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New Report -- Endpoint Security and Network Admission Control -- Market Size and Vendor Profiles -- We've had so much interest in our most recent report on Network Admission Control that we've decided to follow it up with another report profiling the vendors in the space, along with our market sizing estimates. As of now we're tracking 27 vendors providing solutions into this market. If you're interested -- jkatsaros@irg-intl.com
2005 Wrap-Up: It was a good year for our business, for the industry and for what John likes to call "our trashy little newsletter" and I want to thank all of you for that. Having weathered the dot com bubble burst and the subsequent IT nuclear winter it's certainly nice to sense the energy in the air and to spend more time dealing with tomorrow's opportunities and less with yesterday's follies (although we just finished a project for VC's trying to find where their $80M had gone -- sad to report we too found no trace). We continued to do work in security and the branch office, two of the big picture areas we seem to have wandered smack dab into the middle of. I just finished two brief pieces for our clients, the first on the impact of identity on security (which we think will be a big deal in 2006) and one speculating that 2006 will be the time in which enterprise needs in wide-area file systems (WAFS) will start to resolve and with that the future of the vendors bringing innovative technology to this space. For a final cathartic flushing of insight (or purging of mental toxins, you'll have to decide) I'm doing a brief piece on the future of IP networking. The question at hand is whether we're at the end-of-the-road for the IP networks invented 30 years ago and if so what we should do about it. The wonder of IP networks is that the Internet operates essentially without human intervention (more precisely probably because of the absence of human intervention), by all means the premier wonder of the modern world. The problem is that these autonomous networks aren't quite good enough for what we want to use them for (e.g. media convergence, high-quality application delivery) and it's not clear what we do to make them better without screwing them up (or at least I haven't heard any compellingly good ideas yet). I'm not sure whether this 50,000 foot musing has any practical relevance for our paying clients so I'm reticent to foist it off as valuable research, but if you're interested send me a note. Contact Peter
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2005 Thanks for the Memories -- For me, 2005 started off looking like a repeat of the dreary years of 2003 and 2004 then a strange thing happened -- things slowly improved. Each month that went by seemed to be slightly better than its predecessor. Once or twice I even had a bubble like feeling, but dare I actually say that out loud. Overall, 2005 seems to have worked out pretty well for the infrastructure industry at large and, with hope, 2006 will be as good as or even better. It would be nice if we saw a few infrastructure companies with IPOs as a way of getting some new money into this space as opposed to all of the acquisitions that we've been seeing. But acquisitions are sure a lot better than what was going on before. Peter, Joanne, Jesse and I (and of course Rooz, our intern) thank all of you for putting up with our ramblings for all of these years (we've been doing this since around 2002 although our first issue seems to have fortunately disappeared). Hopefully, in 2006, someone will tell us what we're actually doing -- but we've never really handled adult supervision very well…
E12 in Beta -- It was easy to miss -- last week Microsoft announced Beta 1 availability for its Exchange 12 product. In Microsoft speak, Beta 1 is a restricted release to 1400 of its closest friends -- the company expects E12 to go GA in late 2006 or early 2007. From this early glimpse, E12 is fascinating because it directly addresses the questions of how Microsoft plans to grow its billion dollar plus Exchange franchise over the next few years. In our last newsletter, we wrote about how Cisco tries to push its value above the wire into the systems space and "value compete" against the likes of IBM and Microsoft. With E12, Microsoft is more or less "doing onto Cisco" through Unified Messaging -- a common mailbox integrating Voicemail with e-Mail. Why let Cisco and other networking VoIP vendors pick up all the money selling VoIP mailboxes? In the 90's, Unified Messaging was a popular marketing term for vendors but a huge disappointment for the customers, primarily because the technology that was available was unable to deliver on the promises that were made. But it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to want to extend its Exchange franchise into the voice side for both business reasons -- it's a huge market where they can pick up lots of incremental revenue -- and for technical reasons -- say what you want about Exchange but you've got to admit that most companies have figured out how to get it working as a reliable infrastructure utility. E12 is just going into beta now -- so the real battles are still a long way out. But it's going to be fun to watch.
