InternetAcceleration
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Momentum Revenge... We're always whining when pre-public vendors send us "momentum" press releases telling us how great their sales are without providing any real numbers other than triple digit percentage increases. So we've decided to do the same with regard to how well our new book, Getting It Right The First Time, is doing. Sales are up 300% since last month. New customer sign ups are at an all time high. Web site hits are at 500% beyond forecast. It's #1 in the unpublished New York Times category of high-tech business books with greenish colors on the front cover. Distributors can't keep it in stock! Get your copy -- www.gettingitrightthefirsttime.com
RSVP Rage -- We've received calls from those of you who have RSVPed to our upcoming N-Square (Networking Networking Dinner) schmoozing dinner, sponsored by EMC, wondering where it will be held. We know the date -- Tuesday, March 8th. We know the city -- Palo Alto. But because the response has been so large (apparently free dinners are the thing in the infrastructure world), we've had to do some restaurant re-arranging which is just about finalized. We've always said that we're using a RAVE format -- drive in the direction of Palo Alto on that night and we'll send further instructions to your Blackberry... Actually, e-mails with the details will be going out shortly. jkatsaros@irg-intl.com.
Los Altos Knights: We were visited this week by Sir Harold Evans (Harry to his friends) on his way back from the TED conference in Monterey (a luminary / digirati networking event) where his recent book They Made America (also a PBS TV Show) was a featured hand-out. Hopefully we have you at least curious about whether something more than unexpected rental car failure on 280 is at play. It turns out Harry's book features the work of key inventors in our history, and one that he chose to feature is Gary Killdall the founder of Digital Research. It turns out that John played a bit role in this twenty five year old high-tech urban and, its true, that it was Bill Gates shouting at him but that was before Bill Gates was Bill Gates. Harry's book is a lot heavier than ours (you could really hurt someone with it) but an interesting read and a nice addition to a Valley living room table. It's a delightful book to read. After you read ours you might want to look at Harry's.
Intel Comes To Our Defense: Intel's annual big bash, the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), was held this week in San Francisco, and it was worth taking the time to drop by. John and I each have our favorite way of offending seemingly hot new companies showing us bogus plans so they'll never speak to us again much less read this newsletter. In my case it tends to be with companies that want to talk about their custom hardware based designs. This produces a knee-jerk response where I have to tell them why they are going to fail and to tell them about how NetWare works. Not wanting to insult all of Intel in one fell swoop but realizing the possibility, it was with some trepidation that I attended talks at this week's Intel Developer Forum about Intel's newly disclosed I/O acceleration technology. I'm delighted to say that this disaster was avoided when Intel began by explaining how they had learned that TCP/IP hardware acceleration is a stupid idea and stopped trying to do it. Then came a well reasoned explanation of what the real problem is when communications rates reach 1Gbit/sec and beyond. Of course Intel went on to explain how clever silicon could improve things but in the context of reducing application data latency while minimizing any data movement or context switching overhead (Right On Brother!). As they explained the fundamental problem with any separated hardware acceleration solution is that you don't solve either of these problems. Instead, the Intel solution (which will be supported directly by Microsoft in their new TCP/IP stack) requires (uncharacteristic for Intel) intimate cooperation and coordination with the operating system (because the goal is to make the data available to an application). If any of our readers still believe that separated acceleration subsystems are a good idea maybe they'll listen to Intel even if they won't listen to us. Oh, by the way, the elegance in Drew Major's 20 year old Netware implementation is that it doesn't do excessive data movement or context switching. Comments→Peter
