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April 10, 2008
Don't Blame the Sub-Prime Meltdown for the NAC Market's Underperformance
"RSA 2008 Conference -- Roiled in equal parts by a troubled economy and a market sector in retrenchment, network access control vendors are regrouping with cheaper options to entice IT users to buy.
"NAC 'appliances' are now the order of the day, essentially smaller scale boxes for authentication and access priced under $10,000 apiece, and a far cry from the grander schemes of health checks via multi-vendor end points that comprised a security management framework.
"The once high-flying NAC sector has fallen on harder times of late. NAC vendor Lockdown Networks shut its doors late last month; Caymas Systems went out of business last year. Vernier Networks, is reportedly going to relaunch itself outside the NAC market. (See Lockdown Networks Shuts Down.)
"'Lockdown had strong technology, but I guess the market for NAC didn't take off as fast as people expected to,' says Amith Krishnan, Microsoft's senior product manager for network access protection (NAP), Redmond's flavor of NAC. 'But I think the market has started to mature and people understand it's not just enforcement that's going to drive NAC.'"
NAC as a "market" or "industry" was a terrible idea to begin with. It was a marketing excuse to consolidate customers on one platform, and it flew out of control. If some of these companies had targeted the Web economy 10 years ago, they would have been trying to sell browser back buttons.
(Link)
Previously:
- NAC: a nice idea ... err ... collection of ideas ... kind of ...
- INTEROP: NAC Frustration is Mounting
- Symantec Tops NAC Roundup
Posted by mhall at 2:02 PM | Add Comment
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