Making IT work as One

How does my company stay efficient while we’re using technologies around interoperability? How can innovation help my business?

Top business needs:

• Reduce cost
• Manage complexity
• Mitigate risk

Mixed IT environments are a reality for almost all organizations. Different environments, architectural strategies, desktop profiles, etc. There are benefits to having mixed source environments, although homogenous environments are ideal. On average 46,000 hours in an organization are spent on Sarbanes-Oxley standards.

Some considerations to make IT work as one:

• Strategy
• Solutions
• Ecosystem

Strategy

Actionable strategy is key. The emergence of three silos (applications, systems and infrastructure, and operations) are now moved into one. There is a lot of pressure to make these pieces come together.

Solutions

You need focused solutions to solve problems today while keeping an eye to the future. There are three main needs: the data center, end-user computing, and identity and security. This is also what is the most important to the market right now. The end goal is the agility of the data center.

Data Center Challenges

• Create an agile IT infrastructure
• Address power and space constraints
• Deliver performance, security and availability
• Manage hardware, software and labor costs
• Meet service level agreements

Data Center Solutions

• Workload management - green IT and server efficiency, unified physical and virtual environment
• Virtualization and Consolidation - business continuity and disaster recovery
• Enterprise Servers

End-User Computing Solutions

• Collaboration
• Enterprise desktops - Novell uses Linux and Open Office, interesting to note
• Endpoint management

Identity and Security Challenges

• Minimize risk, uncertainty and policy violations
• Provide timely and secure access to information
• Ensure, document and prove information security
• Reduce the cost of proving compliance
• Reduce the cost and complexity of governance

Identity and Security Solutions

• Identity and Access Management - user provisioning, role management, access management
• Compliance Management - Audit, Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC), IT controls automation, Security, Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Ecosystem

The ecosystem is powerful. Companies should challenge partners for innovation and interoperability.

Community Innovation - open source and open standards

IT Landscape - Mixed IT Environments

• Consulting, systems integration vendors
• Application vendors
• Systems software vendors (Novell)
• Hardware, network vendors

How does your ecosystem help your company? How do your partners help? What is their role in the industry to help you? How are all the vendors in the industry helping you?

I was reading Tim Greene's column this morning about Symantec's new on demand web log in for guests as part of their SNAC appliance offering. I have to admit that even I who follows the NAC market and competition pretty closely, get pretty confused with all of the different offerings Symantec has come out with around NAC. Symantec seems to be following a fling stuff on the wall and see what sticks strategy when it comes to NAC.  The problem is separating the keepers from the rest of it when evaluating their offering.

This latest offering appears to sure up a hole that was called out in the recent CRN review of their product in a bake off against Sophos and StillSecure's Safe Access. In that review Symantec's drop off in functionality between agent and agentless was called out.  So within just a few days comes this announcement addressing the issue.  Very timely indeed.  This comes on the heels of Symantec's peer-to-peer approach to NAC, which came on the heels of their Endpoint Security product version 11 which had NAC included (and which I understand has already been patched/upgraded several times since its release). 

At this point you have Symantec NAC with their endpoint suite which is a throw in but has no guest access option on its own. Than you have the Symantec NAC appliance which can do enforcement of managed devices beyond what just endpoint suite gives you.  Now you also have on demand/dissolvable agents available with the Symantec NAC server (but I guess not with the endpoint suite). You also have the Symantec peer-to-peer stuff, which I think also requires the SNAC server.  Starting to get confusing? I guess this is what happens when your NAC offering is made up of an amalgamation of several different products lumped together.

Not to worry though, I am sure Big Yellow will still sell plenty of all flavors of their NAC offering. At the end of the day some of this stuff is bound to stick.

I was reading Tim Greene's column this morning about Symantec's new on demand web log in for guests as part of their SNAC appliance offering. I have to admit that even I who follows the NAC market and competition pretty closely, get pretty confused with all of the different offerings Symantec has come out with around NAC. Symantec seems to be following a fling stuff on the wall and see what sticks strategy when it comes to NAC.  The problem is separating the keepers from the rest of it when evaluating their offering.

This latest offering appears to sure up a hole that was called out in the recent CRN review of their product in a bake off against Sophos and StillSecure's Safe Access. In that review Symantec's drop off in functionality between agent and agentless was called out.  So within just a few days comes this announcement addressing the issue.  Very timely indeed.  This comes on the heels of Symantec's peer-to-peer approach to NAC, which came on the heels of their Endpoint Security product version 11 which had NAC included (and which I understand has already been patched/upgraded several times since its release). 

At this point you have Symantec NAC with their endpoint suite which is a throw in but has no guest access option on its own. Than you have the Symantec NAC appliance which can do enforcement of managed devices beyond what just endpoint suite gives you.  Now you also have on demand/dissolvable agents available with the Symantec NAC server (but I guess not with the endpoint suite). You also have the Symantec peer-to-peer stuff, which I think also requires the SNAC server.  Starting to get confusing? I guess this is what happens when your NAC offering is made up of an amalgamation of several different products lumped together.