Intel Does Infrastructure: Intel is doing some really interesting stuff that plays right into our Infrastructure space certainly including security. Three of the four legs of Intel's platforms were disclosed in some detail at IDF: Intel's advanced management technology, their I/O acceleration technology (IOAT) and their virtualization technology. We talked about IOAT above -- it enables doing a lot more interesting processing on the computer and is bound to disrupt the security ecology over time. Intel's Advanced Management Technology (AMT) provides a management infrastructure that enables the remote control of systems without making great assumptions about the health of the host operating system (given worries about malware infecting systems that certainly sounds pretty interesting). And finally Intel working with VMWare, Microsoft and others is revamping their CPU architecture so that virtualization -- hosting multiple different operating systems on one machine for example -- becomes more efficient and better. There are many ways in which virtualization can be exploited. A couple of them are clearly of high relevance to security: providing a safe playpen in which to run uncertain code and the inverse version of creating a safe environment for running good code in an uncertain environment. In all of these advances it demonstrates the strengths of solutions that are deeply integrated into the computers in the network. The fourth leg of this set of advanced technologies embeds critical security technology safely underneath the customer's visible machine. All of this would be interesting enough but all the more so because of Microsoft. Jim Alchin from Microsoft was around talking relatively clearly about Microsoft's intention to exploit all of this. With these advances Intel is getting very system and software savvy, which is good news for their customers considering the degree that these are all system issues, not hardware issues. To make these advances really useful, there needs to be close cooperation with software vendors. Although Microsoft and Intel are uncomfortable bedfellows over their long-term relationship, none of that seems visible in these discussions. Both have selfish interests: Intel to sell more silicon and increasingly differentiate from IBM, their latest server CPU competitor, and Microsoft to continue to differentiate Windows against Linux. In the past each company has hoped to break the bonds of the relationship, but now more than ever they seemed linked at the hip and striding together into the future. It's an impressive partnership. Comments→Peter
There They Go Again: As you know, we've been giving (free) advice to Gartner to improve the quality of its output -- hire senior people that are experienced senior managers in the disciplines they're covering, spend more time doing actual research, explain the methodology behind a report and provide transparency to conclusions reached so that readers can understand both the perspective and the scoring that was used. Gartner has sent us e-mails pretty much telling us to mind our own business. Our motivation for providing Gartner with this advice is purely shameless self-interest -- we believe if the quality of research improves, clients' businesses will improve as they make better decisions, then research spending will increase and eventually shops like ours will benefit from the boom. Gartner's Magic Quadrants should be a good vehicle for IT buyers to sort out the deluge of offerings on the market. It's a role that big research companies like Gartner can and should play. But we think that the current quality of output in its Magic Quadrants are both potentially misleading to IT buyers and an abuse of its brand. Case in point -- the latest MQ "Magic Quadrant for Web-Enabled Application Delivery." When we saw it, we thought that Gartner's choice of its winners looked weird -- the closer we looked the stranger it appeared. First off, Gartner doesn't say if this MQ is for shops the size of BofA (where F5 might be a leader) or for The Bank of Los Altos (who might not want the complexity and price tag that comes with F5). We asked a few of the vendors listed in the MQ how much effort Gartner put into its evaluation (did Gartner contact them, interview reference accounts, talk to investors, business partners, review "bake off" findings...) and we were basically told that, from these vendors' perspective, Gartner had done very little. Here's a shocking example of what one vendor told us: - "we spent about a half hour with ... [Gartner Research Vice President Name Deleted] ...of Gartner almost exactly one year ago. We gave him a brief overview of our company and exchanged pleasantries. As I recall the subject of a "paid relationship with Gartner" was raised more than once." That wasn't the only response like that. This situation turns out to be worse than we thought. It appears to us that not only is Gartner clearly doing insufficient research (hadn't even spoken to a vendor listed in the MQ for a year!), but that Gartner Vice Presidents are using vendor briefings as thinly disguised sales calls. It's pretty intimidating for a vendor to be asked to sign up for research services IN THE SAME discussion as they're providing input used in a MQ ranking and some may say unethical. Don't you think that in this MQ report Gartner has responsibility to include a note in its report that tells readers "although we haven't talked to XYZ vendor in a year and haven't spent any time researching their product offering they are, nevertheless, included in this study." We originally thought that Gartner could improve its quality on its own. But it looks like it will take more than that. In the financial arena, it took NY State Attorney General Elliott Spitzer's litigation to crackdown on the sham that was labeled "investment research." Similarly, maybe a frustrated vendor will have to take legal action to fix what's happening in our little neck of the woods.
