Tripwire going public, you are kidding right?

Jim Johnson, CEO of Tripwire, recently mused that tripwire is thinking of going public. And while every CEO wants to get there, the numbers just arent there for Tripwire. According to their own press releases, their growth is slowing: grew 30% in 06 and only 19% in 07.  The market is clearly going and Tripwire is losing market share to companies like Solidcore.

Also the tripwire technology is really old (10 years!) and  is being rapidly commoditized by players like BladeLogic (which considers them a competitor) and several CMDB vendors. Tripwire benefited greatly from VISA including their name in the original PCI spec as an example.  It has since been dropped from the latest specs.  New advanced technology like Solidcore Continuous File Integrity Monitoring is being rapidly adopted in the marketplace and gaining market share.

The idea of tripwire going public is nothing more than a head fake to get them a better valuation from a potential acquirer. Also the comparison in the article to ArcSight is meaningless, for Arcsight is much bigger and has a growth rate which is fantastic.

Sharp selects Solidcore Embedded for its Printers

Sharp selected Solidcore Embedded to go into their multi-function printers. (See Press Release from Solidcore) The selection process was tough and was extremely competitive. A lot of the usual Anti-virus players like CA, Symantec, McAfee and TrendMicro were competing for the business. These multi-function printers are aimed at the backoffice for shops among other things.

Again Solidcore’s ability to change to the image was key in winning this deal, among other factors like very small footprint and fantastic performance.

VMWare’s Million Dollar Deals

VMWare will be reporting earnings later this month. Most of the analyst firms are predicting that the earning will be great. One of the interesting parts about the earnings are that there are several transactions over a million. While this is a great sign that Corporate America (and World Wide) has adopted VMW as a standard, it also raises the concern whether there is a shift in the “deal structure”. Are the million dollar deals more like “enterprise deals” which a shot in the arm in the short term, but can lead to price erosion per node in the long term. Microsoft went through the same cycle with their ELA which is signed every 3 years.  The advantage of signing ELA is that it locks competitors out of accounts as the incentive to switch even at departmental level is low.

the other things that the million dollar deals point to is that the direct salesforce inside of VMWare is growing, which will lead to a change in behavior for the organization. One of the great things about how VMW got off the ground was the “download” model and grass root sales effort. As soon as you get an enterprise direct sales force, their compensation drives them to do larger deals with smaller per node pricing and steeper discounts.

Why are device manufacturers replacing Symantec, McAfee & CA with Solidcore?

Once customers deploy Solidcore’s embedded solution on their devices, they stop deploying anti-virus on those devices. Most companies shipping windows based devices in the past just by default installed anti-virus software. Anti-virus’s constant update model doesn’t work well with devices (would you like your fridge to constantly download software?). One of the reasons it doesn’t work well is who should be responsible for the download is not clear, the device owner, the manufacturer or the channel.

We have replaced AV from Symantec, McAfee, CA, TrendMicro in several companies. The two other reasons are the fact that manufacturers need to control the image of the software on the devices and the AV folks dont play into that at all. And lastly several of these devices now need to be PCI compliance for which Solidcore is the only solution in the embedded space.

Solidcore is becoming the defacto solution for XPEmbedded and other flavors of embedded windows.

Windows Embedded, Change Control & Solidcore

 Solidcore S3 Embedded product is having tremendous success in the embedded (microsoft and linux) market. These are devices like ATM machines, voting machines, ultra-sounds, CT scanners, point of sale systems, kiosks are running windows (XP embedded). If you are wondering what in the world has change control got to do with a ultra-sound machine? You are not the only one.

The seeds of this market  started in mid-nineties when people began switching from proprietary operating systems on these devices to windows NT. Linux also began to play in this market place around 2000. GE Healthcare standardized on Linux on several of their medical equipment.

It turns out that the behavior of the customer buying the device and the channel selling it, the behavior changes once the they know it is windows or linux.  Now it is something that they can play with, install other software. Also if the device is on the network it is picked up by scanning tools and the patch levels are exported to audits. As these products flow through the channel there is a real need to control who can change what. Solidcore is the leader for change control and a great fit for this space.

Today Solidcore announced a partnership with BSquare a leader in the Windows Embedded space. This is a big partnership and will change the landscape of the embedded software world. More good stuff to come.

Its time for India to flex their Cricket Muscle

Disgusting is the most polite of words to be used for what has unfolded in Australia. I would have supported Anil Kumble walking off the field on the Rahul Dravid dismissal. BCCI should definitely call off the current tour.

In addition since Australia started this whole racism thread with Jaisurya from Sri Lanka, BCCI should enlist the support of Sri Lanka and call off the triangular series. Sri Lanka vs India playing in India would be a awesome series which would get all the media attention and the advertising money.

We need this moment to bring the umpiring and behavior in Cricket out of the dark ages.

Is Cisco on a collision path with Citrix?

I was visiting my home loan agent. She always makes people wait, so I sat there looking at her desk while she was talking on the phone. And something interesting hit me. She had one of these slim desktops where the computer was almost in the monitor itself and the other thing she had on her desk was a phone. So what is interesting there: Should those two devices be on a consolidation path? Its not a new thought … but the absence of anything else on her desk hit me.

Another interesting aspect about the phone in the enterprise is that most phones work off of an enterprise switch which gives voicemail, conferencing capabilities etc. With VOIP phones the architecture again involves a couple of central servers in addition to the centralized switch.

The architecture looks very similar to one where there is a thin client and which works of a citrix server in the backend or newer architectures using VDI and vmware.

There are three possibilities here:

- phone will become the thin client

- the thin client will become the phone

- the desktop will become the phone

The second option thin client with soft phone capability has been around. For example, this NEC client offers softphone capability with their backend.

Microsoft unified communications is making the desktop the phone by integrating exchange, instant messaging and a soft phone all working of the enterprise active directory.

The first option of a phone becoming the thin client is quite viable and interesting, especially with the VOIP phones as they are connected to the intranet anyway, have speakers, it should be easy to add a DVD drive and usb. Also VOIP phones at $100-$200 per node are in the same price range as the thin client ~ $100-$200.

Which direction the consolidation happens might be influenced by the refresh cycle. Is there a refresh for VOIP phones or a refresh for the desktops or a thin client initiative.

Rosen