HP Unveils Halo Room: HP introduced their first video conferencing service based on the innovative concepts first developed by DreamWorks for the production of Shrek 2. I had a chance to see Halo Room much earlier (back in the Carly era we only vaguely remember now) and now that it's an official product encourage all of you to do the same (although it ain't easy because the full experience is based on a custom built video conferencing room). I did a brief report on Halo for our clients; the $64 question is whether the advances are enough to actually precipitate the much broader use of video over time with the attendant impact of network equipment and services purchases. Send me a note if you might want to get deeper into these issues. Contact Peter
Funding News -- 17 infrastructure startups raised over $200M in early December.
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Date |
Company |
Sector |
Detail |
Amount |
Total |
Investors |
|
12/5 |
SavaJe Technologies |
Java for Mobile Phones |
|
$40.0 |
|
Investcorps Technology Ventures Fund II and joined by existing investors VantagePoint Venture Partners, Ridgewood Capital, RRE Ventures, and Vodafone Ventures |
|
12/5 |
World Wide Packets |
Carrier Ethernet Solutions |
|
$25.5 |
|
Eagle River Holdings, LLC and Rally Capital, LLC with Argo Capital, Azure Capital Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Northwest Venture Associates and Entrepia Ventures |
|
12/12 |
Telsima Corp. |
Wired/Wireless Broadband Telecom Gear |
Series C |
$20.0 |
|
|
|
12/12 |
Beceem Communications |
Chipsets for Mobile WiMax |
Series C |
$20.0 |
|
Samsung Ventures America with Global Catalyst Partners, KTB Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Walden International and Vinod Khosla |
|
12/8 |
Third Brigade Inc. |
Intrusion Prevention System Provider |
|
$16.5 |
|
BCE Capital, Celtic House Venture Partners, and BDC Venture Capital |
|
12/6 |
LiteScape Technologies |
VoIP Applications Software |
Series A |
$13.0 |
|
Softbank Capital and Telesoft Partners |
|
12/12 |
AirTight Networks |
Wireless Security |
Series B |
$12.0 |
$22.25` |
Trident Capital with Walden International, Granite Ventures, Blueprint Ventures and Siemens Venture Capital |
|
12/5 |
Mimosa Systems |
Information Management |
Series B |
$11.0 |
$17.5 |
JAFCO Ventures, with participation by current investors August Capital, Clearstone Venture Partners, and Lighthouse Capital Partners |
|
12/7 |
PGP Corporation |
Data Security |
|
$10.0 |
|
DCM-Doll Capital Management, Venrock Associates, SVB Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank |
|
12/13 |
CounterStorm |
Network Security |
Series B |
$9.5 |
$23.0 |
JK&B Capital and included Paladin Capital Group's Homeland Security Fund and Novak Biddle Venture Partners |
|
12/5 |
BigFix Inc. |
Security Management Solutions |
|
$8.4 |
|
Thomas Weisel Venture Partners with participation from Levensohn Partners, Selby Venture Partners and Split Rock Partners |
|
12/2 |
Active Endpoints |
Integration Software |
Series B |
$6.0 |
|
|
|
12/8 |
Optosecurity Inc. |
Security |
Series A |
$5.1 |
|
Business Development Bank of Canada, Innovatech Quebec and Fondaction CSN |
|
12/16 |
IPeria Inc. |
Communications Software |
Series B |
$5.0 |
|
Friedli Corporate Finance |
|
12/12 |
Redfern Integrated Optics |
Optical Transmitters |
Series C |
$2.2 |
|
|
|
12/8 |
Quellan Inc. |
Analog Ics |
|
|
|
Samsung Ventures America |
Mergers & Acquisitions -- Cisco Systems to purchase select intellectual property and assets of Cybertrust's security intelligence information service, known as Intellishield Alert Manager. Radware, integrated solutions for secure delivery of networked and Web-enabled applications over IP, signed an agreement to acquire assets of V-Secure Technologies, behavior-based network intrusion prevention solutions in a cash transaction valued at $15M in addition to warrants for the purchase of 45,500 Radware shares at an exercise price of $22 a share. Earthlink, Internet service provider, to buy New Edge Networks, single-source national provider of private Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and secure multi-site managed data networks and dedicated access for businesses and communications carriers for $144M. RSA Security Inc. to acquire Cyota, online security and anti-fraud solutions to thousands of financial institutions worldwide. RSA Security is purchasing Cyota for total consideration of approximately $145 million. Finisar Corporation, gigabit fiber optic solutions for high-speed data networks, acquired all of the optical transponder assets of Big Bear Networks for $1.9 million in cash. Sunbelt Software to purchase Kerio Personal Firewall, personal security technology that fully protects personal computers against hackers and internal misuse. Critical Path, messaging software and services, to sell its hosted messaging assets, including its hosted messaging customer base, its assembled hosted messaging workforce and other elements of goodwill, as well as its hosted messaging hardware, to Tucows, provider of Internet services and downloadable software. NetQoS completed its acquisition of Pine Mountain Group Inc. (PMG), and its PMG NetAnalyst certification program.
