From the number of e-mails that I've received over the past couple of days it seems that everyone has enjoyed the little exchange of ideas between Alan and myself. Alan says he's done, so I figured I should close things off as well.
I'm glad to see that Alan responded to all the questions I had on his product, and in exactly the way I expected him to. As he correctly pointed out, I lifted all those concerns from the recent NWW NAC review, and it seems from his responses that he doesn't feel any of them stick (except the one that he owns up to and says is covered on roadmap). So, Alan, are you going to be surprised if I tell you that I don't think a lot of the concerns raised about our product in the year old NWW review that you quoted stick either? We're a year further down the line and at the time that review was conducted our product had been on the market 4 weeks. We actually came out with an equivalent score to our friends over at Consentry in that one and they had been shipping for over a year.
Now speaking of Consentry, it seems that Michelle has been hanging on the sidelines waiting for Alan and I to wind down before trying to steal our sweat equity. Come on Michelle, next time jump in rather than waiting until the end, especially if your on my side :-) First I should apologize to Michelle, she is correct that the doing vs. teaching analogy was hers, I just forgot where I heard it. In my defence Consentry have borrowed big slices of our messaging and positioning over the years (the LAN is the DMZ, LAN security, Secure Switching, etc) so let's just call it a wash. I don't think it's a surprise that Michelle lines up behind me on most of the arguments, as we both take the same inline approach to NAC, the main architectural differences are in Nevis's deterministic performance, pattern matching and broader deployment capabilities. Anyway, let's address more of that nasty FUD that Michelle decided to fling:
I think it's fair to say that Consentry has more customers than us right now, but they have been in the market a year longer than us, mainly because we built our own ASIC rather than taking an old one in off the street. We believe this gives us some long term architectural advantages, particularly when it comes to secure switching, as that is what we set out to build from the ground up. As for the accusations of no customer announcements this year?
How about June 18th?
http://www.nevisnetworks.com/press_release.php?id=44
or June 4th? There were a few in that one
http://www.nevisnetworks.com/press_release.php?id=42
I'll go one better. Do you want to hear what our customers have to say about us? Here's a couple of examples:
http://brighttalk.com/comm/Nevisnetworks/edb684859b-4539 - Aptuit
http://brighttalk.com/comm/Nevisnetworks/7747e567c9-4423-983-4146 - SOCCCD
Anyway, Michelle, aside from those little FUD'ish distractions, I think we're mostly on the same page. Maybe we can go a couple of rounds on the definition of a Secure Switch, why pattern matching has distinct customer value for security in a LAN Security solution and other advantages besides security. We should also debate that thorny topic of performance at some point, and why it's important to customers. Just let me get my breath back first :-)
//Dom
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