Not to worry though, I am sure Big Yellow will still sell plenty of all flavors of their NAC offering. At the end of the day some of this stuff is bound to stick.

Not sure if it is because of the slumping market and economy or in spite of it, but there pace of merger activity has been picking up lately and the security industry has not been immune to it.  Today saw two meaningful deals announced that could have an impact on the security landscape:

1. Sophos buys Utimaco - Saw this one when I woke up today, as it is a European deal.  UK based Sophos is buying German based Utimaco, makers of the SafeGuard line of data encryption/protection/DLP product line.  Sophos is paying cash $340 million US for in this deal.  This means they are substantially dipping into the credit market, as this is far more than they reported cash on hand. So like the Brocade/Foundry deal, the acquiring company feels strong enough about the acquisition to mortgage the house to get it.  In this case, I think Sophos is making a smart deal. They clearly say that to compete with Symantec, McAfee and Microsoft they are going to need a full endpoint security suite. AV alone is not just going to cut it. This gives Sophos a real play in DLP and data storage space. 

Yes they could have just done a partner deal for this type of technology, but I applaud them for going out and buying the technology.  I wondered if they would use this as a reverse merger entry to the public markets but it doesn't look like that.  In any event it looks like Sophos is making the play and spending the bucks to be a player in the endpoint security suite game.

2. Motorola buys AirDefense - Well one of the air brothers finally found a taker. I always thought that for all of the press AirDefense, AirTight and AirMagnet receive, the revenue just didn't match the hype. Stand alone wireless security was a tweener.  Would traditional security cover wireless or would traditional wireless cover wireless security.  In any event a stand along wireless security play is a tough road.  So with this answer Motorola says wireless handles wireless security. 

My question is what does the future hold for Motorola.  They are reportedly getting out of the cell phone business.  Is their wireless business, even a secure one enough to support this giant?  I don't know but there is a bit of "dead man walking" over there if you ask me. 

I think the play is clear though that wireless providers are going to snap up wireless security companies. The real issue is at what prices.  If anyone hears a price on this one, let me know.

Not sure if it is because of the slumping market and economy or in spite of it, but there pace of merger activity has been picking up lately and the security industry has not been immune to it.  Today saw two meaningful deals announced that could have an impact on the security landscape:

1. Sophos buys Utimaco - Saw this one when I woke up today, as it is a European deal.  UK based Sophos is buying German based Utimaco, makers of the SafeGuard line of data encryption/protection/DLP product line.  Sophos is paying cash $340 million US for in this deal.  This means they are substantially dipping into the credit market, as this is far more than they reported cash on hand. So like the Brocade/Foundry deal, the acquiring company feels strong enough about the acquisition to mortgage the house to get it.  In this case, I think Sophos is making a smart deal. They clearly say that to compete with Symantec, McAfee and Microsoft they are going to need a full endpoint security suite. AV alone is not just going to cut it. This gives Sophos a real play in DLP and data storage space. 

Yes they could have just done a partner deal for this type of technology, but I applaud them for going out and buying the technology.  I wondered if they would use this as a reverse merger entry to the public markets but it doesn't look like that.  In any event it looks like Sophos is making the play and spending the bucks to be a player in the endpoint security suite game.

2. Motorola buys AirDefense - Well one of the air brothers finally found a taker. I always thought that for all of the press AirDefense, AirTight and AirMagnet receive, the revenue just didn't match the hype. Stand alone wireless security was a tweener.  Would traditional security cover wireless or would traditional wireless cover wireless security.  In any event a stand along wireless security play is a tough road.  So with this answer Motorola says wireless handles wireless security. 

My question is what does the future hold for Motorola.  They are reportedly getting out of the cell phone business.  Is their wireless business, even a secure one enough to support this giant?  I don't know but there is a bit of "dead man walking" over there if you ask me. 

I think the play is clear though that wireless providers are going to snap up wireless security companies. The real issue is at what prices.  If anyone hears a price on this one, let me know.

Some of the major obstacles we face with 802.1X center around creating a smooth end user experience.  We, as integrators, have the distinct ability to make ‘whatever’ work- we find a way. But, what I hear most from my customers is “it has to be easy for the end user.”  (Sometimes they go on a little further, but I’ll leave it at that.)

Why does it matter?

Wireless, wireless, wireless. Although wired 1X is popular with our customer-base, the world isn’t quite flocking to it yet. However, 802.1X is certainly the best way to increase security and ease management of wireless networks. It’s standard, it’s flexible, it’s widely-supported by devices and endpoints and it eliminates the need for pre-shared keys or secondary passwords. It’s what most enterprises, government and educational organizations are implementing now, so it’s important.

What are some of the problems?

The end user will have some adjustments to make, and network admins and support desks aren’t always thrilled with the propect of re-training users for these expectations.