Partnerships -- Opalis Software, data center automation and integration technology, announced a strategic relationship with Japanese IT solution distributor Networld Corporation, expanding Opalis' market reach in the lucrative Japanese region. Route1, mobile thin clients, and ClearCube Technology, PC blade computing, are establishing an integrated marketing plan for their combined technologies, including Route 1's new Mobi Solution, a platform that enables instant secure, remote computing using ClearCube I/Port user ports, PC blades and management software. Nexaweb Technologies, software framework for building and deploying Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), joined the Eclipse Foundation, a not-for-profit industry organization committed to developing and promoting the open-source Eclipse universal development environment. 8e6 Technologies, Internet content filtering provider, has become an IMlogic Threat Center partner, exchanging up-to-the-minute IM-borne threat information with the center to protect millions of customers around the world from emerging and existing cyber attacks. Apani Networks, enterprise network security software, has joined the Open Group and OASIS. v6 Transition, the consulting and training arm of IPv6 Summit formed a strategic alliance with Spirent Federal, integrated performance analysis and service assurance systems for next-generation network technologies to the U.S. Government, to launch the world's leading IPv6 test center. Storage management companies, BridgeHead Software, partnered with Grid-Tools to provide fully integrated policy-driven database archiving and storage management. McAfee, Intrusion Prevention and Risk Management solutions, partnered with Bulldog Communications, the UK broadband and telephony services, to protect its 8 MB internet access customers from viruses, hackers, identity theft and spam. Application Security Inc. entered into an exclusive reseller agreement with Little eArth Corporation Co., Ltd., to secure Japanese databases against attacks and breaches of privacy and LAC will have exclusive rights to distribute the Japanese version of AppDetective, vulnerability assessment scanner. AirTight Networks, wireless perimeter security, announced that Colubris has integrated the capabilities of AirTight's SpectraGuard family of products into the Colubris Intelligent MultiService WLAN System. Alcatel, AT&T, Telmex purchase majority stake in 2Wire Inc.
Product News -- Entrust, securing digital identities and information, announced the commercial availability of Entrust IdentityGuard 8.0, flexible, strong, risk-based mutual authentication platform. Skybox Security, Security Risk Management (SRM), launched the industry's first integrated suite of Security Risk Management applications, Skybox View Suite version 2.5. Fortinet, Unified Threat Management announced FortiMail-2000, a new secure messaging appliance targeted at very large enterprises, universities and managed security service providers (MSSPs), and unveiling of FortiMail 2.2, a major new firmware release for its FortiMail systems. Apani Networks, network security software provider introduced EpiForce 2.0, a major upgrade to the company's flagship security software product now supports up to 100,000 software agents with as many as two million security policy relationships, all managed through a centralized administration console. Akonix Systems, security and compliance for instant messaging (IM), launched Akonix L7 Enterprise v4.3, designed to increase security and visibility into IM use across the enterprise. Forum Systems, Web services and SOA security for threat protection and trust management, announced the availability of Forum Vantage XML Accelerator, a new product designed to provide XML acceleration across networks for secure and optimized delivery of Web Services. eEye Digital Security, network security and vulnerability management software solutions, introduced the REM 3.0 Security Management console. SenSage, enterprise security analytics, announced the SenSage Compliance Bundle combining SenSage with an EMC Centera content addressed storage (CAS) system.
