TippingPoint Gets Aquired, AGAIN!
I am sure you have all seen the news today about how H.P. has acquired 3Com and along with that, TippingPoint. Although since the acquisition of TippingPoint by 3Com back in January 2005 (I know this date because I was on the 3Com due-diligence and acquisition team back then), TippingPoint has repeatedly attempted to fool customers and prospects that they were not part of 3Com and that they were a separate company. That's strange because I could never find a 10k or any other financial data on a company called TippingPoint.
As a matter of fact, the "company" called TippingPoint ceased to exist after the acquisition by 3Com.
Here comes H.P. to save what is left of 3Com. I felt it was a poor strategy for 3Com to partner when a Chinese company when most of what I believed 3Com's business was in the enterprise and government accounts. You can't convince those guys your a U.S. company anymore when you are in bed with the Chinese. AND, it gets even more difficult when you start to sell Chinese made networking gear.
Is anyone paying attention to the news lately about all the data breaches here in the United States? Yup, that's right, most of them are coming from the Chinese. And you think we want to buy our networking and SECURITY gear from them? Hell no!
I felt TippingPoint started to lose its market lead after the 3Com acquisition and now I predict that H.P. will make TippingPoint more an engineering shop than a full fledged business unit.
It was poor enough that Gartner continued to show TippingPoint as a company on the in-famous Gartner "Magic Quardrant", when in fact TippingPoint was no longer a company after January 2005. What was Gartner thinking? They don't.
A trend is clear with the networking vendors of the world. Integrate core added value features into their switches, routers and other network infrastructure so that they can cycle out the older networking grear and convince customers that having it all in one box is the way to go.
I don't agree. And let me share my views on this.
While in some environments (Small offices, remote locations) it does make sense for what is termed a Unified platform. The All-In-One. However for the medium to large enterprises, networks and its data are more efficient and better protected when security elements become a wrapper around the network infrastructure.
Some suppliers will say you need to protect your network from attacks. This comes mostly from the IPS Intrusion Prevention System vendors, while others say you need to protect your data because after all, isn't that what we are trying to protect anyways? Not really.
It's BOTH.....
We need our networks protected from malicious content and rate based attacks. What good is protecting your data when nobody can get legal or legitimate access to it. You need to protect your data from being accessed by unauthorized users or being emailed or FTPed to someone that should not be viewing the documents. Some vendors call this Data Leakage Protection.
So these go hand-in-hand as they say. I am a big supporter of IPS and DLP and feel that EVERY network needs to add these technologies to their networks.
The days of depending on your Firewall to protect your network and your data are OVER. The hackers have figured firewalls all out and today I feel they are in-effective.
Gartner touts about a Next Generation Firewall and the great frontier. I don't think its going to be anything close to a 'firewall' per say, I predict what we are going to see as the next great security platform is something that provides network, data and application protection. You won't get this in a switch or router, it will be an appliance and will start by providing throughput speeds at 10Gig. The next hop will not be 20 or 30Gig. With bandwidth demands going up at a rapid rate and media rich applications drive this need, it won't be long that we will require security appliance that hit the 100Gig point.
Will H.P. deliver on any of this? I feel they will be well suited to deliver the all-in-one solutions for the small business users but wont' be in a position to hit the higher end or the next-generation security appliance as I have outlined.
As a matter of fact, the "company" called TippingPoint ceased to exist after the acquisition by 3Com.
Here comes H.P. to save what is left of 3Com. I felt it was a poor strategy for 3Com to partner when a Chinese company when most of what I believed 3Com's business was in the enterprise and government accounts. You can't convince those guys your a U.S. company anymore when you are in bed with the Chinese. AND, it gets even more difficult when you start to sell Chinese made networking gear.
Is anyone paying attention to the news lately about all the data breaches here in the United States? Yup, that's right, most of them are coming from the Chinese. And you think we want to buy our networking and SECURITY gear from them? Hell no!
I felt TippingPoint started to lose its market lead after the 3Com acquisition and now I predict that H.P. will make TippingPoint more an engineering shop than a full fledged business unit.
It was poor enough that Gartner continued to show TippingPoint as a company on the in-famous Gartner "Magic Quardrant", when in fact TippingPoint was no longer a company after January 2005. What was Gartner thinking? They don't.
A trend is clear with the networking vendors of the world. Integrate core added value features into their switches, routers and other network infrastructure so that they can cycle out the older networking grear and convince customers that having it all in one box is the way to go.
I don't agree. And let me share my views on this.
While in some environments (Small offices, remote locations) it does make sense for what is termed a Unified platform. The All-In-One. However for the medium to large enterprises, networks and its data are more efficient and better protected when security elements become a wrapper around the network infrastructure.
Some suppliers will say you need to protect your network from attacks. This comes mostly from the IPS Intrusion Prevention System vendors, while others say you need to protect your data because after all, isn't that what we are trying to protect anyways? Not really.
It's BOTH.....
We need our networks protected from malicious content and rate based attacks. What good is protecting your data when nobody can get legal or legitimate access to it. You need to protect your data from being accessed by unauthorized users or being emailed or FTPed to someone that should not be viewing the documents. Some vendors call this Data Leakage Protection.
So these go hand-in-hand as they say. I am a big supporter of IPS and DLP and feel that EVERY network needs to add these technologies to their networks.
The days of depending on your Firewall to protect your network and your data are OVER. The hackers have figured firewalls all out and today I feel they are in-effective.
Gartner touts about a Next Generation Firewall and the great frontier. I don't think its going to be anything close to a 'firewall' per say, I predict what we are going to see as the next great security platform is something that provides network, data and application protection. You won't get this in a switch or router, it will be an appliance and will start by providing throughput speeds at 10Gig. The next hop will not be 20 or 30Gig. With bandwidth demands going up at a rapid rate and media rich applications drive this need, it won't be long that we will require security appliance that hit the 100Gig point.
Will H.P. deliver on any of this? I feel they will be well suited to deliver the all-in-one solutions for the small business users but wont' be in a position to hit the higher end or the next-generation security appliance as I have outlined.
posted by Ken Pappas, President at
6:08 PM
<< Home