We tested a beta of the McAfee Firewall Enterprise on a live network in April 2010, using its Windows-based client and also ran the Cisco ASDM client in its demo mode for comparison purposes.

McAfee
3965 Freedom Circle
Santa Clara, CA 95054
888-847-8766

http://www.mcafee.com/firewall/

Pricing: Starts at $1500 with higher prices for higher throughput and additional network interfaces

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.

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

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

Version 1.5.1
Price: $19,500 for appliance model

http://www.mcafee.com/us/local_content/datasheets/ds_fw_profiler.pdf

First off, password security should be priority in any network. Educating your users to secure and memorize their password (that means no yellow post its lying around with that info) should be the top concern for any sysadmin. Allowing a person to post their credentials in the footer of his email signature is horrifying, as one of the brainy scientist had done. Hmm, maybe that’s how the hacker got into your system in the first place? Just maybe so.

Second, if you write about deleting information that you’re afraid of being obtained through a freedom of information request, then don’t store that same information on an unsecure server. That’s just counterproductive now! You never know when a hacker will download all that info and, oh who knows, publish it for the world to see. It’s rare, but I hear it happens.

Finally, let your users know that everything they write, or say (voice mail) and do (teleconference, security videos) at work which is recorded is the property of the company, and may just find it’s way unto the front page of the NY Times. Do you really want that remark about your assistant advertised on the frontpage? Think twice about what you say and think thrice about what you document into written record.

What do you think about the fiasco of the Climatologist emails and the fallout that they are experiencing due to their bad security? ISC2 is going to have a field day in with this!

Besides Symantec and McAfee, we now see Lumension adding anti-virus software to its suite of systems management tools. Sophos has integrated data loss prevention (DLP) software with its anti-virus software. And Axcient is integrating encryption with its data backup and recovery services.

The reason that all the vendors are expanding the footprint of their clients is naturally to expand their reach in adjacent markets. But for solution providers in the channel, these expansion efforts will require a little extra consideration. As each vendor expands their footprint, they also expand their ability to lock customers and their solution providers into their architecture. This can be a good thing if the solution provider is tightly aligned with a particular vendor. But many solution providers might not want to align that closely with a given vendor for any number of reasons.

Of course, delivering a variety of services using the same client architecture should reduce systems overhead and lower systems management costs, so solution providers that don’t want to align with a particular vendor’s client architecture are going to have to make a compelling case to the customer. And as more services get added to a particular client delivery system, making that argument is going to get harder and harder.

By now, it’s become apparent that vendors are going to attempt to use universal clients to consolidate any number of distinct management services. The only real question is where will solution provider in the channel wind up with each successive wave of consolidation.

Data Security Tools: As the focus on security has shifted from the perimeter, solution providers are finding success with a wide range of security tools focused on securing data rather than access to the network.

Data Storage: No matter the state of the economy, demand for more storage space keeps growing. And until storage virtualization goes mainstream, there is still plenty of opportunity to sell storage arrays.

Business Intelligence: There are a lot of tools in this category, but the reason companies buy them is the same. After years of investing in packaged applications, customers are anxious to show value for those investments by presenting users with actionable information.

Smartphones: There’s not much money to be made on the sale of the smartphone itself. But a new generation of mobile applications is creating opportunity for the channel.

Cloud Computing: It’s still early days as far as the channel is concerned. But the convergence of cloud computing and managed services does create a lower cost model for delivering IT services.

802.11n Wireless Networks: Increased bandwidth, lower costs and fewer headaches are a combination that most customers can’t ignore no matter how bad the economy is.

Appliance Consolidation: All those devices at the edge of the network are now ripe for consolidation as customers have become concerned about the total cost of managing them all.

Virtualization Sprawl: In the back half of the year, customers have discovered that not only do they need virtual machine management tools, but that left to their own devices virtual machines will suck up all the memory they can find unless properly managed.

Application Acceleration: Short of a full network upgrade, the best thing for a slow network is a set of application acceleration appliances that offload high bandwidth or low latency applications.

Desktop Virtualization: Starting with a conversation about Windows 7 and aging hardware, solution providers are starting to discover that customers are rethinking their entire approach to managing the desktop.

Even in the worst of times, there is always opportunity in the channel if you just know where to look.

Cases in point are as follows:

*Most customers don’t really have the internal expertise to successfully invest in business intelligence system. This is one of the primary reasons that BI penetration as a percentage of the total market seems relatively low. But what if all a customer had to do was upload data into a service that cost $125 per user per month to get a visual representation of all their data in a matter of minutes. That’s the core idea behind a new Spatial Key service from a company called Universal Minds.

*Pivotlink is a SaaS offering that gives end users a more robust way to analyze data that’s easy to set up and a lot more useful than a spreadsheet. What’s interesting is they recently partnered with Primitive Logic to integrate their BI service into Primitive Logic’s human capital management software. There are probably thousands of instances where an existing enterprise application could benefit from a relatively quick BI makeover by embedding links to a BI service into the application, as opposed to trying to add that capability through a whole lot of application development work.

*Even IBM is getting in on the act. The company now offers a Rational AppScan on Demand service that allows solution providers to use the company’s application security testing tool as a service. Given the huge amount of concern over application security these days, providing a testing service that doesn’t require somebody to physically take apart an application is nice quiet way of addressing a major pain point without getting anybody bent out of shape about the quality of their code until you absolutely have to.

As the whole concept of cloud computing continues to evolve, it’s pretty clear that there will be thousands of ways to enhance existing on-premise application software environments that will all create opportunities for channel partners to add value. And as long as the solution provider is seen to be the one bringing the intellectual capital to bear to make these solution possible, it doesn’t really matter all that much where they actually run.