InternetAcceleration
News Summary
Not a subscriber,
yet?
Sign up here
Operating on All Cylinders – You can calibrate the success of a company by how simply the CEO articulates how the company provides value and Citrix’s Mark Templeton got an A at last week’s Analyst Conference at the Fairmont in San Francisco. He explained how Citrix’s key value propositions – performance, security and ROI – are amplified in value by where Citrix sits in the IT infrastructure next to the applications servers. From this position Citrix has great insight into the goals and values of the application (compared for example to a traditional WAN device). Judging from Citrix’s continuing revenue growth rate and their 180,000 customers the market likes what they are doing. Citrix’s aggressive acquisition strategy seems to be working: Expertcity (3/04), Net6 (12/04), NetScaler (8/05), Teros (12/07), Reflectent (5/06) and Orbital Data (8/06). They say they are first or second in most of their markets including being the market leader in the SSL VPN market (ahead of Juniper’s Neoteris product) with their Citrix® Access Gateway which was acquired from the Net6 acquisition. What’s more, the management teams from most of these acquisitions have stayed on at Citrix. It’s an impressive infrastructure success story that’s still being written.
EMC’s Security Thrust: We wormed our way onto our old friend Dennis Hoffman’s calendar and talked to him just before EMC announced closing the RSA deal and the acquisition of Network Intelligence. Dennis has kept us informed about his quest to build a major new business for EMC in security (the problem with the storage business is that the underlying disk drives keep getting cheaper and cheaper). EMC has reasoned that unless you can adorn storage with higher level values such as information life-cycle management and security it’s got a pretty grim future. Dennis has been working on the security plan for about a year and we think his accomplishments to date are pretty impressive. There is great merit in the notion of securing the data as a key component in a comprehensive security strategy, and despite the purchase price, RSA provides an important brand with very high market share in key storage-related technology and applications. In his devious past Dennis used to be a strategy consultant so maybe we shouldn’t be impressed by his accomplishments but we really like the strategy. Now all would agree it moves to that nasty execution phase and then the market has a chance to comment on the “dogfood.”
EMC Jumps Into the Content Analysis Market – Speaking of EMC, it’s worth checking out their recently announced product – Infoscape. It’s a content analysis product that discovers and classifies documents in an enterprise’s infrastructure. That sounds simple enough but can be a difficult problem for even a mid sized company. It’s a product that answers the questions – “What do we know, Where do we keep it and how we protect it?” It’s an interesting start for EMC in an interesting market.
September, 2006 Content Inspection Report – And speaking of content, our content inspection research reports have turned into a trilogy – instead of a single report we ended up with three - The 2006 Content Protection Market Report, The Value of Network Traffic Analysis – The Visible Enterprise and The 2006 Content Protection Vendor Landscape Report. There are over 25 vendors in this hot new space focusing on inspecting traffic headed outside of an enterprise to alert (and in some cases actually block) based on preset corporate policies. Interested?– jkatsaros@irg-intl.com.
|
WAAS Up Mr. Chambers? Cisco introduced the latest instantiation of their file/content/application acceleration offering, now called Wide Area Application Services. The WAAS functionality is provided by software running on Cisco’s X86 appliances and appliance blades, the same appliances Cisco has been using for some time. WAAS has evolved quite a bit from the Actona WAFS offering. File access optimization is more in the Peribit or Riverbed large object cache model. Protocol optimization is added beyond the standard compression that Cisco has supported. What is quite unique and differentiating about WAAS is the degree to which Cisco has (understandably) worked to assure that WAAS optimization doesn’t fight against packet network optimizations like QoS. For a Cisco enterprise customer in the middle of or having completed a large VoIP deployment WAAS presents a compelling value proposition in the “fit in and extend” model. Cisco has also downplayed the direct competition with Microsoft Branch Office (although we bet they still think about it a lot) and now positions WAAS as an optimization later above the packet network and below IT that accelerates all applications. The biggest impact of WAAS is likely to be real heartburn for the network level competitors (we wonder if the timing wasn’t just a little bit to queer the Riverbed IPO deal just for the fun of it). Ironically WAAS makes partnering with Microsoft all the more attractive.
