Network security company SonicWall has announced it has exceeded its financial and operational metrics set across sales, partner engagement and support for the third consecutive quarter this year.

Bill Conner, SonicWall president and CEO says, “We have stood as our own stand-alone company for less than a year, and we've already reached record financials that are significantly ahead of plan and accelerating.

“The entire SonicWall team has worked tirelessly to meet and exceed the lofty goals we outlined on day one, and these results demonstrate the strength of our channel partners, the global SonicWall  team, and our world-class portfolio of products and support services.

SonicWall attributes a great deal of its success to its partner ecosystem with the company stating it regularly introduces innovations to the partner community.

One such development was the launch of its SecureFirst partner program for resellers, integrators, managed security service providers and security consultants.

The company says since the program's launch in November, SonicWall experienced a surge in registered partner growth and sales, with over 18,000 channel partners registering for SecureFirst, and 5000 of those being new partners.

It says partner deal registration has exceeded 50 percent since the launch of the partner program, reflecting over $330 million in new pipeline.

Giordano Zambelli, Verxo CTO says, “We are thrilled with the positive changes that have been made at SonicWall since the company became independent last year.

"This team truly understands the needs of partners and resellers, as well as the end customers, and the combination of great products and industry-leading training programs have been central to enabling our business.

While SonicWall does not disclose its sales numbers as a private company, it points to independent market research from NPD Group which suggests it has leapfrogged key competitors.

This research also suggests the company jumped to No. 2 in the rankings of vendors in terms of network security appliances sold in the first quarter of 2017, reporting over 55 percent year-over-year growth

In March 2017, the company also introduced SonicWall University, a real-time digital and role-based curricula, driven by intelligence gathered from SonicWall's Capture Labs and threat researchers.

SonicWall says partners have gravitated to the program for a range of training and certifications, including specialisations ransomware, email threats and encrypted threats.