InternetAcceleration
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Juniper Gets Everyone A-Twitter: Last week Juniper created the kind of excitement in the industry reminiscent of the high-school football star inviting the new girl out for a date when they announced the intent to acquire Peribit and Redline for a total of about $500M. What with the increasing challenge of being a small cap public company this kind of acquisition and valuation must be close to a Camelot end for both of these startups. Redline and Peribit deserve a standing ovation for their accomplishments. As the saying goes, "they rang the bell." We share the industry's enthusiasm for the valuations and the recognition of the importance of these acceleration offerings. And we look forward eagerly for the next marriages.
It's also going to be interesting to see what it takes to integrate these new offerings into Juniper's sales process (things were rocky for a while after their NetScreen acquisition). Further, it's not clear how these products fit in with the rest of Juniper's enterprise networking strategy. But Juniper has succeeded in increasing company valuations across these categories and, coupled with the potential for integration confusion, competitors in the space are celebrating as well. It's fair to say that it's a nice day in Camelot.
INBOX on the Horizon: INBOX San Jose is coming up in the not so distant future and you IRG groupies will have a chance to attend some live broadcasts. Peter is going to running two panels, one on the topic of IP reputation and one on the rapidly heating area of advanced "Web" clients. Advanced browser applications like Google Maps have a lot of us with dropped jaws finally able to grok the power inherent in the modern browser when commanded by a DHTML master and others seemed poised to follow. Should be fun.
Microsoft's Security Strategy -- We're about to publish our latest research report describing Microsoft's Security Strategy. It's our observation that the typical Silicon Valley response is to ignore MSFT by claiming "they'll never get security right." We don't agree. We think that, taken as a whole, Microsoft has started to take major steps toward (to use a phrase that we like) "getting it right." Our report describes Microsoft's roadmap for accomplishing this. Unlike our last report, The Need For Comprehensive Security Systems, which we generously provide free via downloads from our Web site (www.irg-intl.com) our Microsoft's Security Strategy Report is part of our "for fee" research advisory service. For info -- jkatsaros@irg-intl.com.
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Dueling Visions at Interop: Tuesday and Wednesday at Interop 2005 began with keynotes from John Chambers and Scott Kreins respectively. Both wandered into new vision and strategy territory. If you've heard a Chambers keynote over the last three years you know that his big message is that IT productivity is the basic driver of economic growth. Over the last decade Cisco has driven very substantial internal productivity growth through the better support of business processes through network enabled applications. Chambers is visibly ruminating over what the next phase of network-enabled productivity improvement will be and he's chosen the somewhat confusing term "interaction" to talk about it. Fortunately Cisco's Analyst Dinner was that night and provided a perfect opportunity to deconstruct what he was trying to say. We think it's the same basic point that Microsoft is making in their collaboration strategy. Neither means the kind of collaboration that was attempted in developments like e-Rooms during the dot com bubble. Both mean using the network to facilitate the vital but not transactional human interactions that drive large parts of a business (Chambers called out areas like development and marketing where Cisco's internal analysis showed their own productivity improvements to have lagged). Looking at this issue from the very different perspectives of Microsoft and Cisco is a very interesting task. Scott Kreins' talk was unfortunately a good 30,000 feet higher in perspective. For some time Scott has been focusing on a perspective of how consolidation eventually shaped the computer business and speculates that the same will happen to the network business and what the ultimate franchises will be. He reaches the predictable conclusion that Juniper will be one of the franchise survivors in what he calls "Traffic Processing." Not surprisingly that has included basic transmission and security, and with the acquisitions of last week it now has an application optimization part too. It seemed more like a talk you give to the board when they ask about longer term strategy rather than a talk meant for the Interop audience of mostly enterprise customers, but it was an interesting glimpse into what he's thinking about and why he spent $500M last week.
I've got those Interop Blues -- Although the RSA security conference was ten weeks ago, its impact still looms large at the Interop conference. The RSA conference has become the thought leadership conference on network security, leaving Interop to roll out its standard cast of characters talking about what they've talked about year after year. RSA has the advantage of attracting not only networking types but also application types to the same venue. So when they're talking about security, you've got companies like Microsoft and Cisco participating as part of the dialog. But watching the Interop discussions about subjects like performance without hearing from the application side leaves a lot to be desired. MediaLive, the producer of Interop, has had a few tough years and they have to pragmatically deal with the realities of running a major conference in today's economic environment. Catering to the networking vendor/sponsors is essential. Maybe their newly announced December Interop in New York City will be the time for them to revitalize the conference sessions, attract leading application side participation and retake the high ground for topics like network security and real application performance.
