SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SonicWALL, Inc. today announced major updates to its Medallion Partner program designed to deliver enhanced opportunities for growth and profit to a broad set of channel partner business models. The new program aims to meet the changing needs of the reseller community by enabling them to compete more effectively while differentiating their offerings, and provides added potential to build profitable recurring revenue streams.

"Our goal is to make it easier and more profitable for our channel partners to do business with us," said Michael Valentine, vice president of Americas Sales at SonicWALL. "Our expanded Medallion program is the culmination of hundreds of conversations with our partners to understand how their needs have changed. Each tier of the new program has been designed to provide the opportunity for improved ROI and more predictable revenues for different channel partner categories."

With the new program, SonicWALL now recognizes the specialized needs of two evolving channel business models: Direct Market Resellers (DMR), who sell high volumes of a broad set of security solutions; and Value-Added Merchants (VAM), resellers of solutions and services with industry or regional specializations, whose primary sales and support mechanism is via phone or Web. SonicWALL is the first vendor to create focused programs for the VAM category.

"A one-size-fits-all program cannot reflect the realities of today's channel environment," added Valentine. "DMRs require marketing resources to help them be effective in a high volume, transaction-based business, while VAMs tend to sell to second- or multiple-time purchasers, requiring a little more attention for each sale. In contrast, our Medallion partners frequently act as a virtual IT department for their end customer. This new program not only accounts for, but is equipped to reward widely differing business models."

For its Gold, Silver and Approved Medallion partner categories, SonicWALL has created a new incentive structure to encourage the growth of a balanced hardware and software services-based business and support the growing popularity of the managed services model. The program also places emphasis on business planning, partner certification and staffing levels.

"SonicWALL's new program recognizes the changing realities in the channel partner community," said Deepak Thadani, president of SysIntegrators, LLC (http://www.sysintegrators.com/), a SonicWALL Gold Medallion partner. "We are moving away rapidly from the old model of hardware sales -- today, my business is predicated on security expertise, service delivery and added value. The Medallion program supports our evolved market focus and gives us new potential for strong margins, recurring revenues, and the ability to create business continuity for our customers."

To assist Medallion partners in growing their customer bases, SonicWALL has redesigned its marketing and sales support programs, offering a comprehensive set of pre-designed marketing tools, creating a new field sales organization to develop and execute programs on behalf of partners, and allocating dedicated inside sales resources. The Market Development Fund (MDF) has been redesigned to allow partners more easily to plan marketing activities based on identifiable, accrued amounts of co-funding.

For DRM and VAM partners, SonicWALL offers resources including co- operative marketing funds, offering partners monthly access to funding based on program guidelines and identified ROI, and targeted program rebates available on a quarterly basis.

"It's gratifying to see SonicWALL's partner program evolve to include newer categories of reseller partners," said Brian Reed, Chairman of Dreaming Tree, a SonicWALL Value-Added Merchant partner in Indianapolis (http://www.firewalls.com/), "We're excited about the new incentives and partner support SonicWALL has put in to place to support our business and look forward to continuing to work together in providing affordable, superior security solutions for our customers."

About SonicWALL, Inc.

Founded in 1991, SonicWALL, Inc. designs, develops and manufactures comprehensive network security, email security, secure remote access, and backup and recovery solutions. Nearly one million SonicWALL security appliances have been shipped worldwide to protect millions of computer users in mid-enterprise, large distributed networks and small and medium-sized business. SonicWALL is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol SNWL. For more information, contact SonicWALL at +1 (408) 745-9600 or 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 opportunities of growth and profit for channel partners, the potential to build recurring revenue streams, the potential for improved return on investment and a more predictable revenue stream, incentives to encourage balance business growth, the redesign of sales support programs and marketing development funding, and the design to reward widely differing business models. 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, 2005, 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 owners.

CONTACT: Mary McEvoy of SonicWALL, Inc., +1-408-962-7110,
mmcevoy@sonicwall.com; or Erin Collopy of The Hoffman Agency, +1-408-975-3041,
ecollopy@hoffman.com, for SonicWALL, Inc.

Web site: http://www.sonicwall.com/