PowerDsine, Power over Ethernet (PoE) solutions, launched its next generation 6500 PoE Midspan series, IEEE 802.3af-compliant 6500 PoE Midspan series is reportedly the first PoE midspan to offer advanced secured Network Management System. Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Exchange "12" Beta 1 - the code name for the next version of its leading server for e-mail, calendaring and unified messaging, to a select group of testers. Exchange "12" will reduce the cost and complexity of the messaging system by providing more control for IT administrators. Netuitive, real-time analysis software, today announced Netuitive SI 3.2, the company's latest version of its systems management software. NextHop Technologies, networking software solutions, announced NextHop UNS 4.0, secure, enterprise-class software solution for unified switching. Blue Coat Systems, proxy appliances, announced the availability of Dynamic Real Time Rating (DRTR) capabilities in its WebFilter URL filtering system for ProxySG proxy appliances. Apposite Technologies, released Linktropy 4500 link emulator, providing a way to simulate terrestrial, wireless, internet, satellite or private network links in a lab environment, making it easy to validate application performance and test and troubleshoot networks under a variety of real-world conditions. SSL VPN technology company Aventail Corp. is adding a Web collaboration solution to its secure, remote access product, Aventail Secure Collaboration that includes Remote Helpdesk, Web Conferencing, Instant Messaging, Secure VoIP chat, and other tools, all integrated with the Aventail SSL VPN. Stratacache, scalable content delivery solutions for broadly distributed organizations, announced OmniCast 3.0, the latest version of its content distribution software. Tenable Network Security, security management solutions, released Nessus 3.0 for the Linux and FreeBSD platforms. Coyote Point Systems, Web application acceleration systems, announced Coyote Point Equalizer Extreme II include an enterprise-class hardware platform capable of handling up to 100,000 connections per second, advanced SSL acceleration, content compression, bandwidth management, application firewall rule sets and SNMP network management. Brix Networks, trusted provider of service assurance solutions for interactive applications, announced an enhanced IP video quality algorithm -- the Brix Video Quality Index (Brix VQI) -- that ensures providers' success with their IPTV rollouts.
PostX, encrypted email communications for businesses and consumers, unveiled its newest offering - PostX Messaging Application Platform (MAP) 6.0, boasting new approaches to policy management, authentication, and additional delivery methods. IMlogic Threat Center reported the first of a new breed of malicious interactive IM bots and reported an increase in threats by 3,266 percent in November versus November 2004 and the increase in IM threat mutations. iAnywhere announced the availability of M-Business Anywhere 6.0 new features include Web Services integration support, Asian localization as well as improvements in management, performance and security. Network Chemistry, wireless security, announced the availability of the industry's first public database to aggregate and communicate wireless vulnerabilities and exploits (WVE). The WVE database was created to catalogue security threats for products or protocols specifically designed for wireless communications including 802.11, Bluetooth, EVDO, EDGE, HSDPA, 802.16/WiMax, VoWLAN, RFID, and others. XenSource, infrastructure virtualization solutions based on the open source Xen hypervisor, released release of Xen 3.0 and introduced XenOptimizer. Newbury Networks released a new edition of its WiFi Watchdog wireless security solution - WiFi Watchdog/EWS and announced API level integration with Cisco Aironet Access Points, providing comprehensive scanning of the 802.11 RF (radio frequency) surroundings, as one of the multi-function capabilities of Cisco wireless AP's.