When is Enough Bandwidth Enough? It's our pesky bandwidth question again. Back in the optical data boom we went around like wet blankets asking people why the world needed as much bandwidth as the industry seemed intent on providing. Of course that much capacity wasn't needed and much of that market collapsed for just that reason. We successfully burst that balloon by theorizing that 20 Mbits/sec for each man, woman and child was enough (that's a personalized HDTV channel for each). The answer is probably considerably lower for most circumstances. One of the founders of a leading wireless LAN vendor came by for a chat and noted that when you install an 802.11b (practically about 6 Mbits/sec) access point you never seem to hear people complaining about the bandwidth even when sharing it with a full conference room. It's nice that LAN switches are moving to Gbit ports and 10Gbit is somewhere in the mid term future. Just don't build business plans on the assumption that people will really use much of it.
Funding News -- Eight new infrastructure investments yielded over $100M in new funding in the past few weeks.
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Date |
Company |
Sector |
Detail |
Amount |
Total |
Investors |
|
4/11 |
Yipes Enterprise Services |
Managed Ethernet Solutions |
Series C |
$24.0 |
$94.0 |
Crosslink Capital, along with Norwest Venture Partners, JPMorgan Partners, LLC and Sprout Group |
|
4/19 |
MessageGate Inc. |
Email Compliance Solutions |
Series A |
$18.0 |
|
Vulcan Capital, also included previous investors Polaris Venture Partners, Northwest Venture Associates and Newbury Ventures, and new European-based investor Icon Capital |
|
4/20 |
Xelerated |
Network Processing |
Series C |
$17.0 |
|
Accel Partners and Amadeus Capital Partners, Atlas Venture and Alta Partners |
|
4/18 |
Ingrian Networks |
Data Privacy Solutions |
Series D |
$15.4 |
|
Menlo Ventures led the round with Prism Venture Partners, Globespan Capital Partners, HighBAR Ventures, and Partech International |
|
4/19 |
Nakina Systems |
Security Management Systems |
Series B |
$10.0 |
|
VIMAC Ventures and EDC Equity, VenGrowth Capital Partners and MMV Financial Inc |
|
4/12 |
Laszlo Systems |
Open Source Platform and Rich Internet Apps |
Series B |
$6.25 |
$18.25 |
Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners, General Catalyst Partners and Sofinnova Ventures |
|
4/14 |
Network Chemistry |
Wireless Network Intrusion Protection |
|
$6.0 |
|
Geneva Venture Partners, Innovacom, and In-Q-Tel |
|
4/20 |
SIPquest |
Session Initiation Protocol Applications |
Series B |
$6.0 |
|
Covington Capital and Skypoint Capital |
Quarterly Results -- Trend Micro posted consolidated net sales of 17.3 billion Yen (or US $165.4 million, 104.59 JPY = 1USD), operating income of 7.3 billion Yen (or US $69.8 million) and net income of 4.6 billion Yen (or US $43.6 million) for the first quarter 2005. These figures reflect gains of 27% in net sales, 42% in operating income, and 45% in net income compared with the same period a year ago. EMC reported total consolidated revenue for the first quarter was $2.24 billion, 20% higher than the $1.87 billion reported for the first quarter of 2004. Net income for the quarter was $270 million or 93% higher than the $140 million for the first quarter of 2004.
Mergers & Acquisitions -- Juniper Networks, Inc. has signed definitive agreements to acquire Peribit Networks, Inc., a Wide Area Network (WAN) optimization technology, and Redline Networks, Inc., Application Front End (AFE) technology. The Peribit Networks acquisition is valued at approximately $337 million in cash, stock and assumed stock options. The Redline Networks acquisition is valued at approximately $132 million in cash and assumed stock options. Cisco Systems agreed to acquire Topspin Communications, provider of server fabric switches, a new class of server networking equipment, providing a high performance, programmable infrastructure for grid and utility computing, clustered enterprise applications, and server virtualization.