“WAAS Up?” – That’s the title of our latest report focusing on the WAN infrastructure market, now that Cisco has introduced its WAAS (Wide-Area Application Services) product line to the market. This report, WAAS Up? Cisco Fleshes out its WAN Offering, contrasts the different WAN strategies of both Cisco and Microsoft and the directions that customers may choose from. Interested?– jkatsaros@irg-intl.com.
Got Them e-mail Blues – It wasn’t surprising to hear the rumor about e-mail server provider Mirapoint’s layoff of 50 employees on the same day that Google announced its corporate communications tools (e-mail, IM and calendaring) service offerings. An argument that’s often made by the nine or ten e-mail server companies is that they’ll beat Microsoft’s Exchange in the “mail for the masses” market – when, for instance, retailers decide they need to provide e-mail accounts for their huge workforces and don’t want to pay the high price for Exchange. We’ve always said that this was a weak proposition since the Googles of the world can quickly move in and monetize this space by providing better functionality at no cost supported through advertising. And that’s starting to happen with Google’s announcement. Mirapoint was probably the first of the bunch to feel the impact since its business is heavily skewed toward the education market, a likely first target market for Google’s new service offerings. Google’s free 2GByte mail box service for the entire student body is a difficult offer for a budget restricted educational institution to turn down when compared to spending heavily to buy and operate an e-mail infrastructure.
The NAC/NAP Solution: Some time ago Microsoft and Cisco solemnly promised to avoid a NAC / NAP food fight and apparently neither was holding King’s X behind their back because last week they unveiled the solution. The target market is people who have interest in both NAC and NAP. In that context the NAC/NAP solution makes a lot of sense. Cisco no longer tries to have a distinct agent that has to be installed on Windows systems but instead provides code that Microsoft tests, integrates and automatically distributes with the O/S or Windows Update. When enabled, the Microsoft side provides the basic posture assessment and then provides status to Cisco to set-up the network. The solution looks well thought out and a good mutual solution. Our (unanswered) question is “who cares?” Someone who is really hot on the security solutions in Vista and NAP (as evidenced by a relatively rapid desktop conversion to Vista) probably has the least to gain from NAC. The ideal NAC customer seems to be one with a relatively heterogeneous (i.e. not all Microsoft) system solution. Obviously all joint Microsoft and Cisco customers should be happy that they longer have to take sides. We’re curious to talk to one that intends to vigorously proceed on both paths.
Last One Out Closes the Door – Born in an era of irrational exuberance, Caspian Networks appears to have closed its doors last week. Our only surprise was that it took this long for investors to see that even after $300M in funding, the company couldn’t identify a market big enough for what they built. They’re a good case study for our next book. It’s a remarkable story of how building something so complex and using words like “flow based routing” can be a funding benefit because you get to a point where investors won’t have the vaguest idea what all that means but they invest anyway because it makes for cool cocktail party talk. When we dropped by to see them in 2003 it was clear to us that “that dog can’t hunt” – it was another one of those deals of a product without a market. They made the mistake in their analyst briefing of asking us our opinions. After pointing out that they had failed to identify a market for what they built we were promptly shown the door and told that our opinions didn’t matter (at least they had that part right, but that’s another storyJ). Last year when a venture group asked us whether or not they should listen to Caspian’s funding pitch we thought that they were better off going to see the SF Giants game that afternoon – at least that way they’d get something back on their money and perhaps catch a Barry Bonds homer.
New IRG Briefing Policy: Like the CarTalk guys say, please “staple your briefing request to a Sharp 1080P 57" LCD HDTV. The LC-57D90U has a 57-inch screen and features 1920 x 1080 resolution, 1500:1 contrast ratio, 16:9 aspect ratio, 60,000 hours of lamp life and more. Impressive color and advanced functions for a superior viewing experience.” We’ve been tweaking McAfee for some time about why they couldn’t hold briefing in the “other” McAfee facilities over by the Oakland Airport (the Arena and the Coliseum). They took the bait, hook line and sinker, and provided “briefings” at a recent Red Hot Chili Peppers concert and then from an Oakland A’s game. So come on guys, you’re not going to let McAfee make you look like non creative marketing pikers are you?
