ConSentry expects to be a serious NAC competitor

Clarifying issues surrounding this emerging security architecture

The new CEO at ConSentry Networks will aim at growing the company via alliances in sales, software and OEM agreements.

Joe Golden a former partner in one of the venture-capital firms funding the company, was took the helm about a week ago, and says it is important to expand the sales force.

That can be done through partnerships with resellers as well as by adding to the internal sales staff. While he says the company has enough money in hand to be stable for the near-term, he hopes that by this time next year it will be in good enough shape to tap more funding.

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The new CEO at ConSentry Networks will aim at growing the company via alliances in sales, software and OEM agreements.

Joe Golden a former partner in one of the venture-capital firms funding the company, was took the helm about a week ago, and says it is important to expand the sales force.

That can be done through partnerships with resellers as well as by adding to the internal sales staff. While he says the company has enough money in hand to be stable for the near-term, he hopes that by this time next year it will be in good enough shape to tap more funding.

Golden says the company will open up APIs to its platform so third-party software developers can write applications to the ConSentry NAC platform. (Compare Network Access Control products). For instance, a third party might write software that gathers data pertinent to particular regulatory audits and formats it appropriately.

He says the company will ride on Cisco and Juniper pushing their switches as key elements for enforcing NAC. Their endorsement of the architecture will help build acceptance more quickly and widely than ConSentry could do itself, he says.

The company plans to seek out other vendors to resell their gear as Alcatel-Lucent already does, Golden says.

He acknowledges that selling NAC-enabled switches into corporate networks is difficult for a start-up and that there are companies that wouldn’t even consider ConSentry. The company won’t even try for them.

The company will cultivate customers unhappy with their current switch vendors and early adopters who are open to ConSentry’s NAC technology, he says.

Golden acknowledges it is difficult but not impossible to beat Cisco head-to-head for NAC customers, but that the company expects to win some of those competitions.

Read more about security in Network World's Security section.

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.