Cisco is far and away has the most appeal to customers shopping for network access control gear, but the company comes in only seventh among NAC vendors whose current customers would consider buying more from them, according to a new study.

Cisco’s two NAC options, its infrastructure-based NAC and its appliance-based NAC, score 41% and 45% respectively when corporate NAC decision-makers who have not yet bought NAC were asked if they would consider Cisco, according to the latest Current Analysis annual NAC study.

The second-place finisher on this attraction scale, Microsoft, scored 21%, the study says.

But when customers who already had NAC installed were asked whether they would consider buying more gear from the same vendor -- the retention scale -- CA came out on top, with 81% saying they would.

When Cisco NAC appliance customers were asked if they would consider Cisco for more NAC gear, 67% of NAC appliance customers and 68% of infrastructure NAC customers said yes.

That indicates a certain amount of loyalty for NAC gear; once a business has a particular vendor’s NAC gear installed it is often much more likely to stick with that vendor.

For some vendors that is quite a dramatic difference. Bradford Networks, for example, would be considered by 1% of those polled who have not bought NAC gear. The number who would consider buying Bradford gear again after the initial purchase jumps to 78%, according to the study.

The Current Analysis research is based on 290 respondents tasked with making decisions about NAC, says Andrew Braunberg, the analyst who wrote the report. The survey was distributed from technology Web sites. About 45% of the respondents have already deployed NAC, he says.

Some might argue that Microsoft doesn’t belong on the list because it hasn’t shipped all the elements needed to deploy its network access protection scheme, Braunberg says. But it was included because so many respondents felt they derive NAC benefits from Microsoft products, he says.

Similarly, IBM and CA are listed but don’t market NAC products. That is because by piecing together some of their security products, their extensive professional services groups can deliver features that other vendors call NAC, he says.

Some NAC vendors -- ConSentry, Lockdown, Mirage, Nevis, Senforce -- didn’t make the lists at all. That is because more than 5% of respondents had to mention a vendor for that vendor to be included in the results, Braunberg says.