How many Gartner analysts does it take? – A recent Networld article, Analysts caution Microsoft/Citrix pact, discussed Gartner’s take on the Microsoft/Citrix partnership to develop branch office appliances referring to a Gartner report authored by four of their analysts. Those English majors from Connecticut are at it again, this time warning that Microsoft is working hard to decrease Cisco’s intent to dominate the branch office. Talking about a potential Cisco/Microsoft battle may be a good topic if you’re used to writing about Macbeth, the noble warrior caught up in a struggle for power. But the Cisco/Microsoft branch office motivations aren’t like that at all and if they’d look a little deeper (and maybe actually do some research) maybe they’d realize that the goals of these companies, while different, aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive thanks in large part to enterprise customers that want these two to work together. And it’s not Microsoft that will be nibbling away at Cisco’s networking share of the branch office market. It’s Microsoft’s development partners that are the ones Cisco needs to watch. This sort of reminds us of last year’s misguided missive from these same New Englanders praising Juniper for its Peribit and Redline acquisitions making Juniper a “functionally superior alternative.” Huh? In answer to our question, one reader wrote in “Four, three to hold the client down while the forth grabs his wallet.”
Funding News – We’re assuming it’s a summer slowdown – in the past few weeks only nine infrastructure startup funding deals raised a little over $180M.
|
Date |
Company |
Sector |
Detail |
Amount |
Total |
Investors |
|
9/6 |
Clearwire |
Wireless Internet |
|
$125.0 |
|
Intel Capital and Motorola Ventures |
|
9/6 |
PolyServe |
Software Consolidates Servers and Storage |
Series E |
$10.0 |
|
|
|
8/24 |
IVivity |
Storage Network Technology |
Series C |
$10.0 |
|
|
|
9/6 |
Laszlo Systems |
Open Source Platform |
Series C |
$8.0 |
|
WI Harper Group with General Catalyst Partners, Sofinnova Ventures, Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners, and other private investors |
|
8/24 |
Iamba Networks |
Ethernet Optical Networking |
|
$8.0 |
|
Israeli backers |
|
8/24 |
B-Hive Networks |
Network Solutions |
Series A |
$7.0 |
|
Venrock Associates and Index Ventures |
|
9/7 |
Handmark |
On-Device |
Series B |
$5.0 |
|
Motorola Ventures, Argnor Wireless Ventures, Apax Partners, Borealis Ventures, Village Ventures and Hanna Capital Management |
|
8/23 |
IPLocks |
Database Security |
|
$4.4 |
|
|
|
8/14 |
MuleSource |
Open Source Application Integration |
|
$4.0 |
|
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Morgenthaler Ventures, said co-founder and Chief Executive Dave Rosenberg |
|
8/14 |
Egenera |
Datacenter Virtualization Architecture |
Series E |
$26.0 |
|
Pharos Capital Group and Fujitsu Siemens Computers |
Corporate News - Allot Communications, intelligent IP service optimization solutions, opened regional offices in the United Kingdom and France. United States General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded RADVISION a five-year Federal Supply Schedule contract for the purchase of equipment and services. VitalStream Holdings, audio and video streaming, announced that the Nasdaq Stock Market has approved its application for upgrading its listing to the NASDAQ Global Market. Internap Network Services Corporation, performance-based routing solutions over the Internet, announced that the NASDAQ Stock Market has approved its application for listing on the NASDAQ Global Market at the end of September 2006.
Mergers & Acquisitions – Cisco Systems completed the acquisition of Arroyo Video Solutions, Inc., next-generation solutions for on-demand television and related consumer services. AT&T Corp. agreed to acquire USi, global Application Service Provider. Comverse, supplier of software and systems enabling network-based multimedia enhanced communication and billing services, completed its acquisition of privately-held Netonomy for approximately $19 million in cash. Sybase, enterprise infrastructure and mobile software, will acquire Mobile 365, mobile messaging and content delivery, in an all cash transaction valued at approximately $400 million. Intervoice, purchased the assets of Nuasis, Internet-enabled, customer contact software, including the intellectual property, customer and channel contracts and other assets, and will assume certain obligations. Nortel signed an MoU for the sale of its UMTS access business to Alcatel. NeoPhotonics acquires BeamExpress.
