TheInfoPro

Written by Daniel Kennedy, Research Director for Information Security

In our interviews, network managers continue to cite managing costs, aging hardware, and managing network growth among their top concerns, and while these will likely remain top-of-mind concerns in the future, the continued growth of higher-capacity networking looks to ease some of this pain. With that in mind, the continued rollout of Intel’s more advanced platform next year allowing 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE) LAN on motherboard (LOM) connections should, combined with the normal network refresh cycle, allow 10GigE to become the default connection on rack-mounted servers.

This change further extends the benefits of 10 GigE, including network simplification, performance, and more efficient costs via the need for less equipment.

In the meantime, network budgets are recovering nicely in 2011 to help address these concerns, and the continued rollout of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE) even in advance of standardization of volume servers is poised to receive a piece of that investment. Implementations on the network core are passing 50% of respondents, with 33% having rollouts in plan. Not far behind is moving toward 10 Gigabit server connectivity, at 45% in use and 26% in plan, with Cisco as the primary vendor provider in both. HP and Dell, fresh off their acquisition of Force10, round out the top three vendors respondents cite for 10GigE on the core network; Juniper is second on the server side.

A sampling of narratives around project initiatives supports this projected growth:

• “..upgrading infrastructure (10Gig links)”
• “Yes, we’re changing our design. Bigger links between switches; we’ll start using 10Gig for communication between switches.”
• “Implementing UCS along with 10Gig networking and Nexus switches.”
• “Upgrading to 10Gb data center.”
• “Take fiber link to core to 10Gig.”
• “Increase in 10Gb capacity.”
• “Both backbone and systems connections for 10Gb.”
• “Core network refresh/moving to 10Gb.”
• “Capacity is growing – bigger and faster. 10Gb is the de facto standard.”
• “Want to go to 10Gb.”

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Written by Marco Coulter, Research Director for Storage

This Thursday’s TIP is based on a real-time update extracted with 71 in-depth interviews complete. Last Thursday’s TIP, we looked at 2011 budgets. This time, we look at how vendors will experience the closing quarter of the calendar year. How successful will vendors be in the Q4 CY11?

Brocade, Hewlett-Packard and EMC show the largest numbers planning spending in Q4, playing to their respective fiscal years. IBM goes against this model, with spending predominantly occurring by the end of Q2, possibly indicating overflow from the prior year coming into the first quarters of this year.

Symantec delivers evenly, with 80% spending evenly through the year. Before assuming that software delivers more balanced revenue than hardware, consider that the other listed software player, CommVault, has the lowest number of respondents indicating even spending. It is likely that Symantec sees more renewal revenue as the “gorilla” in the protection segment, while CommVault’s business is more new clients making initial commitments.

HDS goes significantly against the fiscal year “hockey stick” model. Thirty-six percent (36%) of storage professionals reviewing HDS planned their spending in Q3, well after the company’s fiscal year is concluded. HDS and NetApp look to have the least Q4 spending plans among our respondents.
Below is a table of the months that the listed companies conclude their fiscal years:
Fiscal Year End for Charted Storage Companies

March – Symantec, CommVault, HDS
April- NetApp
October – Brocade, HP
December – EMC, IBM

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Written by Daniel Kennedy, Research Director for Information Security

Cisco is having an interesting year, attempting to shave $1 billion of expense through layoffs and asset sales while beating both its own and Wall Street’s predictions of earnings as announced Nov. 9. At halfway through our Wave 9 Networking Study of enterprise networking environments, it is clear that Cisco continues to retain its prominence. The company has already jumped out to a 25% lead among vendors that respondents are excited about, and has a healthy 37% of respondents planning to spend more on its products in 2012 than they did in 2011 (vs. 21% reporting decreased spending). In terms of vulnerability, 7% of respondents report that they are definitely considering a switch off Cisco, which ties with Juniper (also at 7%) and easily beats Hewlett-Packard, where 18% are working out a switch.

Reflecting on Cisco’s continued entrenchment in enterprise environments, as well as its prominence in in plan implementations over the next year and a half, the question arises: can anyone unseat Cisco as the dominent networking provider? TheInfoPro asks just that question in its latest study, and finds the answer is largely “no”:

Digging into the preview data, in a number of categories with significant growth potential, Cisco is the leading in use vendor. For example, with 10 Gigabit Ethernet rollouts, 33% have upgrades to their core network in their plans, and 26% report the same with server upgrades. In both cases Cisco is the lead in plan vendor. Similarly, with the hottest technology in the voice and video category, Unified Communications, which figures into 39% of respondents’ plans, Cisco maintains its leadership as the top in use vendor, but in this case has the possibility of being passed by Microsoft.