Thomson, has acquired CIRPACK, the European leading provider of softswitch platforms. The acquisition will complement Thomson's existing offering in IP telephony, remote management and access products and gateways. McAfee, intrusion prevention solutions, completed the sale of the McAfee Research (formerly NAI Labs) assets to SPARTA, Inc.
Partnerships -- Network Physics, the leader in application infrastructure integrity, introduced the Network Physics Alliance Partner Program. AlterPoint, intelligent network change and configuration management solutions, announced a reseller agreement with Kedron UK Ltd, supplier of network management and monitoring solutions. VitalStream, streaming media solutions and global content delivery network (CDN) provider, announced an OEM partnership with thePlatform, digital media publishing tools, and will provide customers with a comprehensive publishing solution, enhanced by thePlatform Media Publishing System (MPS), to manage, control, publish and track secure digital audio and video that is sent over VitalStream's advanced content delivery network.
Corporate News -- HyPerformix received a patent for a method to convert a non-object oriented programming language into an object oriented one. MX Logic joins America Online, Cingular Wireless, Comcast, EarthLink, Openwave Systems, Verizon and Yahoo! among others on this independent, non-profit coalition of carriers and technology providers all working to eradicate messaging abuse.
Product News -- NIKSUN, INC., network security and performance monitoring solutions, announced the availability of Certified Rules which enable NIKSUN customers to proactively defend enterprise computer networks against cyber attacks. Diversinet Corp., mobile device security and authentication solutions for the mobile data ecosystem, has launched its MobiSecure suite of mobile tokens and MobiSecure Authentication Service Center designed to protect individuals, companies and enterprises from security threats such as identity theft, online fraud and identity misrepresentation -- better known as smorphing. Nortel announced enhancements to its mobility solutions with applications and solutions to make it possible for workers to take their 'Office Anywhere' through mobile access to business applications. EMC unveiled the new high-end EMC Celerra NSX Network Attached Storage (NAS) gateway delivering up to 300,000 NFS operations per second. iAnywhere Solutions, announced the upcoming release of AvantGo for the BlackBerry platform from Research In Motion (RIM). McAfee, intrusion prevention solutions, announced McAfee Desktop Firewall 8.5, an enhanced version of its distributed software firewall for small to large enterprises. Trapeze Networks, wireless LAN (WLAN) Mobility System, will deliver new features in its Mobility System Software that will allow for a new level of interoperability with Cisco Systems APs (Cisco Aironet 350, 1100 and 1200 Series). Network Physics, application infrastructure integrity, unveiled the NP-500, which delivers application performance management capabilities to medium-sized organizations and branch offices with less time, staff, tools, and budget than their larger network peers.
Converged Access Inc., application performance management solutions for converged IP WANs, announced the Converged Access Point (CAP), the first Layer 7, application-aware CPE access device that enables enterprises and service providers to guarantee their end user experience by delivering precise network metrics to each application according to customer-defined policies. Network Appliance announced support of Microsoft Windows iSCSI Initiator 2.0 as well as its new virtualization engine—NetApp V-Series virtualizes a variety of third-party hardware storage, including systems from storage rival EMC. Building on Trend Micro Enterprise Protection Strategy, Trend Micro announced a series of new products and services designed for the Internet gateway, server and desktop combating spyware in the enterprise. DeepNines' Security Edge Platform prevented vulnerabilities in Cisco's IOS software involving IPSec VPNs and denial of service attacks. SlipStream Data Inc. launched SlipStream SP 4.0- Web and Email Accelerator with more speed and new features and expanded compatibility and support for increasingly popular Internet browsers such as FireFox, Mozilla and the soon to be released Opera 8.0.DataPower has opened a permanent office in the DC area staffed with technical and sales personnel. With the government sector's shift to fully funded production projects, DataPower is discontinuing the free equipment loaner component of its Government Web Services Security Immersion Program launched in 2003.
