Dan Kaplan over at SC Magazine had an article up today  (they use Intense Debate for comments too)about ArcSight's first day of trading.  It seems that in spite of the overall condition of the market, they went ahead with their planned IPO.  They picked a bad day to do so, as the NASDAQ was off 1.74%. Opening at 9 dollars a share (the low end of their expected range), they closed at 8.78, bouncing off an intra day low of 8.07.

OK not an auspicious start, but I think they deserve credit for putting the ship out in this storm. I remember when I was at Interliant and we were planning our IPO.  Trying to time the market is a fools game.  Sometimes you just have to go for it.  Only time will tell if the market rewards ArcSights gumption to go public at this time or punish them as they have done recently with Sourcefire. For reasons that include purely selfish ones would love to see the public markets be a viable alternative for security companies to pursue liquidity events and access to capital.  Without them no one will be able to gain the girth necessary to compete with the current security monoliths.