We tested a unit on a live network with actual production data with Firefox running on Windows XP in February 2010.

Price: starts at $110,500.
Backup products supported include Symantec’s Netbackup and Backup Exec, CA ARCserve, IBM/Tivoli Storage Manager, and EMC.

SEPATON S2100-ES v5
400 Nickerson Road
Marlborough, MA 01752
Sepaton.com
508 490 7900

Evidence of this convergence abounds. Security software vendors are lined up to port their wares to network infrastructure platforms from companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Juniper Networks and F5 Networks. The latest example is the coupling of the Firemon firewall and network management platform with BIG-IP switches from F5 Networks.

As IT organizations ponder their options for the next generation of networking, many of them are insisting that security functions come baked in with the gear. This creates disruption and, in some cases opportunities for solution providers such as M&S Technologies in Dallas that is leveraging its relationship with both Secure Passage and F5 Networks to expand its potential base of customers for both offerings, said Mark Miller, a company partner.

There will always be the need for security services as practice, but how security technologies get delivered to the enterprise is undergoing a major transformation that will challenge solution providers to adopt to some new market realties in the days and months ahead.

A good example of how Web 2.0 platforms can be used in the channel comes in the form of a Web service from BrainShark. Dubbed the Brainshark Channel Solution, this multimedia platform makes it relatively simple for a vendor to extend “widgets” and other modules from the Brainshark service and right on to the Web site of the solution provider.

As platforms like these continue to gain traction, it’s easy to see how solution provider could mix and match modules of product information from different vendors to create solution sets on their own Web sites without having to reinvent that content. Better yet, the same piece of content can be used multiple times across various solution sets.

Brainshark isn’t the only channel marketing platform out there, but it does illustrate how solution providers need to evolve their marketing in the age of the Web. Of course, before that happens, the vendors have to evolve their capabilities as well. And the best way for that to happen is for solution providers to start asking vendors why can’t they do what platforms such as Brainshark already provide?

In the meantime, solution providers need to up their marketing game in the age of the Web, and aligning themselves with vendors that actually help them do that is one intangible criteria that should be seriously considered when deciding to ally with one vendor or another.

We tested the appliance on a small network in February 2010.

Global Velocity GV-2010
Globalvelocity.com
St. Louis MO
314 880 2900

We tested Alpha 5 v10 on a Windows XP running SP2 in February 2010.

Price: starting with a developer license at $349
Alphasoftware.com

Normally, the assimilation of one product category into another is cause for dismay in the channel. But as we go forward, Adam Famularo, CA , senior vice president and general manager for CA’s Recovery Management & Data Modeling business unit, points out that what we’re actually witnessing is the transformation of backup and recovery into an ongoing service that creates opportunities for recurring revenue streams for channel partners.

Famularo adds that this general movement towards backup and recovery in the cloud is also creating some even bigger opportunities for solution provider in the realm of data management. Customers no longer want to treat all data equally. They want to be able to prioritize the recovery process based on relative importance of the data. That creates an opportunity for solution providers to deliver information lifecycle management (ILM) services to the customers are that are enabled by data deduplication and replication services tied back to cloud computing services.

Famularo says channel partners should keep an eye out for how CA not only intends to tightly integrate backup and recovery with cloud computing services, but also how the entire portfolio of CA products will be unified around a data management strategy.

In the meantime, Famularo says he wants partners to know that CA is serious about backup and recovery because it’s now part of a larger corporate strategy that will ultimately create more opportunities for partners.

DataCove is virtually a plug and play email archival appliance. Within a few minutes after logging on to a test unit, I quickly learned how to manage it. In fact, for experienced email administrators, there is no learning curve whatsoever. In short, the DataCove is a mission-critical email archiving solution that solves the serious problem of archiving messages without the usual trappings of an enterprise appliance.

DataCove provides a simple hands off approach to daily usage that solution providers will surely enjoy. What’s more, the technology scales up to enterprise level solutions without the complexity associated with large scale deployments. DataCove’s modular design allows administrators to upgrade storage while keeping the access simple to use. Some DataCove models feature hot swappable drives, which allow a unit to be fixed in minutes if any disks fail.

