I saw an article up in ComputerWorld by Greg Schaffer today called NAC: now or later. I have spoken to Greg several times so wanted to see what he had to say.  The article was about NAC standards and mentioned and quoted Steve Hanna (can you have an article on NAC standards without Steve?) and for the first time that I have seen in print, Mauricio Sanches from HP ProCurve.  I have met Mauricio at some TCG events and such and think he is a pretty sharp guy about security in general and NAC in particular. Frankly though, the article was about what you would expect in an article on NAC standards.

On the second page of the article I came across this insightful quote, "Microsoft Server 2008 will go a long way towards adoption of NAC" says
Shimel, who adds that the proliferation of NAP "is going to really help
the TNC standards course." Now how is that for prophetic, huh?  Doesn't take much of a crystal ball to to see that one coming does it?  What was I thinking?  Than I remember that I had spoken to Greg for this article some time ago.  At the time I said this NAP still seemed very far away and who new when Server 2008 would come out (OK 2008 would have been a good guess). That just goes to show you that when you read some articles with quotes from people, you really don't know when those quotes were given and have subsequent events rendered them irrelevant or painfully obvious. 

On the other hand I wanted to mention that Microsoft's launch this week of Server 2008 has certainly seen many people jumping into the NAC band wagon.  Sort of looks like a pick up truck driving by one of those corners where "undocumented workers" wait for work with a help wanted sign displayed. While I still think NAP is going to be a linchpin in NAC adoption, it will be interesting to see how some of these folks pledging enhanced NAP functionality fare over the months to come.To be fair I have to say that we are NAP partners our self with
Microsoft and have out own plans around NAP support and extensions. My prediction is that some of these folks will find out that NAP doesn't leave them enough of the pie to live on and they will quickly start complaining about Microsoft relegating them to the dark corners. 

In the meantime the real question is how long is it going to take for customers to roll out Vista, Server 2008 and NAP.  My prediction is not really until the 2nd half of 2009.  So says Shimel the NAC prophet.