Is Security Detection Really Dead? Being dead isn't quite the simple proposition it used to be (remember when breath on a mirror was the definitive answer, at least for movies?). Despite the fact that Gartner declared IDS dead, it's still very much alive. Gartner has informed us explicitly that we are wrong about IDS being alive, that Gartner declared IDS dead quite clearly years ago, and that it really isn't either useful or productive for us to want to debate the topic any more. Since they won't debate us, we decided to publish our own report titled: The Need for Comprehensive Security Systems - Comprehensive Security, that develops the common sense point of view that would in fact justify why IPS alone can't do the trick -- that detection does and will play an important role in security system design. Although we generally limit distribution of our reports to our Advisory Research clients, we will gladly distribute this report to a broader audience, including our newsletter subscribers, in the hope that it will finally put to rest any lingering misconceptions caused by Gartner's inaccurate prediction. Request a copy - John.
(Time to) Say Goodnight Craig: Maybe this is just "the year of the awful keynote speeches by companies sponsoring industry meetings" but we have to rate Craig Barrett's Intel IDF Keynote right up there with Art Coviello's at RSA earlier. In the case of Barrett, it's a lot harder to excuse a content-thin talk because in contrast to RSA, Intel is unquestionably a foundation player in the industry and as the rest of IDF proved Intel's doing a lot of interesting stuff. Craig is in process of retiring from Intel after what is bound to be remembered one of the more painful periods in Intel history, so maybe Craig thought or hoped that this would be a warm farewell with the audience spontaneously rising to sing Auld Lang Sine with tears welling up in their eyes. Apparently Craig forgot that you can't orchestrate that yourself. It was like watching a bad version of a Carly Fiorina keynote -- short on substance with mostly celebrity glitter but Carly at least attracts the likes of Gwen Stefani for guest appearances while the Craig geek version featured a bizarre custom Chrysler from TV's "Pimp My Ride" guys and an appearance of aerospace visionary Burt Rutan. Sorry Craig, it's time to reread Douglas Macarthur and just "fade away".
Spam as a Stepping Stone to World Domination? We're delighted to note that Enrique Salem has made the final cut and appears in the merged Symantec/Veritas organization as head of the Enterprise and Consumer Security Business Unit. We first met Enrique when he took over as head of Brightmail, and always enjoyed our little updates from Enrique because with his history as Symantec's CTO. He could talk Geek pretty good and additionally really made business sense from Spam control. Over time we wonder whether John Thompson acquired BrightMail primarily to get Enrique back. Now if Thompson takes the HP job (or maybe shows up surprisingly as head of the World Bank)...
Update on Borderware -- E-mail anti-abuse appliance maker Borderware apparently closed its second round bringing its total capital infusion to $18M. Jefferson and Woodside Fund participated in this round. And apparently they're putting the money to good use -- in the past few weeks Borderware announced its distribution relationship with Microsoft, its new SIP security offerings and its plan to add reputation functionality to enhance its MXtreme Mail Firewall appliances.