A sampling of narratives gathered thus far on Cisco reflects the mixed sentiment users have similarly expressed in the past:

• “We are a Cisco shop, but we will look at other vendors and even some appliances to address performance issues.”
• “Cisco is always cutting edge, in my opinion. They are capturing market share in addressing application performance in a distributed networking environment.”
• “Cisco is our vendor of choice. Overall, they continue to perform as we continue to grow. They have great technical support, especially when we hit complex issues. They are not as responsive to the competition as they could be. I would like to see Cisco in a more aggressive posture against some of the smaller emerging vendors.”
• “Cisco has a great technical staff, great support and sales. Cisco is the leader in this space, no doubt. Cisco has more ways to lose an order. If you get to the right person their knowledge base is extreme, it is just getting there.”
• “Cisco is ‘losing it’ right now. They have not done a good job in delivery, pricing and bill of materials. Cisco sold us the wrong licenses and they could not explain what happened. They are trying to go into too many directions at one time, they need to find the right path and get on it!!!! The products are solid and they work, at least at the router and switch level.”

Of course we’ll have a more complete picture of what’s happening with Cisco in the enterprise at the close of our Wave 9 Networking Study.

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High Profile Breaches and Mobile Devices are key spending drivers according to a report authored by Daniel Kennedy, former Wall Street Chief Information Security Officer and now Research Director for Information Security at TheInfoPro

NEW YORK, November 17, 2011 – TheInfoPro, a division of leading analyst and data company The 451 Group, recently released the findings from its bi-annual study of the Information Security market, where the source of the data is in-depth, one-on-one interviews with over 150 decision-makers in the Global 2000. Key findings include: …

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Written by Daniel Kennedy, Research Director for Information Security

On Oct. 4, IBM announced the acquisition of security information and event management (SIEM) provider Q1 Labs for approximately $575 million, according to The 451 Group’s M&A KnowledgeBase. This is at least the third SIEM solution IBM will have established under its umbrella, but potentially also the most expansive solution when it comes to capturing the emerging combination of log management, network monitoring and security monitoring solution space. With this acquisition, IBM plans to create a new Security Systems division led by Q1’s current CEO, Brendan Hannigan.

Originally published as a ThursdayTIP to the respondent network of TheInfoPro. Would you like to receive all of the ThursdayTIP reports when they are fist released? Sign up here for TheInfoPro’s respondent network.

This move follows Hewlett-Packard’s acquisiton of ArcSight nearly a year ago, and precedes further consolidation in the space; NitroSecurity was also announced as being brought into Intel’s McAfee last week. With this shakeup, IBM is poised to occupy the fourth spot in SIEM market share, according to the results of respondent interviews for the Wave 14 Information Security Study. HP’s acquisiton of ArcSight makes it the de facto leader of the space, with 6% of in plan implementations also going its way. EMC’s enVision product (RSA) and Symantec round out the top of the pack.

SIEM enterprise market share, 14th security study.

The most recent information security study shows SIEM installations at a fairly mature 53% in use in enterprise environments, with 6% of respondents seeing new implementations in their short-term plans and 18% having SIEM installations on the radar in their longer-term project planning. Thirty-three percent (33%) of respondents see increased spending in 2012 on SIEM solutions, with 60% projecting a flat spend into next year.

What do respondents think of the product IBM has acquired? The trend in responses bends positive:

• “Q1 Labs’ product is very innovative.”
• “[We’ll look at] enVision, Q1 Labs, Symantec.” (In response to a question about spending plans for 2012 for SIEM solutions.)
• “We are in woeful need of consolidation. We are evaluating whether to continue on with enVision or use something new. We did a POC with Q1 Labs, or [we may] go to SecureWorks as a third party.”
• “Just had this discussion; there are others, like Q1 Labs and EMC enVision.” (In response to a question about switching off another SIEM vendor’s product.)
• “The company [Q1 Labs] is innovative. They remain fresh in terms of feature set. They are a small company, and they are subject to being swallowed up! They need to keep the system ‘capable’ at all times, especially keeping up with the patches.”

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