Customer Wins -- Weta Digital, based in Wellington, New Zealand, used a combination of Network Appliance's fabric-attached storage (FAS) systems, NetApp NearStore systems for data archival, and a NetApp IP SAN storage solution for Universal's King Kong movie. COLT selects Arbor Networks to defend its European management network. Palm Beach County School District is using Blue Coat's WebFilter running on its ProxySG proxy appliances to protect students from offensive Web content, meet Federal compliance regulations and protect its network and computers from spyware, viruses and other threats. Pelco, video security equipment manufacturer, selected and deployed Infoblox appliances to deliver highly reliable and manageable domain name system (DNS), dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) and IP address management (IPAM) services. Close Motor Finance chooses NetDevices' SG-8 Unified Services Gateway products to create an airtight disaster recovery environment for its business critical financial services databases. France Télévisions Publicité, a subsidiary of the France Télévisions Group, installed a secure Trapeze Networks' WLAN throughout its main offices for use by its sales staff and the general public. Japan Airlines Group has selected Mirapoint's RazorGate 450 email security appliance to block unwanted email and viruses from its network of approximately 100 companies. The Seattle Times is using IMlogic's IM Manager to gain visibility into staff instant messaging use, ensure compliance with internal and external use policies and prevent cyber threats from entering its network. The Republic of Macedonia has selected Strix's Access/One Outdoor Wireless System (OWS) to create a country-wide wireless mesh network.
Momentum Releases -- NetApp and IBM conducted the TPC-C Benchmark on an IBM eServer xSeries 460 server configured as a client/server system with NetApp fabric-attached storage (FAS) systems. The result demonstrates the robust scalability of NetApp storage for enterprise online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads, especially in storage area network (SAN) environments. Stratacache, scalable content delivery solutions, has shipped more than 500,000 user licenses for its OmniCast software. Among the major corporations using OmniCast for daily data updates to thousands of locations are Sherwin Williams, Bosch, Pep Boys, Goldman Sachs, Ford Motor Company and hundreds of other "Global 2000" companies worldwide. Network Chemistry, wireless security, has secured more than 75 new enterprise deployments since the beginning of the third quarter in July, including Albertsons, Loews, the New York State Police, the U.S. Department of Energy, two Fortune 500 utilities, and hundreds of other name-brand companies.
Executives On The Move -- Iperia, network communications software, selected David Jodoin to fill the position of CEO. Entuity selects Michael Jannery as president and chief executive officer. TZero Technologies, ultra wideband chipsets for wireless multimedia networking, hired Barry A. Hoberman as president and chief executive. GuardianEdge Technologies, enterprise data security, appointed Alan Fudge as Chief Executive Officer. Bret Sewell has joined Venturi Wireless, 3G mobile optimization solutions, as president and CEO. Force10 Networks names Stanley Meresman to Board of Directors.
SkyPilot Networks, carrier-class mesh networking systems, added David Robertson as its new chief financial officer, Marty Hahnfeld senior vice president of sales, vice president of business development Wes Schaefer and vice president of operations Allen Adolph. ConSentry Networks, secure networking solutions for LANs, announced that finance veteran Jim Buckley is the company's new Chief Financial Officer. Aicent, mobile data network services and solutions, announced that Kallen Chan has joined the company as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Return Path, email performance management company, appointed Leslie Price to the newly-created position of Senior Product Manager, Accreditation Services. Blue Lane Technologies, inline patch proxy for enterprise servers, hires Gordon Frank as vice president of sales. InfiniRoute Networks, managed Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) peering services for wireline and wireless carriers worldwide, announced that Larry Frank has joined the company as its vice president and chief marketing officer. Mimosa Systems, next-generation information management solutions, expanded its executive team with Donald Gieseler, vice president of North America sales, and Peter Skinner, vice president of finance.
See links below for the complete text of those items mentioned above plus other news.
The InternetAcceleration newsletter and www.internetacceleration.com are produced by Internet Research Group. For more information or to keep us updated, contact John Katsaros at jkatsaros@irg-intl.com.