DataCove rivals products from tough competing vendors such as ArcMail and Mimosa Systems. Administrators will quickly come to that same conclusion once they deploy DataCove on their network. DataCove uses email journaling or SMTP for collecting and archiving messages, and can access messages from POP and IMAP servers.  The unit’s simplicity comes at a price. Typically, in an Exchange shop, administrators turn on journaling to comply with regulatory requirements. However, journaling’s major drawback is that it doubles the workload of an Exchange server. Journaling can further tax a server if mail folders, contacts, calendars and other documents are also archived. Solution providers interested in offering DataCove will have to take that storage and performance hit into account, before sizing a system for deployment and that may increase the pricing and or force an Exchange server upgrade.

But at the same time, interest in increasing the productivity of the existing workforce through the better use of IT is on the rise. The question is how can solution providers best leverage unified communications to meet the needs of customers while simultaneously advancing their own business goals? The answer to that question is to start thinking more like a carrier that is delivering set of services that have been customized for a specific customer.

We all know that every major carrier is looking to expand their footprint in unified communications. But the issue these big carriers will have over time is their inability to customize these services. As unified communications evolve in the enterprise, customers are going to want to see these services delivered inside the applications they use every day. That creates an opportunity for solution providers to provide custom unified communication services as a managed service to the customer.

To pull that off, however, solution providers are going to need to deploy a suite of products based in industry standards such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) that by definition creates an open architecture. For example, it’s the maturity of SIP that enabled Siemens to replace Tandberg with Polycom as its preferred partner for the video conferencing component of the OpenScape unified communications platform. That same approach has also allowed Siemens to make a case for layering its software in on top of existing Nortel infrastructure rather than just assuming those customers will become customers of Avaya in the wake of the latter company buying the enteprise assets of Nortel, said Michael Garland, head of the North America channel for Siemens Enterprise Networks.

As time goes on, SIP will be extended to integrate with a host of service-oriented architecture (SOA) services, as promised this week separately by Avaya and IBM, that will allow unified communications to be delivered seamlessly across public and private cloud computing implementations.

In the meantime, unified communications represents one of the best opportunities for solution providers to inset themselves inside the business processes of their customers. And as we’ve said before, whoever controls the business process controls the customer.

Of course, IT vendors never saw an emerging technology trend that didn’t look like an opportunity to increase their attach rates. So what is happening under the heading of data center convergence is an attempt by Cisco to expand its networking base into the server realm. This naturally led to a response from Oracle in terms of acquiring Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard’s move to acquire 3Com.

Even before these deals, all three companies have been pushing partners to increase their attach rates and as we move into 2010 there will be more pressure than ever. But the question that solution providers should be asking themselves is whether data center convergence will actually come at a cost of their vendor independence. The fact of the matter is that there are several perfectly good software-only approaches to data center convergence that accomplish much the same goal that Cisco and HP are trying to achieve. Furthermore, we’ll see some evolution of various virtualization technology standards that will make it easier to deliver heterogeneous solutions for data center convergence.

What will change, however, is how customers think about acquiring IT infrastructure. Instead of buying servers, storage and switches, customers will evolve their thinking into buying something akin to “data center processing units” where solution providers are asked to deliver sets of discrete pre-integrated components to power a given set of applications. That may require a little more technical savvy on the part of the solution provider. But what it won’t require is the solution provider to sacrifice their vendor independence unless they deem that backing one horse in the data center races is a good idea.

Further on down the road, solution providers can also look forward to the business opportunities afforded by the eventual need customers will have in terms of integrating diverse units of data center processing. In the meantime, solution providers would be well-advised to not panic in the face of the massive amount of sound and fury around data center convergence that will be one of the hallmarks of 2010.

Panda Security may have the answer to that dilemma with a new security service aptly named Panda Cloud Office Protection. Panda’s new service offers a unified threat management and security mitigation by managing the delivery of desktop security via the cloud to give small businesses the best of both worlds for combating ever-increasing threats.
With hosted services, cloud based storage, social networking sites, web mail, and Web 2.0 applications (Ajax and .Net), it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate where data is stored and precisely where applications execute. Add to that the increasing use of remote computing and virtual desktops, and security becomes a very complex endeavor indeed.

Panda’s service aims to reduce the administrative burden associated with traditional security layers, which are typically deployed at the PC level, the Server level and at the edge of networks. Those traditional solutions use a HIPs (Host-Based Intrusion Prevention) approach that requires anti-malware and anti-intrusion engines, as well as security suite software, installed on every endpoint and a security/management server installed at the edge of each managed network.

At best, that proves to be an expensive undertaking involving hardware, software and licensing expenses. At worst, that proves to be a management nightmare, which sucks up time and money, while providing less than ideal protection. Any way you look at it, traditional security solutions prove to be lacking when it comes to the small business environment, especially if those small businesses have multiple sites and leverage a mobile work force.

