* Start-ups should begin improving their products so they’re ready to compete with Cisco oneNAC
Nemertes Research took a look at Cisco’s plan to unite its appliance- and network-based NAC schemes and decided it was good news for customers with all-Cisco networks.
Since most NAC customers initially try out an appliance, it makes sense to have the appliance, endpoint agents, management and policy engines all interoperate with Cisco’s network-based NAC. This is what Cisco is working on and may have ready in 18 months.
“Enterprises that aren’t committed to the Cisco approach now have another reason to consider (or reconsider) it,” the research firm says in a recent Impact Analysis e-mail newsletter. A clear migration path from appliance to network NAC gives customers flexibility and protects their investment.
Nemertes looks at the flip side of this and notes that start-ups competing against Cisco with their own NAC appliances and network infrastructure can beat Cisco on the head about the gap between its NAC scenarios.
It also sets a timeframe for these same start-ups to improve their own products so they can compete when Cisco does get its NAC acts together. Most notable is the throughput limits of appliances and the need to deploy them near the access layer of networks, requiring large numbers of appliances for large deployments. These start-ups should work toward making their offerings as scalable as possible, Nemertes says.
Nemertes takes yet a third look at the situation and says that investors might look at these start-ups as merger and acquisition targets – something that happens to start-ups as any technology matures.
While Nemertes doesn’t address it, investors may also find a timeline here for their NAC start-ups to start reaping profits. If the VPN market is a valid comparison, if start-ups don’t have it together when Cisco’s NAC is tuned up, their struggle may become insurmountable.
