FirstWave unveils ‘first significant win’ via OEM agreement with Cisco Systems
FirstWave has confirmed its first substantial win under the global Cisco OEM agreement.
Cloud security technology company FirstWave Cloud Technology (ASX: FCT) has unveiled its “first significant win” under its agreement with US computing giant Cisco Systems.
The agreement between Cisco and FirstWave was first signed in July 2018 and is poised to generate revenues before the end of Q2 this year.
The news follows on from its upbeat quarterly results published at the end of April where FirstWave announced “accelerated global sales activity” and a “move to full operational readiness” for its North American platform.
At the time, the cloud security company also confirmed that platform development was going ahead with the deployment of a new premium email security service and added that accelerated business development was being driven by attendance at prominent sales events such as Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (in February), as well as Cisco Live in Melbourne (in March) this year.
The first step of many
Upon making the announcement to the market this morning, FirstWave Cloud said that Cisco’s first customer represented a significant milestone in its growing relationship with the US giant and that the deal was expected to underpin its “partner sell-through strategy”.
Under the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement, FirstWave’s patented multi-tenanting technology will enable end customers to access a unique “cloud service orchestration platform” to facilitate differentiated email, next-generation firewall and web security.
FirstWave stated its proprietary platform technology will, therefore, serve as a turnkey solution for global service providers to deliver new enterprise-grade cloud security services to their customers around the world.
Today’s news means that the agreement with the US conglomerate – currently one of the world’s leading tech companies – is forecast to boost revenue and expected to propel FirstWave to achieve incremental commercial targets.
This is the “first of several wins” that will make a significant contribution towards the company’s overarching revenue target of $20 million over the next three years, according to FirstWave’s chief operating officer, Neil Pollock.
“This win is a very exciting milestone for FirstWave, in particular, that it has occurred within twelve months of signing the agreement with Cisco. It is one of several opportunities in the pipeline and endorses our decision to invest in the relationship with Cisco globally,” he said.
Mr Pollock also hinted at further commercial results in the near term. “We are currently conducting proof of value demonstrations with a number of other service providers across the globe and I will provide more news on these opportunities in the near future,” he said.
Meanwhile, FirstWave chief executive officer David Kirton explained that Cisco’s first customer as part of the OEM agreement served to validate FirstWave’s strategic decision to collaborate with Cisco.
“This first win through our OEM agreement confirms our earlier strategic decisions to expand the pre-sales and technology integration with the Cisco team. It is a pleasing result and demonstrates the expanded sales activity which had already commenced when we announced the agreement last July,” said Mr Kirton.
He added that “the team is absolutely delighted, and we look forward to announcing more OEM wins in the near term.”
Today’s news helped FirstWave shares gain 5.3% up to $0.30 per share in early morning trade.