Natural Convergence announced a partnership with BorderWare Technologies. The partners are working together to provide simple, scalable security solutions tailored for service providers to target the Small Business Market.

According to Eastern Management Group, in the United States there are 32 million key systems, with the average age of key systems being 12 years. This means that key systems are ripe for replacement and a replacement wave is quickly gaining momentum in the SBM.

As there are different types of service providers who are beginning to address the huge and largely underserved SBM, a one-size-fits-all approach neither works for small businesses nor for service providers. Regardless of the size of service provider, solutions must be reliable and secure and, more importantly, must fit each of their deployment models.

“We have seen what happens when vendors take a one-size-fits-all approach to the market,” said David Cork, CEO of Natural Convergence. “A small Internet service provider on the west coast who wants to add VoIP service to their small business bundle has little in common with a national voice service provider who owns their own last mile facilities. By partnering with BorderWare Technologies we are able to build a range of best in class security solutions that fits each individual circumstance.”

“As companies look to expand their VoIP communications capabilities and services, security becomes a top priority to address, requiring special industry expertise and functionality,” said Tim Leisman, CEO of BorderWare Technologies. “BorderWare’s SIPassure security gateway is architected to tightly integrate with Natural Convergence’s platform, making deployment and management simple and scalable, while providing security and reliability for service providers and their customers.”

For facility-based service providers who run a private network today, this approach will allow them to easily extend their network security to ‘off-net’ remote locations. They can now fully service multi-site customers who have locations in the service providers’ footprint as well as outside of the footprint. This approach also serves the small business owner that often takes their work home with them or who have a remote sales force that works from their home offices.

BorderWare’s SIPassure security gateway combines the best of three technologies: Session Border Control, an Application Layer Gateway and a SIP-aware Firewall. SIPassure enables VoIP traffic to securely traverse the network while keeping the internal infrastructure free from external malicious threats. SIPassure is based on BorderWare’s proven expert threat detection and prevention technology developed through 12 years of experience.

Natural Convergence’s silhouette hosted key system is a software application designed for service providers to win the Small Business Market. The silhouette application replaces traditional key systems, combining familiar functionality with powerful cost and performance advantages.

On January 31, 2007 at 2:00PM EST, Natural Convergence will host a free webinar on Network Security for Hosted Small Business Solutions. This web event will discuss how service providers can win the SBM while ensuring a secure network offering. Several network deployment models are discussed to provide real world context to the security issues and solutions available. To register, go to: http://www.naturalconvergence.com/news/events.html