Gomez Inc., Internet performance management intelligence company, announced the immediate availability of Gomez Performance Network (GPN) 6.0, allowing companies to more proactively identify and quickly resolve application performance problems and to confirm compliance with service level commitments. Ample Communications, provider of intelligent Framers and MAC ICs for wire line network systems, announced VoIP capabilities for its Harrier family of chips. Sybase, enterprise infrastructure and mobile software, made available its end-to-end radio frequency identification (RFID) solution, RFID Enterprise, integrating data from RFID devices seamlessly with enterprise data management environments. NetScaler, accelerated application delivery systems, announced the results of a new independent lab review which validates its ability to reduce end user response times by accelerating typical Oracle application deployment scenarios by an average of 5x, with some results measuring as high as 15x. FineGround, Web application delivery, unveiled FineGround Velocity-FS, single-appliance WAFS solution that resides entirely in the data center and implements unique transformation techniques to deliver high-performance file services over Wide Area Networks (WANs).
Customer Wins -- FirstAssist, a provider of insurance, assistance and provision in the healthcare and business protection markets, has implemented Secoda's compliance management and policy awareness solution, RuleSafe. Fusepoint Managed Services, outsourced services, has been selected by Dominion Bond Rating Service to implement and support a fully mirrored high-availability disaster recovery solution. Tower Insurance has selected one of Equinix's New York area Internet Business Exchange (IBXR) centers to provide an offsite data center facility. BB Cable Corp. of Japan, a subsidiary of SOFTBANK BB Corp. has employed and licensed SecureMedia's Encryptonite System software to secure its broadcast music service, BB Audio.
Dow Jones Marketwatch has selected NetScaler to accelerate the performance of its mission-critical business applications. With this new customer, NetScaler officially passed the 500 customer milestone, adding approximately 100 new enterprise customers in the past quarter. Newcastle City Council has selected Trapeze Networks, provider of enterprise wireless LAN (WLAN) Mobility Systems, and Telindus, pan-European network solutions and services provider, to provide a secure WLAN to meet the mobility needs of its guests and employees.
Circuit City Stores, providers of consumer electronics, has chosen TeaLeaf RealiTea for powerful visibility into what customers do and see while shopping on circuitcity.com. General Nutrition Centers (GNC) selected Keynote WebIntegrity to streamline compliance management for its Web site. Cascade Lumber and Manufacturing Company has deployed Fineground's Velocity-FS Wide Area File Service solution for storage and file server consolidation projects aimed at improving storage utilization and recovery.
Momentum Releases -- McAfee surpasses their 1000th IPS Customer McAfee, intrusion prevention solutions, surpassed its one-thousandth intrusion prevention customer, demonstrating exponential growth for the McAfee IPS solutions and continued market adoption in the area of proactive security solutions.
Executives On The Move -- Scott Blaine, CFO, becomes interim CEO and president of Kineto Wireless, software and systems that allow cellular calls to be handed off to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networks. Silverback Systems, iSNAP storage network access processor products, has named Ahmet Houssein, as its new president and CEO. TeraChip, switch fabric provider, named Rod Kay as president and CEO. Volantis, Intelligent Content Adaptation solutions and services, hired Matthew Harris as Chief Executive Officer. PacketHop, Inc., mobile mesh networking software for instant wireless group communications, appointed Jonathan Spira as Chief Financial Officer. HyPerformix, application performance and capacity management software, announced that Reagan Y. Sakai has joined the company as chief financial officer.
Alan Marc Smith, CEO of Electrograph Systems, joins Insightix Ltd., Advisory Board, next generation infrastructure discovery and monitoring solutions. Peribit Networks has appointed a new Regional Director for Northern Europe Matthew Nuney, formerly from Cisco. AccuRev Inc., next generation software configuration management (SCM), announced that Lorne Cooper, former president of PeerDirect and NuSphere Corporation, divisions of Progress Software has joined AccuRev as president. Telcontar, software and related services for the Location-Based Services (LBS) industry, selected Marc Prioleau as Vice President of Marketing. Kerio Technologies, security and messaging solutions for small to medium sized enterprises, appoints H. Peter Felgentreff as Vice President of Sales, North America. Cranite Systems, Inc., security software for wireless local area networks (WLANs), announced that Dr. Jeff Pittges has been named VP of Engineering. Evident Software, IT Service Intelligence solutions, appointed Frank C. Cicio Jr. as Executive Vice President of Field Operations.
See links below for the complete text of those items mentioned above plus other news.
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For more information or to keep us updated, contact John Katsaros at
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