity of competitive network infrastructure solutions; SonicWALL's leadership position in SMB; the ease of use, flexibility or reliability of its products; and the success of its services delivery model. These forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the time the statements are made and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. In addition, please see the "Risk Factors" described in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006, for a more detailed description of the risks facing our business. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to SonicWALL as of the date of the release, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement.

NOTE: SonicWALL is a registered trademark of SonicWALL, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.