Funding News --
|
Date |
Company |
Sector |
Detail |
Amount |
Total |
Investors |
|
2/17 |
Vativ Technologies |
DSP-based silicon solutions |
Series B |
$11.0 |
|
InnoCal Venture Capital, Intel Digital Home, Redpoint Venture Capital, Mission Ventures and Qualcomm |
|
2/16 |
SecureWave |
Endpoint Security Software |
Series B |
$4.0 |
|
Index Ventures and Mangrove Ventures |
Quarterly Results -- McAfee's Q4 ending Dec. 31, 2004, consolidated net revenue was $244 million and for the full year 2004, consolidated net revenue was $911 million and new revenue grew by 28% year over year and 16% sequentially. Akamai Technologies reported revenue for the fourth quarter 2004 was $57.6 million, an 8 percent increase over the previous quarter's revenue of $53.3 million, and a 27 percent increase over fourth quarter 2003 revenue of $45.2 million. Total revenue for 2004 was $210.0 million, a 30 percent increase over 2003 revenue of $161.3 million. Full-year net income for 2004 was $34.4 million, a significant improvement over the 2003 net loss of $29.3 million. And, Network Appliance, networked storage solutions, reported results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2005, revenues for the third fiscal quarter were $412.7 million, an increase of 39% compared to revenues of $297.3 million for the same period a year ago and a 10% increase compared to $375.2 million in the prior quarter. Net income increased 50% to $60.1 million compared to $40.2 million for the same period in the prior year.
Partnerships -- Proofpoint, messaging security solutions, announced strategic partnerships with Authentica, PGP Corporation, PostX Corporation and Sigaba, whereby Proofpoint and the respective secure messaging vendor will jointly market and promote each other's solutions. QUALCOMM Incorporated, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, and Openwave Systems, open software products and services for the communications industry, have entered into a licensing agreement that will further promote the rapid advancement of 3G WCDMA (UMTS) handsets.
Corporate News -- NeoAccel, next-generation Internet security solutions announced its corporate launch.
Product News -- EMC introduced new versions of EMC CLARiiON networked storage systems with native iSCSI (Internet small computer system interface) support, including the new CLARiiON AX100i, CLARiiON CX300i and CLARiiON CX500i models, delivering the broadest set of Fibre Channel and native iSCSI storage networking solutions. Securify, enterprise solutions for hardening the internal network, released SecurVantage 5.0, allowing companies and organizations to secure networks beyond the perimeter.
Packeteer, WAN Application Traffic Management, introduced the Web Services Workbench and new additional Layer 7 application classifications as major new software enhancements. The company also announced the availability of Packeteer 7.1, designed to keep enterprise networks running even under the most debilitating attacks by proactively identifying -- and correcting -- wide area network (WAN) performance issues. The newest software release for Route Explorer, Packet Design's industry-leading route analytics appliance, offers support for BGP "confederations," a technique used to increase the scalability of large IP networks. CrossTec Corporation, distributor of the NetOp product line, released NetOp Remote Control v8.0. Developed by Danware Data A/S, NetOp v8.0 adds extensive improvements in security, platform support, communication, and speed, as well as, a number of new features including a new remote management utility for powerful remote control capabilities. Network Physics, managing application infrastructure integrity, announced the availability of problem resolution capabilities for network security and application performance based on two major IBM technology programs, the Autonomic Computing initiative and the Orchestration and Provisioning Automation Library (OPAL) initiative.
CREDANT Technologies introduced their new notebook encryption product, a Windows encryption component of its CREDANT Mobile Guardian Enterprise Edition to provide a new class of security for notebook computers. TriGeo Network Security, automated remediation, introduced a new version of TriGeo Security Information Manager (TriGeo SIM), for small to medium enterprises that automatically identifies, notifies and responds to suspicious behavior, policy violations and network attacks. DataPower, network hardware for securing XML Web services, announced that its XS40 XML security gateway successfully demonstrated SAML 2.0 interoperability at the RSA conference. Seaway Networks introduced the Trident NCA2000-L7P Intrusion Prevention Accelerator Card, a complete IDS/IPS system-on-a-card for use in intrusion detection/prevention and content filtering appliances. DesktopStandard Corporation (formerly AutoProf) released PolicyMaker Application Security (PMAS), a software solution that enables network administrators to enforce the ‘least privilege' security principle on Windows desktops via Microsoft's Group Policy change and configuration management system.
