Cisco releases "NAC' 4.0

As you probably read, Cisco announced today the release of NAC appliance 4.0.  Of course this is the latest version of Cisco Clean Access, which in itself was the new name for the Perfigo Clean Machines product, which Cisco bought a while back. What I thought was interesting here is that they now have officially made Clean Access part of NAC. What does this mean for their NAC framework which has been the subject of so much PR over the last few years?  What does this mean for partners of the NAC framework? I think time will tell.  Our own Safe Access NAC solution is a Cisco NAC certified solution, but we compete head on with Clean Access.  I guess time will tell whether this spells the death knell for the NAC partnership program as it has existed.  Another telling factor is that I understand the Cisco NAC developer conference scheduled recently, was cancelled.  I have not seen anything on whether NAC 4.0 still uses  Nessus or SNMP. 

You can also hear a good podcast interview with Cisco on NAC 4.0 from Infoworld here