Panda’s goal is to offer businesses increased protection and eschew all of the required elements of the past by eliminating the most of the traditional HIPs components. How is that possible? Panda is turning to the very same environment that creates security problems to build a comprehensive security solution – and that environment is the cloud.

Panda Cloud Office Protection is a security solution for networked PCs – based on the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS), which shifts installation, maintenance and management chores to the cloud. That reduces the need for on-site security components and solutions, which are often hard to maintain and prove to be expensive. The idea here is to let small businesses focus more on their core competencies instead of pushing resources towards the administrative burdens of security.

The net result is increased security, which is simple to use and offers reduced operating costs. The product combines 2 pieces of technology, local software clients for endpoints and a management console that runs in the cloud (on Panda’s servers), which is accessed via a web browser.

Installation proves to be very easy, with all the security software delivered to the local PC or server via an installation agent, manually launched at the PC, or automatically installed using login scripts, active directory policies or other policy tools. The PC install can be silent, in other words, no end user activity is required to install the client portion of the product.

The installation file is smaller than six megabytes, making downloading and installation almost instantaneous. Once installed, the product adds a small “panda bear” icon to the taskbar, which users can click on to execute manual scans, check the basic status of their PCs and so on. Ease of use seems to be the rule of the day, at least with the client portion of the product. All screens are easy to understand and access to online (as well as local) help is just a mouse click away. For the most part, end users can simply ignore the little panda bear on their task bar and let the software take care of security.

Administrators will use the management console to perform a variety of tasks, ranging from managing individual PC’s security settings to generating reports to tracking licenses. The management console also offers real-time network statistics, which can come in handy for tracking security problems and reacting to those problems quickly, before they spread.

The management console requires no installation or setup, as a SaaS product, administrators simply access the console via a web browser using the credentials assigned by Panda. The console is intuitive, which ultimately is a good thing, simply because most security suites have become overly complex. The browser based interface has the various management options divvied up by tabs at the top of the screen. “Status”, which is the default tab, is launched when accessing the console and gives a 10,000 foot view into the security status of the collective endpoints using a couple of informative graphs. The graphs offer a quick assessment of the types of infections and the source of those infections and prove to be a good indicator that the product is working properly.

The “Computers” tab offers a view into the status of each protected endpoint and allows the administrator to drill down further to gather information about registered endpoints, including their statuses and other pertinent details. Administrators can select to “blacklist” PCs, removing PCs from the security database. Adding a computer to the blacklist eliminates managed protection for that system.

An “Installation and Settings” tab provides the functionality needed to deploy the client software, create groups and modify profiles. Administrators will find multiple ways to deploy the client, including a direct download “.MSI” application file, a network deployment tool and an internet URL that when launched in a browser will automatically install the client software on a PC. The profile’s control allows administrators to vary the level of protection, control actions taken by the client software and manage the default settings on each client PC.

Administrators can use profiles to customize end-point pop-up messages and create automated actions, such as automatically cleaning infected files, scheduling updates and enforcing firewall policies. Although Panda Cloud Office Protection offers numerous features and capabilities, there is some room for improvement. For example, the administrative interface could offer a more comprehensive look at individual PCs, allowing administrators to check the scan results and status of an individual PC, without running a report. What’s more, it would be beneficial if an administrator could remotely instigate an immediate security scan on an individual PC and then monitor the results in real-time, without having to define a scheduled event. More comprehensive system activity reports with easy to define filters would be another welcome improvement. The client application also has some room for improvement – for example, if the end user could simply click on the “Panda Bear” icon and determine the security status of their system (ie. Group membership, deployed policies, local reports), that could ease tech support issues and give the end user a better understanding of the security used on their systems.

Panda Cloud Office Protection brings many features to the world of SMB security at an affordable price of $55 per user per year. The company does offer multi-year discounts, further lowing the total cost of ownership. From the security standpoint, the product proves to be a good value by offering all of the needed security functions at a competitive price, while throwing in remote, consolidated endpoint management. Small business operators and their solutions providers will also find additional value in the product’s ease of use and hands off approach to endpoint security – which ultimately makes security more foolproof and guarantees a higher level of protection. Although the product could benefit from some minor administrative and management improvements, users will still find themselves well protected from the vast array of viruses, malware and other security ills found in today’s internet connected world.