Partnerships – AirTight Networks, wireless intrusion prevention systems (WIPS), and PowerDsine, Power over Ethernet solutions, partnered and will allow AirTight to provide its customers with the industry leading WIPS solution - for under $20 per user including installation. Calence, building, managing and optimizing customized, client-centric networks, added Netcordia's NetMRI network analysis tools to its Network Assessment offering. Minacom, service quality test automation supplier to telcos and cable MSOs, and Sunrise Telecom Incorporated, testing and monitoring solutions for voice, video, data services and next-generation digital multimedia, will work together to provide integrated test solutions for telcos and cable Multiple System Operators (MSOs) offering VoIP and IP-Video services. Switchvox, IP PBX systems to the SMB market, expanded its reseller program with the addition of Arreva Communications, reseller of IP telephony products. Apparent Networks, network diagnostic software, announced a strategic alignment with Nortel to leverage Apparent Networks network analytic technology within Nortel’s VoIP solution portfolio for enterprises. Iperia, unified communications solutions, entered into a strategic partnership with Systemsfusion, next-generation IP provisioning platforms to telecom service providers and ISPs. NextHop Technologies and AirTight Networks announced a marketing and technology partnership providing enhanced security and performance management for enterprise class wireless networking solutions. Nokia plans to offer Sourcefire’s Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) on its portfolio of high-performance IP Security Platforms. Massively Parallel Technologies, on-demand high-performance computing (HPC), entered into a cooperative agreement with the University of Colorado for the development and commercialization of an innovative breakthrough in proteomics analysis.
Product News – Covelight Systems, real-time application-independent, transparent online fraud management solutions, announced a robust new Capture, Transform and Feed (CTF) architecture that provides web-channel data at wire speed to backend analytic engines for a variety of enterprise uses. Covelight is also announcing FraudProbe 2.0. Visa USA Inc. has validated New Edge Networks for complying with Payment Card Industry security standards adapted by most credit card companies. Oakley Networks, integrated solutions for Insider Threat detection and prevention, unveiled CoreView, network-based behavioral analysis solution. Application Security is pursuing Common Criteria certification for its vulnerability assessment scanner, AppDetective, and its centralized management solution, the AppSecInc Console for AppDetective, through the Accredited Testing and Evaluation Labs of SAIC.
Proofpoint, large-enterprise messaging security solutions, introduced its Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway Virtual Edition for VMware's virtualization products. Xirrus, high capacity, long range Wi-Fi products, announced a new line of enclosures for its Wi-Fi Array family enabling enterprises to deliver the next generation of Wi-Fi networks allowing for capacity and performance beyond the standard five year operating life. Sybase iAnywhere releases new version of M-Business Anywhere; unveiled the next generation of the Avantgo mobile internet service for blackberry handsets; and version 6.0 of its xtndconnect pc mobile device-to-desktop synchronization software.
Lockdown Networks, Network Access Control (NAC) solutions, released Lockdown Networks' 4.5 NAC product suite including new features designed for large scale networks with a highly mobile user base, including employees, contractors, vendors and guests. Tripwire, change auditing software, announced the latest version of Tripwire for Servers and Tripwire Manager. Allot announced NetEnforcer, broadband traffic management device, to identify and help manage applications based on the encrypted BitTorrent P2P file transfer protocol. Lancope, StealthWatch, network behavior analysis (NBA) and response system, announced the general availability of StealthWatch System 5.5, which includes Router/Switch Monitoring & Reporting, User Identity Tracking, Point-Of-View Technology and the new StealthWatch IDentity-1000 appliance, the first solution to tie network traffic and host behavior directly to user identity. LogicalApps, embedded governance software for enterprise applications, announced the availability of an extensive library of controls for Oracle E-Business Suite representing best practices in financial management. Castify EBN Digital Signage Suite to be validated against IBM Retail Store Innovations - Store Integration Framework. EMC, information management and storage, announced EMC Documentum Page Builder, next-generation web content management (WCM) software that simplifies the creation, management and deployment of corporate websites. RAD Data Communications debuts its new LRS-52 SHDSL modem rack, a dedicated chassis providing Symmetric High-Bitrate Digital Subscriber Loop (SHDSL) service within the local loop. Riverbed Technology launched its the next generation of the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS), version 3.0, and three new Steelhead appliances that deliver high scalability and acceleration for up to one million simultaneous connections at 4 Gbps throughput, even for real-time applications like voice.
