Samsung is no stranger to the world of technology with leading positions in memory chips, televisions and mobile devices to name a few. Recently the company has launched a line of gateways dubbed the Ubigate Intelligent Business Gateway (IBG) series.
The gateways range from the IBG3026 for large offices down to the IBG2006 for small branch offices and have many leading-edge features such as hot-swappable modules, fan and power supply, redundant power supplies and more.
The gateway also has a built-in firewall, anti-virus, anti-spam, URL filtering, web application firewall and end-point security.
I met with the company’s charismatic VP of Business Development, Alex Kim who has held positions in the past at 3Com and Spirent. Alex really focused his attention on the four distinct capabilities of the box… VoIP, security, switching and routing.
He went on to say in the mid market he believes a single box is a much better solution than individual solutions. Samsung is certainly ambitious as they want to be the IP mobility convergence leader.
As you would expect, the company will be leveraging its mobility strength to make this vision a reality.
At first Samsung will be selling these products through a data-centric channel and as you might imagine, Cisco is a major competitor. Kim tells me Samsung’s price is lower than Cisco with much better performance.
Where the solution gets very interesting is in future upgrades as Alex shares the future of this product will include a WiMAX module. This is certainly a differentiator.
He want on to say the company is looking for a partner program not just resellers to move boxes through the channel. He emphasized Samsung is financially stable and they will be coming out with more solutions in the future.
This is where he reminded me most networking companies do not have the strength in mobility Samsung has and he is right. Certainly Samsung could become a player in the burgeoning FMC space if they play their cards right.
Samsung is entering a crowded space and I bounced a number of competitive names off Kim… From Allworx to Epygi. Alex knew all of his competitors and he knew lots about each one. I was surprised at the level of detail he had about each company. It was surprising to see someone from such a large company with such intricate competitive positioning in his head. This is pretty unusual.
Even though the space is crowded, Samsung has an established name and leadership who understand where their products fit in the market. This is not necessarily a recipe for guaranteed success but it certainly is some of the main ingredients.
See the press release and latest Ubigate news.
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