Security appliance maker Fortinet has signed an agreement with distributor Fresh Egg to push its managed security services capability to UK resellers.

Fresh Egg becomes Fortinet's third UK distributor and will offer resellers white-label managed service capabilities based on its security appliance.

The FortiGate range of ASIC-based appliances can run virtual private network, Firewall, intrusion detection/ prevention and antvirus applications, which can also be offered separately as managed services. The applications can scale from small and medium-sized enterprise class to carrier class.

Fresh Egg completes the vendor's distribution line-up, which already includes security expert Wick Hill and broadliner Ideal Hardware.

Jonathan Mepsted, Fortinet's regional director for UK and Ireland, said the company's distribution layer is now complete, with all partners offering different strengths.

He added that good margins are available through add-on sales and support. "We make our money from the tin and resellers make money adding value and services."

Graham Fox, managing director at Fresh Egg, claimed the distributor offers margins as high as 40 per cent to resellers. "We offer resellers the chance to white-label managed services, which increases revenues and gets the product introduced to a wide spectrum of customers," he said.

But Ash Hussein, sales and marketing director at security value-add reseller Axial Systems, warned that the managed services opportunity is not as big as initially predicted.

"The market is still in the early stages and although it is not as big as expected the opportunity is there," he said.

Ian Kilpatrick, managing director at distributor Wick Hill, said the product is selling well in "both ends of the market".

"In the low end we have people looking at it as an antivirus firewall, with the gigabit appliance competing well on price performance in the high end," he said.