Global IP Sound (GIPS) announced the availability of version 2.0 of its iSAC codec, adaptive codec for developers of Voice over IP (VoIP) communications, iSAC 2.0 is now optimized for use in hardware devices. Minacom and Edgewater Networks announced that EdgeMarc converged networking routers now support Minacom’s advanced VoIP service quality testing. Minacom, VoIP test systems for telcos and cable MSOs, introduced the Zoey interactive VoIP test agent, a revolutionary new concept in customer support designed for providers offering self-install VoIP service. RADVISION, video network infrastructure and developer tools for unified visual communications over IP, 3G, and emerging next-generation networks, announced the worldwide availability of its ProLab IMS Test Solution.
Customer Wins – Samsung Electronics deployed Force10 Networks' TeraScale E-Series family of switch routers in its semiconductor facility to speed collaboration, design and automated manufacturing processes. K2 Network, online game community service company, has selected Netcontinuum's NC-2000 Application Gateway to provide application security for its high-volume network of online video game web sites. AIG Technologies, an American International Group, Inc. (AIG) member company, with worldwide use of NetQoS' ReporterAnalyzer network traffic analysis product and services. ConSentry Networks, secure LAN solutions, has added 50 customers so far this year, building strong traction for its LANShield LAN security solutions. Meskwaki Casino, full service casino in the Midwest, selected Foundry Networks' compact Power over Ethernet (PoE) edge switches and network management system as the critical ingredients for their ongoing network upgrade. Golden Telecom in Russia expanded its optical network with Nortel. Craig Wireless in Greece rolled out broadband in four Greek cities, Comcor Group in Russia provides VoIP, The Daily Telegraph, The Economist Group and Swisscom all are using Nortel communication solutions. Asia Pacific Online (APOL), Internet service provider (ISP) in Taiwan and National Taiwan University deployed Caspian solutions. SAP AG, business software solutions, has chosen Breach Security's Breachview SSL to enhance their ability to detect unwanted security intrusions by enabling inspection of SSL/network traffic. And Leumit Health Fund, Israeli medical healthcare providers, is also using Breach Security's solutions.
Executives On The Move – Soasta Inc., automated code-testing tools for Web services programming, selected Tom Lounibos as president and chief executive. 41st Parameter Inc., security software for the online retail and banking industry, hired Robert Lewis as chief executive officer. Vormetric Inc., software and server appliances to protect sensitive data, appointed Mark Pine as its new president and chief executive.
Sourcefire, network intrusion prevention, added Joseph R. Chinnici, Senior Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer at Ciena Corporation, and retired Air Force Lieutenant General Steven R. Polk, to the Sourcefire Board of Directors. XenSource, open-source infrastructure virtualization software, named former Microsoft Corp. executive Gordon Mangione as senior vice president for product operations. Exinda Networks, integrated network management, wide-area-network (WAN) optimization and application acceleration solutions, announced that Michael Grace has been appointed to vice president of international business development. Ultra wideband chip developer TZero Technologies has appointed Tzoyao Chan as senior vice president of engineering.
Mobio Networks Inc. has added Paul Cushman as vice president of business development, Marcia Kadanoff, vice president of marketing and Adam Blum, as vice president of engineering. Ruckus Wireless, next-generation smart Wi-Fi technology, appointed Mark Mitchell, former vice president of sales for Juniper Networks, to vice president of sales covering the EMEA region. NeoScale Systems Inc., a start-up marketing products that encrypt and authenticate stored data, has hired James Hanley as senior vice president of worldwide field operations. Digium Inc., an open-source telephony software provider, has added Bill Miller as its vice president of product management and marketing. ADTRAN, networking and communications equipment, appointed Jay Wilson as senior vice president and general manager of the company's Carrier Networks Division and Rick Schansman as senior vice president and general manager of the company's Enterprise Networks Division.
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.
