There are some days where nothing strikes me as interesting enough to blog.  Than there are days like today where there are just too many things that I find compelling enough to comment on.  So rather than do 4 or 5 posts today, let me condense all of this goodness (I hope) into one post:

1. Sophos releases "financial results ahead of analysts expectations". While I applaud the Sophos folks for making public their revenue numbers (at least gross, net and deferred totals it seems), I am not sure what analysts they are talking about.  As a private company, it is not like people are trading their stock and the financial analyst crowd is putting their numbers on the street.  200+m is a lot of revenue, even for an AV company and 40+m to the bottom line is impressive, but until you are public, no one is holding your feet to the fire and analyst coverage is just not the same.

2. Apple is ready to enter the platform war - Larry Dignan over at ZDNet has some good comments and stats on Apple vying with Microsoft and Linux/open source to be "the platform" of the future. I agree that the iPhone and iPod are Trojan Horses into the enterprise and along with the Mac represent a viable platform that could compete with Microsoft and the Linux/open source crowd.  However, I don't think you can judge how many developers are developing Mac/iPhone apps based on the crowd at the upcoming WWDC (worldwide developer conference).  Steve Jobs is a master showman and I think these conferences have become media events.  Many people are there to to twitter and report and to "be there".

Larry is right though that Apple has to balance being too iPhone and iPod crazy at the risk of ignoring the "real" platform here the Mac.  His example about PGP developing a Mac version is a great point.  I have heard many other security companies likewise bringing Mac versions to market. This graphic I think shows the point well:

  But my ultimate point on this one is that the ultimate platform will be the web.  What the underlying OS is for future web apps should be somewhat meaningless.  The webtop platform would seem to me to be the platform going forward!

In any event the WWDC should be a lot of fun and I will be watching to see if any new reports come out.

3. Belden buys Trapeze - Another independent WLAN provider gets bought. Doesn't seem like a great multiple, 133m on 2007 revenue of 56m.  There are not many independent WLAN providers out there now.  Meru Networks is probably the biggest of the bunch. You don't hear too many people saying that wireless is not here yet anymore.

4. McAfee still chasing the dragon on security ROI - McAfee announced that using the Forrester Economic Impact Calculator you can now easily find out your ROI from buying a McAfee product. They have a very nice diagram that I have pasted in here. They ask you to plug in a few numbers about type of security you want, desktops, laptops and servers and presto - they give you an ROI.  I didn't call them to get the scoop, but it really underwhelmed me.  Looks like smoke and mirrors to me, just like many of these security ROIs do.