Vernier Networks announced the support for VeriSign Unified Authentication in its EdgeWall line of Network Access Management appliances. Caymas Systems, Identity-Driven Access Gateways, announced the availability of "Web Relay" capability for its Caymas 220, Caymas 318, and Caymas 525 products, that creates a secure connection between authorized users and applications. Network security company Q1 Labs unveiled the new QRadar appliances that integrate the functionality of network anomaly detection, flow analysis and enterprise-wide intrusion prevention into a family of hardware appliances. Reactivity, Inc., secure XML Web services deployment systems, unveiled the Reactivity Federated Identity Model for Web services, a reference architecture based on the Liberty Alliance trust model that offers a simple way to preserve and use layered identity with XML Web services. LUCID Security, ipAngel self tuning intrusion prevention solution, debuted ipAngel X3V, intrusion prevention appliance. McAfee, producer of McAfee Anti-Spyware Enterprise, launched MyAvert to provide McAfee Avert DATs (virus definition data files) on a daily basis; McAfee also announced its partnership with InnoPath Software, and that it will be collaborating with Bitfone. Authentication fingerprint solution developer Zvetco Biometrics announced Verifi ID Manager, a new line of software products operating in conjunction with Zvetco's fingerprint authentication hardware and 3rd party authentication methods. Openwave Systems announced the availability of Openwave Mobile Device Manager, mobile operators improve the user experience by enabling immediate access to the most cutting edge data services. Authentica introduced its next-generation Active Rights Management (ARM) platform, integrated ERM solution that combines document and email protection in a single platform.
Customer Wins -- Guardian Life, HHS and Banco Santander have each selected Securify's SecurVantage for network protection. Woodland Trust has selected IMlogic's IM Manager to manage and archive all IM communications. Christus Health, Catholic healthcare system, has deployed EMC networked storage, software and services to enable information lifecycle management (ILM) across its 40-hospital network. Internet2 has selected the Force10 Networks E-Series family of switch/routers for its Hybrid Optical and Packet Infrastructure (HOPI) project, which will serve as a model for tomorrow's high performance network architectures.
Momentum Releases -- Openwave Systems, open software products and services for the communications industry, announced new milestones, which demonstrate that mobile operators continue to select Openwave for its IP messaging experience to grow and protect their communities of loyal subscribers.
Executives On The Move -- Skybox Security, Security Risk Management (SRM), announced the appointment of David Batista as the president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors and Gidi Cohen, founder and member of the board of directors, is appointed to the position of chief strategy officer. Covelight Systems, business regulatory compliance, named Spencer Snedecor chief executive officer.
Airwide Solutions, messaging and content delivery management solutions, has elected Kevin A. Wood to succeed Simon Everitt as President and Chief Executive. FaceTime appointed former Netscape security guru, Taher Elgamal, to its board of directors. Airpath Wireless, broadband wireless access services, announced George McHorney as its Chief Operating and Financial Officer. Laszlo Systems, Laszlo open source platform, announced that Michael Ouye has joined as Vice President, Engineering. Madhavan Vasudevan has joined DataPower as Senior Director of Business Development. Conformative Systems, appointed Terry Wise is Named VP of Sales, Robert Alvarez is VP of Finance and Trevor Pokorney is VP of Operations. Apertio, open mobility infrastructure, appointed former Siebel executive, Derek Flynn as Vice President for Sales. Mobile device security solutions provider, CREDANT Technologies has hired David Harris as its vice president of business development. Network Intelligence Corp., consolidating enterprise-wide data at the core of compliance and security, appointed Jeff Melvin to the post of vice president of worldwide sales and field operations. Lumeta, network intelligence, appointed Janet Coddington as chief financial officer.
See links below for the complete text of those items mentioned above plus other news.
The
InternetAcceleration
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www.internetacceleration.com are produced by
Internet Research Group.
For more information or to keep us updated, contact John Katsaros at
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