Mike Rothmans Secure Nirvana

It has been a while since I disagreed with Mike Rothman publicly on the blog.  Fact is I usually find myself on the same side of the fence as him and frankly there are easier marks then him to pick on.  But with the long holiday weekend, the news is slow and we all need something to ponder, so let me dig in on Mike's recent searchsmb column in Techtarget.  Mike returns to his tired (not tried) but not necessarily true, "big is the new small" thing.  It is now called best of breed vs big security.  I know we have debated this in the past, but I still don't buy it all.  I think there is a difference between buying multiple security products from one vendor versus buying from the big boys. Using Mike's examples of McAfee and Symantec, even Mike says their suite products have been largely a failure. So what makes him or anyone think that is now changing.  Yes they have a lot of products, but they are not integrated.

Mike that is the key, integration.  SMBs want unified products, not lots of individual products from one vendor.  Until big security can show unified integration, they are no better than the little guy, who at least gives you best-of-breed.  This is exactly why we think a Unified Network Platform will be so appealing to this crowd.